Matthew Collings: Classic or Dud?

His style is ever so slightly irreverent which is what I like and his quote from last years Turner Prize about it being welcomed back like a girl returning from finishing school with an avante garde haircut was genius.

this is written terribly, please see also worst post ever thread. I'm ill, that's my excuse.

Having said that I only saw the last twenty minutes or so of the programme so I feel a bit like a politician commenting on Brasseye. To Collings' credit, I liked the tangental but sensible links between Rimbaud, Beckett, Richey Manic and the rest.

He did describe Richey as being the singer in MSP which did make me wonder if he got that wrong, what else did he get wrong?

He's one of those writers who writes in such a way that when you read them, you kind of read it in their voice. Like as if he's reading you a bedtime story. Only about Donald Judd.

He does, however, have an irritating habit of never ever using any quotation marks ever in his writing, which means sometimes things become a little unclear. But that's just a small thing.

I think it's great that a critic learned to write with the same slyly concrete, faux-awkward style that Warhol developed in his books, because I do consider Warhol one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century.

it's faux all over, and i hate it. i find it oddly patronizing. cf adam th1rlwell.

I'M WITH FAUX

Am impressed with your lone battle to KEEP ART CRIT REAL though Enrique.

'You can't just say anything you like,' Collings observes. 'You have to join in the official discourse. There are discourses for everything. But with art the discourse is incredibly tortured and unreal, and you have to get to know it over many years. At first you can't believe the phoneyness and unreality. It's like a bad film, set in the art world. It's so extreme, you feel sure everybody must be joking and that suddenly they're going to admit it. But they never do... Innovations in art often seem to be about calling the bluff of the discourse. The new often seems satirical almost. The discourse reels, then adapts. The new seems solemn.'

"When I’m being extreme, I’m capable of thinking that frankly the whole art scene is made up of a bunch of idiots. And I have no desire to get millions of ordinary people to queue up to look at that stuff. Why should they? It’s got nothing much to do with them. To suddenly expect it to be popular is asking the impossible. There really is very little in it for a mass audience and I think this mass audience it’s suddenly now got, knows that really. And they’re not really interested; they’re just along for the ride, for the nonsense. The mandarin people in charge of the Turner Prize, and the media people at Channel 4, and middle-class people who run the art columns on the broadsheets, all assume ordinary people must have this stuff explained to them -- but the motivations for doing that are completely bullshit." - Matthew Collings

HOWEVER i genuinely feel patronized by him AND i feel the whole shebang is intrinsically elitist; i don't think it stands up except for the sort of buzz-value that attaches itself to elite work.

anyway -- it passed half an hour well enough. but if there weren't a big 'brit art' thing, which MC is a major part of, then i don't see that the work wd have any value: it serves its function as something for broadsheet readers to discuss, but i'm afraid to say i just don't see anything of interest in it. now, in MC's view that wd probably be 'valid' -- because i cd still have my broadsheet readers' discussion. but basically life's too short imho./

Hirst is also not exactly the sharpest tool in the box. And who ever said it was about intelligence?

this afternoon i'm going to finish the concluding part of syberberg's 8 hour 'hitler: a film from germany'
this evening i'm seeing 'love actually'

am i an elitist? or a top postmodernist?

xpost: I've no problem with elitism, I just hear the word used lazily too often.

"if there weren't a big 'brit art' thing... then i don't see that the work wd have any value": what you seem to be saying here is that I've been cheated but you've seen through the hype. That's a wildly condescending way of saying you don't like something.

standing up for impenetrable arthouse cinema which is more expensive to see and more difficult for the lay person to understand

bollocks! a) not everyone lives in london, so actually going to white cube/tate moder/whatever is a fuck of a lot more expensive seven than buying dvds, and b) they're rentable in public libraries (i see the vast majority of my films on dvds from the public library -- there's a boom in forign language dvds at the moment).

as for lay understanding -- well it's a potential thing. i mean, if modern cinema were given half the space given to matthew collings maybe we cd have a wider following for movies. however the bbc STILL fails to see the potential -- it used to screen old art-houe stuff nights; now it shows early nineties straight-to-video cop films. like why?

my def of elitist: 'hoxton' here, any demi monde, any 'avant garde'

(look i'm polemical -- i don't mean half this stuff btw)

You're plainly very into demi-mondes and avant gardes, so perhaps it's time to stop using 'elitist' as an insult.

how so?

anyway i'm off, but i'm not into that, believe.

I think part of the problem with art is knowing how to jump into the discourse, there seems to be a debunking attitude towards much of it. Youeither like it or you don't when actually an awful lot of it is just okay (a few good bits a few bad bits). Thinking about the Janet Cardiff, it was one great bit and one terrible bit.

set your video enrique ;)

(also predator 2 is better than predator btw idiot pete) (the everlasting loop of showings of karate kid is where i wd re-programme )

(I watched karate kid II and it made me miss a bit of enterprise grr!)

I can make little sense of the elitist argument above. Surely fronting TV shows trying to interest a more general audience is hardly the behaviour of an elitist? I think he has pretty strong populist instincts in some areas, at least - his fairly plain language is part of this. (That isn't meant to imply that I see muh wrong with elitism.)

As for why there are art shows on TV and virtually nothing on film, I'm not sure the imbalance is that great anyway - Jonathan Ross's show is on every now and then, there's a season now on Brit actors in Hollywood, and there really isn't so much about painting and so on. It's the centenary of one of the great sculptors of the 20th Century, who was also British, Barbara Hepworth, and I think the 5 main channels have managed one show in celebration (and I saw something else on BBC4, I think it was). Anyway, there may be a disproportion compared to their real world popularity, which might be down to that extra reason to put on art shows - the fact that some channels are obliged to provide some programming of this sort, whereas unless they were very specifically arty in their film progs (i.e. docs about Renoir/Ozu, not interviews hyping the new US blockbuster) they would get no credit for that when their licences are assessed.

i laughed out loud when he said (of girls being married to renaissance dukes at the age of ten), "and this makes us cross today"

"We really are too depraved and idiotic as a society now for art."

As for why there are art shows on TV and virtually nothing on film, I'm not sure the imbalance is that great anyway - Jonathan Ross's show is on every now and then, there's a season now on Brit actors in Hollywood, and there really isn't so much about painting and so on

jonathan ross is equiv to a more populist rolf harris, is the problem; but more than this, all tv treats film as a kind of endangered species, it has to hedge any recommendation of a 'difficult' film with all sorts of crap.

yes.

If I really thought that Jonathan Ross was equivalent to a populist Rolf Harris, I'm not sure I would anyway see that as a problem.

They almost always review a movie on 'Late Review', and almost never review a CD or gig.

Film (Insert Year Here) is a review show, what is missing from TV would be an analoug review art show. Exception being an occasional bit of Cockfarmers review. With film I think the received wisdom is that we all have opions already, we don't need coaxing, I think we do to find something interesting in what we may think is rubbish. (Not so interested in a TV series on Ozu, I see however two more are being released at Christmas).

X-Post Andrew, agree. But Ross now doesn't review minor films at all, or just rounds 'em up.

the "100 best spooky bits" has the potential to be good film crit also, but they don't cheat enough and ONLY ask post-maconie types - WHY NO LAURA MULVEY?

(i am v.allergic to marks kerm0de and c0usins, who are in a sense "proper critics" - certainly they are experts w.a good grounding-by-osmosis in official theory - but they never address "what is at stake", as g.marcus likes to put it, hence will never be the matthew collings of TV film studies)

(of course it wd be wrong and silly for TV film studies to separate itself off from TV TV studies, which is even less extant, unless you count Tarrant on TV and TV Burp... which you should)

Hey, I've got a great idea for a TV prog called Do You See? Or Did You See? (Oddly Did You See now sound wrong...) I'd love to see a series of Adaptations, looking at the process, what gets knocked out, added in. Maybe in conjunction with a series about translation, subtitles vs dubbing (a battle which appears to have been won by subtitling which I find astonishing)....

(i am v.allergic to marks kerm0de and c0usins, who are in a sense "proper critics" - certainly they are experts w.a good grounding-by-osmosis in official theory - but they never address "what is at stake", as g.marcus likes to put it, hence will never be the matthew collings of TV film studies)

hmm. i'm not crazy keen on either -- but k3rm0de did a good job on l8 review by defending the honour of 'springtime in a small town' against idiot buff0rd and idiot gr33r. i don't kno that mulv3y wd better; i mean except for 'blackboards' i don't recall her being so hot for new filmz.

interesting development (which was actually crap, but, well it has potential): c5's film cock-ups last night.

are you on drugggs agane? dubbing is just... language isn't just the freakin words you know. it's the semiotique. borges said he'd rather just watch silents than put up with dubbing.

as for tim's 'Can't remember the last time I saw some arthouse movie for nothing.' well, there's a svankmajer film on ch4 tonight, does that not qualify?

andy

well in anycase, renting one will be what? 3 quid. transit costs to art galleries=?

Svankmajer? I bet it was.

Look the point is that Enrique was trying to suggest that film was this utterly accessible medium and that art is elitist, at least partly on the grounds of cost. I was disagreeing. So ner.

that's pretty elitist. even chris marker watches dvds. often they give a better viewing acperience than the cinema -- if, like me, you are a sociopath.

clearly you don't get art galleries in anything like the concentration as you get cinemas/shops/libraries/amazon.co.uk; but yes, there are non-london galleries, though to my knowledge not a vast number of hot young artists stay in the provinces.

More importantly since the art elite (critics etc) are based in London this is what the debate is about. Fair enough there might be a great piece in Middlesbrough, but if no-one is talking about it where is your position in the debate. Fine if you can stick your oar in an talk about it (and have an outlet) but that won't be the case for someone trying to engage with contemporary art for a first time. I find most of the reviews of art outside the capital spend at least a paragraph of the review talking about the unusual setting.

Oh, I am an elitist when it comes to cinema. I like my cinema in the cinema.

You know, it's also possible to see art in books and on TV. It's not exactly the same but then watching a film on TV isn't exactly the same as going to the flicks.

(I could talk a little bit again about seeing the Jenat Cardiff Motet in Liverpool and then in Whitechapel being wholly different experiences, but part of this may be due to it not working in London).

The debate cares about speaking with authority if you want to engage with the official one. I'm not being rockist, I'm suggesting the art establishment might be.

i suppose; but then listening to 'speakerboxx' on a discman is diff to hearing it at home, etc, etc -- it's not that big a deal.

materialism rox u r all plato

(eg "here's why: the bus stops right outside!")

This argument should get back to Collinges now.

anyone see the tuner prize coverage. once I found out the fella was 'dressed up' I suspected he would win. but i liked those pots anyway.

To be fair, they were nice pots, it's jus they had a bunch of shite scrawled all over them, and the dress was just horrible, very very ugly.

i guess we will be doing something on this at the mag any day now!! i don't really like his stuff either

sadly i missed the prog as i have tummyache and went to bed early! :(

only i couldn't get to sleep so here i am online instead

But the rest of his presentation ... hrm.

As Enrique says, his stuff about Goya was pretty offensive, but then again, I found Beavis & Butthead Chapman's Goya-clown things pretty offensive. It wouldn't be so bad, if I weren't mentally comparing Nigel Spivey's chapter on Goya and the 30 Years War (freaking harrowing) with Collings' (flippant and disrespectful).

I wanted Anya Gallaccio to win. Chocolate walls! Upside down trees! Can't remember which pundit waltzed in to say that she was 'a one note artist, it's hardly original to say we're all going to rot and die' but he was sooo wrong IMO.

I like the fact that pots can win, but not those particular ones.

Hey, like I said on the Turner Prize thread, I really liked his little examination of "what you are supposed to say about the TP, based on what class you are, and what paper you read". I thought that was ace.

I can agree with this -- despite MC's clear broadsheetness.

Lots of hand-waving and trying to bring statues to life by inserting quotations as to what they might be saying to us all today in the 1st EP of 'Civilization', but I really enjoyed last night's take on Ruskin.

I go really back and forth on Collings. Hello Culture was basically a formative influence on me. It was the first time I heard of Tom Friedman and Joy Division. A great programme, I loved when he interviews his mother about Primal Scream Therapy. But his Column in Modern Painters can be so snobbish, his wholesale endorsement of Clement Greenberg seems a bit too all embracing, liked a quote he said about art being too full of ideas. (Hello, 90% of living painters) but he is a bit too regressive in what he wants. It seems inevitable that he wants to turn into a Kenneth Clarke for our generation.

His Van Gogh programme was filled with way too much romanticism and biography to be taken really seriously, for a man so dismissive of ideas, I think he only really works when he talks about them.

i had no idea he liked the appalling greenberg.

He, like, worships him.

I actually believe in a lot of what Greenberg says, just because his theories are static, sexist and turn taste into dogma doesn't mean that the baby should get thrown out. But to adopt the whole thing seems like a meaningless slice of contrariness or simple blindness.

It was funny when he rubbished Jasper Johns though.

hmmm i don't think greenberg nowadays would see eye to eye with collings on much really. collings is way more open minded, greenberg would not have dug anyone like jeff koons or damien hirst. he thought duchamp was a fraud.

I can't see that if Hirst or Koons had come along now, Collings would necessarily champion them. Age conserves y'know. Not that championing either of them would put him in the Classic pile for me.

well, if they came along now they wouldn't really make much sense, their early stuff was in the context of the time it was first exhibited.

my point is that collings likes a waaay wider range of art than greenberg ever did and appreciates the ambiguities inherent in talking about the "purpose" of art. greenberg was like: "this is modernism, that's not modernism, it started here with cezanne, it's ending now with pop, etc, etc...
collings seems a lot more laid back in comparison.

Well, last I saw, Collings only really cares about painting (Greenberg), hates "ideas" (Greenberg), thinks that modernism was abandoned too soon (Greenberg), thinks we should only look at form (GREENBERG).

Also, I meant modern day Collings had he been around would not be as receptive as young Collings was.

I was big on the This Is Modern Art book, read it over and over. Had no idea they turned it into a TV series until last night. It's really good! Introduces a lot of the bizarre conceptual modern stuff and mainly asks relevant questions. I really enjoy his style, he seems to have definitive ideas about art but is flexible enough to come back around to some work he previously wrote off. This episode on minimalism is probably the best introduction I can think of to an otherwise strange and ephemeral concept:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXbiaWEq1Bc

It is really weird the digital artifacts that show up in some of those monochrome paintings due to youtube.

Here is what Collings is up to. Good for him.

In Margate. My cheeks are red. I am shaking. I popped into an exhibition that turned out to be the insane fever dream of an artist called Matthew Collins: ‘Drawings Against Genocide.’ The exhibition is described as ‘drawings… raising consciousness about hell…. Israel is the… pic.twitter.com/CO8Ee8eYLG

— Zoe Strimpel (@realzoestrimpel) March 21, 2026

Good on him. I feel like I judged him wrongly and harshly as being antisemitic about 8 years back. My brain was cucked by the Israel propaganda machine back then.

I think he’s cranky but Zoe Strimpel has been paying her mortgage by being offended by the_left for many years now and is a POS.

All that and she forgot to ask which one's for Leave

The drawing of an IDF colonial soldier crushing a skull seems comically evil until you realise this was a thing an actual guy did and took a selfie while doing it https://t.co/qAJ9OfFxYT pic.twitter.com/2BzlXASAZy

— Eleanora Ní Chualáın 🏳️‍⚧️🇮🇪 (@EleanoraStats) March 22, 2026