Art Wank

Sewellisms # 23: Cliché counter

1 panjandrums

1 jabberwocky

1 piffle

3 feminist

1 feminism

• Brian Sewell, ‘Away with the fairies with Susan Hiller’, Evening Standard, 3 February 2011, <http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/review-23920219-away-with-the-fairies-with-susan-hiller.do>.

AW: Sometime I think he puts in the Sewellisms and then writes the article around them. As ever in his review of Susan Hiller ‘feminism’ is taken to be a wrong-headed and outdated phase, rather than a serious belief, approach or political stance.

Sewellisms #18: Pseuds, panjandrums and penises

I fell to wondering what French critics have made of it, but long ago, translating for the Arts Council, I learned that French art criticism is what David Lee, editor of Jackdaw, might dub high octane artbollocks — the self-indulgent blethering of pseuds in the obscure jabberwocky that has developed among cod-philosophers who pretend an interest in art.

• Brian Sewell, ‘Ooh la la, Freud!’, The Evening Standard, 20 May 2010, <http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/review-23836139-ooh-la-la-freud.do>

AW: Thanks, we like that Brian. Though the phrase ‘takes one to know one’ springs to mind. This was a great week for Sewellisms. As well as throwing a ‘panjandrums’ in there (one day I’m gonna count them up, I’m guessing he says it every other week), there is a classic Sewell dissertation on naughty bits:

Occasionally they stand for a moment, but only to pursue some genital enquiry, as with the almost life-size awkwardly recumbent Leigh Bowery (Nude with Leg Up) whose largely tumescent penis is pretty well dead centre in a canvas seven feet wide — for Freud is nothing if not thorough in his depiction of the penis, testicles and cunt.