Weak Points in the Critical Apparatus

There’s a class of artists that the critical apparatus has always had a problem with. These are artists who, regardless of medium or genre, are:

  1. Broadly Popular
  2. Consistant
  3. Prolific
  4. and this last one is the real key: not complex in the ways the critical apparatus is set up to value

And mostly we live in a time where we’ve figured out how to talk about this and we don’t sweat High vs low art thing as much.

But every now and then one of those artists will release something that banks into the broader culture at a weird angle. And the critical apparatus kinda just throws their hands up in the air and says “it’s fine, I guess? You already know if you want it, why are you hassling me?”

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