The fine art of appreciation | 4 March 2006

John Updike is, among one or two other things, a model art critic. Observant, sympathetic and knowledgeable, he also writes at a useful remove from the polemics that rack today’s art world. His status as an honorary non-combatant in the contemporary art wars owes something to his literary fame, to be sure. But it is also the result of a mildly disingenuous decision on his part to maintain an amateur’s attitude in a world beset by experts. Unlike most jobbing art critics, who are inclined to carve out partisan stances, Updike is content to appreciate both the painted, atmospheric delicacy of Hopper or Whistler and the nihilistic wit of Warhol or Duchamp, without worrying that one way of appreciating art puts in jeopardy the other.

His amateur credentials are emphasised in this collection’s introduction, which opens with a discussion of a painting bought by his mother shortly after he was born and passed on to him when she died.