The Critic Critiques Himself & His Practice & Also Critiques His Critics

unapologetically and relentlessly Savreuxian, loony, parainstitutional, and yes, totally and blissfully content in his weirdness

Ah, so how would I, the critic, evaluate my body of work, and what would I say? I'm unsure I could necessarily conclude anything, but here are a few thoughts that came to me the night I decided to commit them to the art crit journal. That is the question before us, and I shall endeavor to answer it for my readership and all whose eyes may cross this blog at any subsequent juncture. For those unfamiliar with my work, it may seem uneasy to categorize or even place within the broader context of all these fanciful, self-important canons.

You may scroll through my social media channels and see everything from visual effects art, animation, monologue comedy, performance art, poetry readings, idiosyncratic commentary or reflection done in the oral tradition, bits of wisdom, absurdist humor, lectures, debates, conferences, presentations, etc. Recently, I poured over my portfolio on YouTube (where I am currently curating everything from lectures to debates, presentations, visual effects art, poetry readings, cinematography work, shorts, video art, animation, and other electronic and academic media). I realized that there was a recurring theme undergirding it all and some commonalities that bear further investigation, analysis, and dissection to conclude here about "what" it is that I do for a living as it currently stands; it would seem that may be a bit ambiguous to the average consumer of art or alt-academia or media.

My portfolio is undoubtedly a window into my mind, zigzagging across media, genres, forms, etc. My 2D and 3D work swings high, low, and everything in between. I make ample use of digital media and basic studio art in such areas as primitivism to rudimentary painting, folk art, naive art, some aspects of abstraction or the vaguely abstract, video art, animation, doodles, calligraphy, graffiti and collage elements, more sophisticated cartoons, poetry, illustration, photography, photo manipulation, art criticism, music journalism, sound engineering and tech, videography, cinematography, etc. I am a blend of self-taught meets some art school (up to the graduate level). And my work is all, at least to some degree or another, quite outsiderish.

Further, it should be pretty obvious to those with a deeper appreciation of art and more abstract definitions of what constitutes art (as opposed to the conventionally predefined parameters of what "creativity" versus "art" actually distinguishes) that my work is not generalist nor is it introductory by any means. While it is true that my work in critical discourse is much more well-developed and far better cultivated, and I work primarily with language and, to a lesser extent, certain areas of mathematics and philosophy, it is just as critical to see the readily apparent evidence that in fact, I am most decidedly a kind of subversive artistic nihilist, though certainly no less an artist in my own (although, again, characteristic) right. I am not self-obsessed nor see myself or place myself within any alleged or self-important canon. Granted, I likely will not be getting any overly generous grants or fellowships (although it should be stated for posterity that I was admitted into a nationally ranked MFA program in media arts with a 2% annual admissions rate, although I dropped out) or big-time residencies and so on.

As an artist, when I want to be and as a full-time critic, it irks me and perturbs me profoundly that so many people, including most artists I know, still have minimal and relatively narrow definitions of what "art" is and what it all means or could mean. There are a variety of things I could point to that I would blame for this paradigm. This kind of movement toward creative tyranny in part owed to various institutions and the Ivy-Leaguing of visual art and creative writing as well as the overall academizing (which I've referred to in other editorials) of creativity in more general terms, but the point that I am attempting to make is certainly not to lambast my artist colleagues all of whom I love very dearly but instead, try to resolve my original musing presented above. There is, however, a central element to my work that is highly informed and influenced by sardonic humor, madcap energy, and incisive mockery, and with it, cerebral social criticism and commentary embedded with varying degrees of philosophical sophistication. It occurred to me the other day that I am just as idiot as I am savant, just as kind as I am primal, just as erudite as I am reductive, just as insightful as I am playful, just as peaceful as I am something of a troll, and just as intellectual and versatile as I am dense, unnecessarily verbose, and loony. Aha! Is that not the truest and greatest hallmark of the appellation critic, poet, or artist? Is that not at once the paramount vestige of what constitutes the highest form of art, literature, or philosophy? Are these elements not recurrent throughout the totality of any truly inventive body of work? And so what does this make me, if not an artist and a critic? I certainly reappropriate the term "kook," "eccentric," and even "loon," for yes, that is what I am, and I embrace it fully and make no apologies for or about it.

Further, is not my academic and peer-reviewed work little more than a hybrid between the autodidactic, the theoretical and high-concept, scatterbrained, and the overly simplistic "idea" or novel notion? Is my academic work not just a blend of the creative and the philosophical, the conceptual and the interpretive, or merely academized editorials with bits of shining originality here and there? Failing that, they could be labeled or subsumed as little more than ideas shrouded within the lost libraries and threads of institutional repositories, amateur journals, alternative presses, external hard drives, graduate student blogs, self-published work, indie presses, big-time publishers, DIY journals, and zines.

So what does all this make me occupationally, and how does it pertain or circle back around to the original musing? This question has been posed to many, including myself, for years. I have maintained for many years that satirist, humorist, and social critic are synonymous occupations (and are certainly well documented and recorded as such), for that is what I truly am; I believe in my heart of hearts. While it is true my work contends with crossing genres and movements, thereby defying easy categorization, I am fundamentally a critic and a bit of a huckster, a tangential overly intellectualized pothead, a congenital smartass who utilizes everything at his disposal to convey his relentless intellectual and philosophical message to the world (as bizarre as it may be), his ideas, his reflections, his critiques, and so forth. And so I ask my readers: is this not art? Is this not self-expression or the expressive content found in creative mediums, and are the messages conveyed via the chosen artistic mechanism itself, not a halfway decent (if, however, basic) definition of art itself? And if it is not judged to be art, then what is it? Is it philosophy? What is the difference? Or, as some have suggested in recent times, is such a body of work incapable of fitting neatly into a single occupational category, and is it, therefore, fully interchangeable with my personage? And shouldn't that be the objective of any artist? And wouldn't it be infinitely more excellent (and perhaps more apropos) to be the kind of person who lives on their terms, free from excess and spoilage? Free from obligations and wealth, but indeed rich in their own right and on their terms, living in peace and amiability? Did not all great half-mad poets and critics not starve such as I do? Living alone in squalor, furiously pounding and gnashing their keyboards and typewriters and writing all over their windows in wax pencil, searching for the next big thing. Ideas, ideas, ideas, create, create, creating, and therefore embodying all that is fundamentally glorious about humanity up to and including the very primal and biologically defining characteristics that make us homo sapiens? Be it systemized language, art, or invention, etc.

So, why do anything artistic or linguistic; you may ask the critic (or whatever you choose to call me today or however I identify at the given hour). Because that's a good deal of what makes us human, is there a better or more reasonable answer than that? I can think of none at present, but then again, I'm overdue for my morning caffeine, even though caffeine is probably something a personality like me need not indulge in lest he certifies himself more certifiable than he already is, and that's without the added lasagna of layers that comes with the ganja.

Peace and Love to all,

~ alexej <3

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To stay up to date with my curatorial efforts on social media channels, you can find me on Instagram (czechpoeta) and (alexejsavreux) and YouTube at:

youtube.com/@ohiamalexej

(YouTube remains very much a slow but ever-steady WIP as I’m combing through it all currently)

thanks for reading and subscribing; more always to follow

Love y’all