[ggm]

I don't "like" Bacon. or, Lucien Freud, or Basquiat. All three are patently immensely skilled artists, caught up in their own world. They have major works in galleries and I like to see them but spend no time engaging with them.

This is probably why I can't be a decent art critic: I'm too bound up in what I like, rather than what I can say about work I don't like, but do admire. Nobody expects an art critic to like everything but they have to be able to be lucid about the work. I just can't fathom whats going on in Francis Bacon's mind, or Basquiat.