Coursework.. It's not so bad!

I thought I would add my latest writing sample!! I am most certainly not a great cook, but I am a huge fan of 101Cookbooks.com. I hope it is as fun to read as it was to write!

Outside a bakery on 33^rd Street in Washington, D.C., the waiting line for customers stretches out the door, and what begins as sweet-tooth gratification turns in to a 45-minute quest for the taste of a Georgetown cupcake. In the movie theater, Julie&Julia serves up a woman’s journey for contentment along with dinner ideas, while Anthony Bourdain waits on TV viewers and brings out cuisines from around the world. Culinary art seems to be leavening everywhere. As this fad encounters a concurrent fad of amateurism, the effect is a cluster of 21^st-century foodies who crave not only the food itself but also the total, hands-on creation of a food experience. Heidi Swanson is one such gourmand, but her actual notability is that she is a photographer and designer turned food blogger turned cookbook author, in that order. In 2003, Swanson cooked up her blog “101 Cookbooks” with the hope of sharing recipes that complemented her hunger for travel, photography, and whole foods, and today her full-bodied collection runs the gamut of taste testers—from food critics for The Washington Post to graduate students in Arizona. One of her more recent blogs posted on May 31, 2010, “Six-Seed Soda Bread Recipe” epitomizes Swanson’s work and showcases her ability to stir a trip to Portland, some cookery, and a little sensory text together in to one photograph that feeds the eye and makes the stomach anticipate its turn.

The particular recipe comes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Everyday, Swanson’s cookbook find in Portland that features local fare. She logs the materialization of the recipe with a variety of pictures, but it is the headlining photograph that gives the quintessential shot of the subject matter: the accomplished six-seed soda bread. Hugging close to the front of the picture space, the loaf is off-centered and cut slightly short by the right side of the frame. The scale of the bread earns the dominance of the picture plane, but the uncertain size of the plate, which is cut off on three different fronts, balances the height and depth of the bread, making it appear manageable to the consuming eye and appetite. The light on the upper left counterbalances the heavy right side of the frame. The use of a Canon DSLR with a fixed, 50mm lens permits a shallow depth of field that preserves, and likewise pronounces, the unique contours of the bread, which is further emphasized by the close, slightly elevated angle of the shot. The front portion of the bread and the area of the plate directly below are in sharper focus, while the “fuzzy” far-left side leads the eye toward an even “fuzzier” background. Together, the composition, angle, and perspective ensure the basic focus of the viewer is on the soda bread; however, the food is not the only item for sale here, as these three elements also serve an experience. The open composition implies that the picture frame gives only a slice of a larger setting, and as the plate protrudes suggestively in to actual space, the viewer is made to feel as though he or she is sitting at the table, ready to dine.

The choices in color and lighting for the photograph enhance this inviting ambiance as well as advocate the recipe. Instead of distancing the scene with a black and white or sepia effect, Swanson employs harmonizing colors in cool hues to give a sense of temporal presence and to create a warm, fairly muted image. The photograph is comprised of various shades of browns, grays, and greens, and the earthy tones play to the organic ingredients found in the soda bread. The intensity of the specks of white call attention to the fact that the loaf is made from scratch and freshly baked. To develop the cooking experience, the still life is situated indoors yet still presented with natural lighting. In one blog, Swanson declares, “No Flash. Ever. Unless you want your food to look sweaty and greasy....” In addition, the combination of quiet colors and soft lighting romanticizes the image to draw the foodie to the recipe and to allude to one of the underlying subjects of the photograph: an appeal to incorporate all-natural food substances for a healthier, more environment-friendly lifestyle.

The manipulation of textures, lines, and visual noise accentuates the man-made and organic elements found in the photograph. The simulated texture of exposed seeds and scattered particles of grain and flour denote nature, while both the plate and wooden table are clearly processed by man. Containing all-natural ingredients yet prepared by human hands, the bread becomes the ultimate medium where the intersection of man and nature takes place. The embellished residue on the plate plays up the traces of flour on the loaf, neither of which are authentic to a completely baked piece of bread but, nevertheless, indicate a homemade product. The line of the dish frames the bread and the cookery, and the running grain of the table adds an illusion of depth and suggests a greater dining experience. As the texture and lines of the background are deemphasized by their blurred quality, the viewer is left to fill in the gaps with either a memory of a personal experience or an eagerness to fashion a similar one. Finally, the visual noise, or the surrounding objects in the photograph that decorate the subject matter, helps narrate the episode, and the purposeful untidiness humanizes the event. The moment, together with the recipe, feels accessible.

Both the accompanying text and the other photographs reinforce the correlation of food, photograph, and place. Engaging all five senses, the word choices augment the scene set visually by the photograph, and the blogger discusses with the reader, step by step, her own experience of finding and preparing the recipe. Consequently, the “before and after” photographs function simultaneously as an allurement and as a sort of proof of process. In her narrative, Swanson also includes details from a past travel to Portland, an insertion that almost blurs the distinction between kitchen work and holiday-like leisure. The treatment of Portland also strengthens the organic, rustic traits seen in both the pictures of the soda bread and the recipe, because the included photographs from the trip are of the natural landscape and Swanson in front of (and suggestively a part of) this landscape.

Keeping in mind this natural-unnatural dialectic of experience, the use of the Internet as the “source of emission” proves an interesting ingredient of the “Six-Seed Soda Bread Recipe.” The Internet removes the physical act of flipping through cookbook pages and expedites the selection process, and these conditions appear in direct discord with the intention of a recipe, which advocates reaching for the oven handle rather than the microwave button. Then again, Swanson is now the author of two corporeal cookbooks; therefore, her online blog developed into an extraordinary marketing tool. Not only does the Internet conveniently broadcast to a vast public, but because the essence of its functionality is that anyone can use it as a “channel of transmission,” the Internet also is on a par with a do-it-yourself culture or, as previously mentioned, amateurism. When the recipe is encountered on the Internet, the amateur, accessible quality of the online blog can be transmitted to the recipe, which, in turn, becomes doable to anyone. Consequently, as it lures the viewer in to the recipe, the photograph of the soda bread interacts with the mouthwatering story and the digital venue, and collectively they utter to the reader, the foodie, the traveler, or any style of amateur, “You can make this, too.”

Touchy Subjects

Admittedly, I often succumb to the desire to avoid one particular, emotive issue in history: the Holocaust. To justify my complex, I scapegoat my high school history teacher, who showed a class of petrified fourteen-year-olds the actual footage of Allied Forces searching concentration camps immediately after World War II. (In all honesty, a part of my adult self still yearns to make the case that I can remember those scenes, which I saw over a decade ago, as vividly as if I saw them yesterday and feel the same queasiness at merely the memory!) Alas, my nonsensical evasiveness has left evidence in its wake—such as, the deliberate neglect to read Elie Wiesel’s Night in undergrad, the decision to opt out of a visit to the concentration camp in Erfurt with other students in Germany, and the cognizant setting of my MA thesis in the nineteenth-century Kaiserreich. In a sense, my difficulty to engage with Holocaust history because of its distressing content mirrors the problems that artists as well as museums like the Holocaust Memorial Museum confront in their attempt to visually portray the tender subject.

In 2006, there was one Holocaust monument I managed to see: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas (“Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe”). Crafted by US architect Peter Eisenman, the memorial opened only a year and a half earlier in central Berlin, and while the name of the monument is straightforward, the interpretation of its aesthetics proves a bit more complicated. The tribute features roughly five-acres of stone slabs, diversely sized and shaped, with enough space to allow passages but without the concern for a starting or stopping point. President of the German Parliament, Wolfgang Theirse, described the work as “a constructed symbol for the incomprehensibility of the crime.” On the other hand, opponents of the Denkmal, such as my good friend (a Jew whose relatives were displaced or killed during the Holocaust) with me at the time of my visit, flared up over the lack of religious symbology and the abstract representation of the event. I remember my friend exclaiming, “I at least expected a monument that made me think about the Holocaust!” But, is there a sufficient way to memorialize or represent a moment that surpasses intellectual capacity? In the last sixty years, printed scholarship has tried to grasp the topic; is it not time for visual scholarship to do the same? Further, why do visual images often incite the public on a grander scale than texts? My chief question regarding the monument is this: how was someone like me, quite the hypersensitive about the Holocaust yet learned in contemporary aesthetics, able to bear visiting this monument with curiously little poignant response? Does that make the work a failure in its resonance or success in its provocation, which unavoidably generates discussion about and engagement with the monument and thus the Holocaust? (As a matter of fact, we, along with one other American and four Europeans, heatedly discussed the Denkmal for the next couple of hours.)

Ironically, a German, James Ingo Freed, built the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the United States. In explanation of his design, he said, “The intent of the building is to be a resonator of your own imagery, of your own memory.” The architecture of the museum, like the Berlin monument, is the epitome of abstraction, meant to leave the visitor, who may come from any area of the world, space to pull from his or her own cultural encyclopedia for an individualized understanding. Freed, perhaps contrary to Eisenman, purposely fashioned the architecture to “take you in its grip.” And if the architectural interpretation of the Holocaust serves as such a great stimulus, then what types of problems do curators of the museum’s collections and exhibitions encounter? As the decision-makers about display, organization, and content (specifically the inclusion or exclusion of material), curators in memorial-style museums seem likely to find themselves caught in a Catch-22 due to the sheer volume of relics, the delicacy of the topic, and the incapacity to articulate or encapsulate the Holocaust to the satisfaction of survivors, visitors, or even their own aspirations. Then again, curators assert that exhibitions are not meant to draw a specific conclusion but rather guide audiences through aesthetic sources to let them extract their own, educated conclusions. Perhaps for an experience that defies reason and, therefore, inference, the museum setting becomes the perfect site.

Finding the Middle Ground

Last week in the New York Times, Michael

Kimmelman proffered “Scots Aim Lasers at Landmarks,” a timely article for the pending seminar on the significance of technological innovations for museum operations.  Kimmelman reports that researchers from the Glasgow School of Art intend to visit Mount Rushmore in April 2010 in order to create laser scans and computer models of the site.  The models will be far from ordinary, as they are meticulous, three-dimensional copies that come within a fraction of a millimeter of accurately depicting the original. Far surpassing the precision of photography and film, this technology plays up both nostalgias and forecasts; the design has the ability to recreate images of earlier environments or project developments in urban planning.  In essence, the Scots provide cultural keepers a staggeringly literal, nearly holistic version of entire cities—conserved and reinstated—in virtual realities.  What will technology, such as the kind proposed by the Glasgow team, mean to institutions like the National Building Museum or the Natural History Museum?

In the midst of the article, however, a warning flag appeared.  Kimmelman included a quote from one of the associated architects, Douglas Pritchard, which declared, “Technology doesn’t lie.” In a postmodern world where scholars mull over notions like the hyper-real, the validity of the photographic image, and the ability to capture anything “original,” how did technology manage to escape dissection and dissolution? 

On the opposite end of the discourse is the director of “La Caixa” Foundation Science Museum (Barcelona), Jorge Wagensberg.  Wagensberg champions the “real” objects and cautions against the overuse of technology, which he says potentially jeopardizes a visitor’s trust (a familiar phrase) and problematizes the research of an institution.  He further rationalizes that “there is also the matter of respect for the visitor, who should not have to be constantly asking whether what he is looking at is real or not.”  Essentially, Wagensberg redistributes the question “is it art,” pervasive in the studies of art in- and outside of museums or galleries, to “is that real” for the debates on technology.  Also notable, “La Caixa,” as punctiliously noted by Wagensberg, is a science museum, not a science centre.  He explains the difference between the two institutions: the museum is “a place with static objects,” while the centre is “a museum of phenomena.”  Pause.  Can objects—science or art or anything else creative—found in museums not also be considered phenomena?  Not to mention, his appalling label “static” essentially ousts a great deal of contemporary works like performance art, which seems far from “static.”

Nearly the entirety of the cultural network is responding to the ubiquity of technology: organizations like DREAM (Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials); artists, such as Tony Oursler (check out his really interesting, borderline disturbing work Moving Images); and scholars, for example Lisa Gjedde and Bruno Ingemann (Researching Experiences: Exploring Processual and Experimental Methods in Cultural Analysis) as well as Phyllis Hecht (The Digital Museum).  Undoubtedly, traditional museums will also take steps to remain relevant in today’s technological environment. What progressive moves will be made, however, remains to be seen, but hopefully these moves will lead the museum to a middle ground, one between the ideas of Pritchard and Wagensberg!

The Aesthetic Spread

On Sunday, New York City welcomed the third installment of the three-week long performance art spectacle Performa, a biennial event founded in 2005 by Roselee Goldberg.  Performa 2009 encompasses 130 projects by 170 artists and uses over 75 urban venues—including traditional spaces like galleries and museums as well as non-traditional spaces like offices and nightclubs. Performa, according to Goldberg, serves to decelerate the viewing pace to let audiences “spend more time with an artist’s work.”  By imbuing the art with temporality, Goldberg creates a sense of immediacy that stamps out the habitual—perhaps disadvantageous—idea of “coming back later” to re-review the art.  The acme of Performa is that the festival draws together a number of New York institutions, which transmits community involvement and concern as well as recharges city spaces with creativities.

In the same vein, the museum appears to have also felt the call of the city.  Taking a page from Adam Gopnick, Chus Martinez, chief curator for MACBA, identifies the current outward drive as “the museum as missionary.”  Museums mean to address the issues of society—thus becoming socially relevant—by employing objects alongside “ideas, questions, and activities.”  Correspondingly, Richard Koshalek, director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, maintains that art traverses institutional walls to become purposeful in the external milieu. The director argues that the Hirshhorn needs to “reflect the reality of contemporary art and culture” and hopes to shape a bipartite organization: one that speaks to both its urban and cosmopolitan scenes. Koshalek, like Goldberg, advocates the plugging of unoccupied city spaces with art and involving an assortment of local institutions to form a sort of creative alliance that draws audiences to the arts.   Furthermore, he preaches aesthetic independence, regardless of how provoking in nature, and aims to position his institution virtually in the shadow of the artist.  In effect, the artistry becomes the primary communal as well as the global outreach. I wonder: is it possible to muffle an institution that has survived the ebb and flow of two centuries? 

As another case in point, the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore launched in 1989 as a roving institution, depositing temporary exhibitions in various spaces and collaborating with local organizations.  As Koshalek hopes for the Hirshhorn, the Contemporary Museum successfully negotiated local and international matters, melding the two in the production of site-specific art.  However, ten years later, the Contemporary Museum set aside its peripatetic ways and put down roots in the Mount Vernon district.  Their choice was calculated to “consolidate a core audience for its programming….” While they offer exhibitions like FAX (September 12 – December 20, 2009) that simulate the instance of a museum without walls and a history of an art that passed through—or broke down—walls (mail art), the institution nevertheless has solid, planted walls. Again, I wonder: do people have an innate need to be stable and settled as well as to demarcate what is inside and what is outside?  Do we, in turn, instill the same drive in our institutions, our identity markers?

To Collect, Preserve, and Interpret

In anticipation of visiting the American Association of Museums (AAM) on Friday, a peek at the purpose of the institution seemed appropriate.  The AAM tenders a mission “to enhance the value of museums to their communities through leadership, advocacy, and service.” Since 1906, the association has marshaled American museums to set common benchmarks, to exchange scholarship or information, and to sponsor the entirety of the museum population.  The AAM embraces the gamut of museums—such as art and history museums, zoos, science and technology centers, botanical gardens, and several other types of museums and cultural centers.  Also, the organization proposes definitions of museums and explains the link between them being “a unique contribution to the public by collecting, preserving, and interpreting the things of the world.”  Museums professionals have promoted these three actions for decades (at least), so how are they put into practice today?

Collecting.  MoMA boasts one of the world’s most paramount, comprehensive collections of modern art.  The Barr galleries, for example, display at any given time 400 works from the collection predating 1975, and this number is chosen from a pool of approximately 2,800 pieces.  Regardless of the deep pockets of the collection, Ann Temkin, MoMA’s latest chief curator of painting and sculpture, efforts to continually add flavor and “surprises” in the permanent collection.  They now intermingle media as well as install works like a Louise Bourgeois in place of a tried and true Jackson Pollock as

opener and thus mise en scène for the 1940s to 1970s display.  Temkin explains, “The tradition here has been fluid special exhibitions and the permanent collection is relatively unchanging….  I want a fluidity and constant rhythm of change.”  Additionally, Temkin stripped many of the Abstract Expressionists’ canvases of their wood frames to release their strokes and bared them in a way appropriate to their radicalism.

Yesterday, AMUS students had the terrific opportunity to meet Lucille Spagnuola, the art collector associated with the galleries at Georgetown University.  Her collection is not an example of an AAM museum, of course, but still worth mentioning. The pictures that showed the art hung in her home were absolutely astounding, as her walls were reminiscent of a nineteenth-century museum with floor to ceiling paintings, prints, photographs, and sculptures.  Interestingly (and perhaps to some obviously), she, as a collector, exhibits a similar mindset to a museum professional.  She contemplates the best and most appealing pieces to collect for herself and others, debates the method and position for the display in her home, and questions whether or not to show all her works at once or store some to reduce wall clutter.  While she still abstains from storing in her home because of her inability to part with the works, Mrs. Spagnuola nevertheless feels compelled to share her and her husband’s collection with the public.  Exhibitions of her art in galleries, she explains, gives her an opportunity to see the art as an individual—piece by piece—to refresh her view of and love for the piece.

Preserving.  The labors of MoMA serve also as an exemplar for museum preservation.  In conjunction with the preservation efforts of other institutions like the Deutsches Filmmuseum, the Korean Film Archives, and the World Cinema Foundation, MoMA hosts an annual film festival called “To Save and Project.”  The purpose is to salvage various films—such as John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Lester James Peries’s film on Sri Lanka titled The Changing Village (1964).  Many restored films like Kim Ki-young’s “The Housemaid” inspire contemporary filmmakers and illustrate the significance of film preservation: “a major work reclaimed from the past that points to the future.”  On another note outside of the American museum circuit, the advocacy of preservation has also provided some museums with leverage over others—for example, in the case of the British Museum and the museums (and even the government) in Greece.  The British Museum, holding fast to several Parthenon marbles, previously claimed that the museums in Athens lacked the ability to properly preserve the pieces.  With the building of the new Acropolis Museum, no doubt the art world sits on the edge of its seat in anticipation of how the drama over preservation between the British and Greeks will now unfold.

Interpreting.  In order to enrich art historical studies, Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker designed Smarthistory.org, which launched with podcasts for the Met and MoMA (there seems to be recurring theme in art news, no?) in 2005.  The endeavor has since expanded into comprehensive, organized sets of audios, videos, and images that educate on and enliven art history.  The project has not only permeated museum education but also entered American school systems; for example, in August the Smithsonian American Art Museum hosted the Clarice Smith National Teacher Institute, where the dialogue inevitably shifted to correlative matters of interpretation, types of speech (informal, formal) in audios, and the concretion of knowledge through questions and exchange.  Today, the use of technology for aesthetic interpretation appears almost critical to dispersing knowledge for the coming generations, and applause should be given to museums for not only interpreting art for the public of their individual museums but also actively engaging schools across the nation to advance an understanding of art.  No doubt, methods such as these exhibit tangible evidence of the AAM's productivity and mission.

Should we be concerned?

This past week, Artforum news issued the article “Credit-Rating Agency Gives Arts Groups Strong Marks,” which declared museums, alongside other cultural institutions, as “stable and resilient.”  I found myself bewildered. 

Over the summer, reviews poured in from the Venice Biennale, one of the leading contemporary art fairs in the world, that remarked on the conspicuous infusion of the global economic crisis—such as in the visitor numbers, the level of festivity extravagances, and the tone of the art.  In September, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, as mentioned in a previous post, chose to dedicate the entire museum space to the collection to both hype its holdings and conserve funds.  Around the same time, author of artmarketblog.com Nicholas Forrest mourned the passing of the Art World Magazine.  October ushered in the Frieze Art Fair in London, which revealed a thirty-percent drop in art prices vis-à-vis prices during leveled economies, and this week we read Robin Pogrebin’s article provocatively titled “And Now, an Exhibition from our Sponsor.” Pogrebin reports on the rise of corporate art collections and their design of “ready-made” exhibitions, which appeal particularly to smaller institutions that seem—to speak frankly—desperate in their willingness to sacrifice autonomy to “opportunity.”  In “The Recession and US Museums,” Adrian Ellis states what Pogrebin only alludes: the “little guys” of cultural institutions confront the toughest roads ahead.  Also, Ellis warns of the retreat of wealthy patrons in failing economies and that the full effect of financial markets lag behind nearly five years in art markets (should we brace ourselves for 2013?).

Exactly what, “credit-rating agency,” seems so very “stable”? (I will give them “resilient,” as I must look optimistically in to my own professional crystal ball!)  Even further, who is “stable”?  They, in a magnanimously presumptuous manner, even offer museums a consolation to the constriction of funds:  “They will likely benefit from an increase in regional tourism, a gain in repeat visits, and government stimulus money for education and science programs.”  Government stimulus money! Ha ha, good one “credit-rating agency,” ha ha!  Both museum students and museum professionals devote countless discussion hours and written pages to the conundrum of achieving the recurrent audience.  Good, a bruised economy solves that quandary!  Of course, the source for this information must be taken into consideration: a “credit-agency” is not exactly a sexy establishment today.  However, I found the article to be not only shoddy but also misleading in its gloss over the museum’s current financial woes.

To end on a lighter note, Ellis proffered three bright, constructive ideas to help combat the depressed market: unorthodox lures for audiences rather than showstoppers, increased exploitation of collections, and a global solidarity (of sorts) among the institutions.  The latter materializes with “collection sharing, joint acquisitions, pooling conservation resources, and pooling curatorial appointments.” A global “museum economy” within a globalized, postmodern, hybrid-to-the-nth-degree, poststructuralist world—that idea, for one, appears reasonable. 

Constructive/Construction

Henri Loyrette, the director of the Louvre, has recently felt the heat of his French public, notorious for taking to the streets of Paris to demand changes—such as with political issues—but apparently will have nothing of the sort for their poster-child museum.  In spite of the Louvre’s dramatically increased attendance rate (67%) and boosted endowments since Loyrette’s arrival, the French berate the director for being a government crony as well as for “diluting the Louvre brand at best and cheapening it at worst” with his international wheeling and dealing, which many French feel rings of American behavior.  They are unhappy with his attempts to create a satellite in Lens (France) as well as deals he has struck with other institutions, such as in Abu Dhabi and Atlanta.  Even art historians feel scandalized by what they describe as Loyrette’s “commercial and promotional use of masterpieces of our national heritage.”

First, I was taken aback by the scarcity of American paintings (only three!) in the Louvre! Okay, I am fibbing: I found the paucity more revealing than shocking, since France and the US have plunged into a noticeably frosty relationship in the last few decades.  The Louvre’s collection, seemingly a reflection of the political (maybe even cultural) chasm between the two nations, demonstrates the museum’s knack for simultaneously revealing both contextual and historical conditions.  Further, I give kudos to Loyrette for challenging the nearly moribund state of the Louvre vis-à-vis contemporary artists and prodding the institution to be “more modern.” The notion of “selling-out” to institutions aside, exhibiting in the Louvre offers living artists unimaginable prospects and, let us be honest, swagger, and one cannot blame the director for hoping to lure visitors past showstoppers like Winged Victory (the included picture of the statue shows my personal encounter with this seemingly magnetic force that draws copious crowds).

Also, I am curious as to their distaste for the employment of art for “commercial” and “promotional” purposes. How exactly have the French used their art in the past, if not to advertise French nationality and refinement or to promote French culture and cultivation?  What is the relationship between nations and their art, and does art serve a utilitarian purpose?  If so, exactly how is this different from the late-twentieth, early twenty-first century trend of “branding” museums and employing business tactics?  Let me preface the following discourse with this: I straddle the fence on the issue of museums conducting themselves as businesses; therefore, I appreciate the logic in arguments from both camps. That being said, my challenge to Loyrette’s critics as well as those who wag their fingers at curators or directors is to develop other methods and practices, which they deem acceptable, that augment museums.  Continually hearing bombardments and chastisements becomes frustrating when alternatives are never (or from what I have read thus far) proffered.  Sensibly, if a better, less controversial idea was submitted to museum professionals, then they would undoubtedly employ the idea in a heartbeat to cease the recurring arguments against the operational judgments of their institutions.  This is not to say I support all of Loyrette’s decisions concerning the Louvre, since I quite frankly do not know them all; instead, I suppose this is my campaign for constructive criticism.