Reply to George Petelin
With reference to the article "Pat Hoffie: Homage to the Unknown Woman" by George Petelin; I include a simple definition of hegemony by Craig McGregor: "By hegemony, as I understand it, Gramsci meant the ideological and cultural control which a small ruling group exercises over the rest of society."
It is a spurious exercise if statements made in catalogues are not scrutinized with sufficient attention to context (i.e. the images and titles within which and against which they operate.) What "threatens to become an overwhelming hegemony of text/theory"[statement made in catalogue, Pat Hoffie paintings March 1987) seems to have fulfilled its prophecy in a critique that ends in offering a three-way pardon based on the need for the practice to answer the rigid demands of critique.
I believe it is important that the role of text and theory does not assume a hierarchically superior position to that of art practice. For this to be avoided, it is essential that art critics make themselves sufficiently au fait with the problematics of art production.
If painting is charged with being unsuccessful in revealing a unilateral, didactic alignment then there is so much more chance of its being successful as a fluid discourse open to a number of possible interpretations.
Surely demands made by self-appointed arbiters of taste on the outcomes of an artist's process of working belong within a realm of pontificating pedagogy better relegated to Secondary School classrooms than included in magazine journalism.