Edward Colless, The error of my ways: Selected writings 1981-1994
Questions of guilt loom large in Edward Colless's The Error of My Ways. The guilty are often a decrepit lot – sterile practitioners, glib reciters of various didactic agendas, hype-merchants, insipid art radicals, but the most decrepit of all are art and film theorists. This makes Colless guilty by association because he earns his living teaching such theory. Yet guilt isn't always a bad thing. It's a matter of quality. A feature of this publication is the way Colless differentiates between the rather banal guilt of theoretical ineptitude and a rather flamboyant guilt that proves to be far more critically vigorous and enticing.
Don Anderson notes on the back cover of the book that these writings are fearless, that Colless is "the antipodean Karl Kraus" because he casts an "unrelenting eye on contemporary cant". This "fearless" tag is no doubt due to the fact that Colless's attacks necessarily implicate colleagues or former colleagues. And his denunciations do cut close to the bone – as is evident in his assaults upon visual arts theory ("Vengeance ", pp. 72-78) or film theory ("The Imaginary Hypermannerist", pp. 57-71 ). While it brings a degree of spark and notoriety to his work, this polemical aspect is ultimately the least satisfying feature of Colless's writing.
The combative role of the fearless polemicist possesses an inordinate appeal in art criticism. In fact, one of the weaknesses of Australian art criticism in the past decade or so is that too many art critics have jockeyed to become the 'antipodean Karl Kraus'. Polemic is undoubtedly often necessary and useful, sometimes even quite funny (if, of course, you're not on the receiving end), but it is usually of