Critic Who Admitted Not Understanding Work Becomes Most-Read in France
PARIS — The review published by critic Jean-Baptiste Arnaud in a Paris cultural magazine following the premiere of “Attente” (the 12-minute silence composition at Gaveau) has become, following 2.1 million reads and a book deal, the most-shared French art criticism of the decade. The review began: “I am going to tell you what happened rather than what it meant, because I sat in the Salle Gaveau for 12 minutes and while I understood technically that I was hearing the room’s ambient sound, I did not understand this experience in the way that ‘understanding’ usually means for me when I engage with music. I am going to describe what I heard instead.”
The review then described, in precise and beautiful prose, the specific sounds that constitute 12 minutes of silence at the Salle Gaveau: the ventilation system’s cycle, a mobile phone notification from row G at minute four, the specific acoustic quality of 340 people trying not to make sounds, and “the strange experience of trying to attend to nothing and discovering that nothing contains more than expected.” He did not evaluate whether the composition was good. He described what happened.
The Critical Honesty
The review’s success reflects a reader appetite for critical honesty: the acknowledgment that art criticism frequently performs understanding rather than documenting it, and that a critic who admits the performance’s absence and substitutes description produces something more useful than the performed understanding. Jean-Baptiste described what he heard. 2.1 million people read the description. The book is his criticism method applied to ten years of art, music, and theatre he attended while performing understanding. The book is honest. The book is excellent.
According to France’s CNL’s arts journalism research, reader engagement with criticism has shifted toward description and personal response over evaluation over the past decade. Jean-Baptiste’s review leads the shift. The shift was already happening. Jean-Baptiste articulated it at Gaveau with 340 other people and the ventilation system.
Honestly described at Virtuosal.com.
