Daryl Chin
Fellow
Daryl Chin is an artist, critic and curator who has been part of the New York City art world for 40 years. As a curator, he held a residency at the Department of Film of The Museum of Modern Art (1978-80); he has served as a guest curator at The Whitney Museum of American Art among others. As a critic, he began his career as Managing Editor of Film Culture Magazine (1976-77); he was Associate Editor of PAJ (Performing Arts Journal) from 1989 to 2004. His essays are included in such anthologies as Asia in New York City: A Cultural Guide (2000), M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists' Writings, Theory, and Criticism, edited by Susan Bee and Mira Schor (2000), Tokens? The NYC Asian American Experience On Stage, edited by Alvin Eng (1999), Queer Looks, edited by Martha Gever, John Greyson and Pratibha Parmar, and Mediating History, edited by Barbara Abrash and Catherine Egan (1992). As a performance artist, he has created over 30 performance pieces from 1976 to 1985. His play The Dialectic of Enlightenment was published by Theatre Communications Group as part of their Plays-in-Process series in 1983. Currently, he maintains a cultural blog, Documents on Art & Cinema (www.d-a-c.blogspot.com).
THIS AUTHOR WROTE
Daryl Chin is an artist, critic and curator who has been part of the New York City art world for 40 years. As a curator, he held a residency at the Department of Film of The Museum of Modern Art (1978-80); he has served as a guest curator at The Whitney Museum of American Art among others. As a critic, he began his career as Managing Editor of Film Culture Magazine (1976-77); he was Associate Editor of PAJ (Performing Arts Journal) from 1989 to 2004. His essays are included in such anthologies as Asia in New York City: A Cultural Guide (2000), M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists' Writings, Theory, and Criticism, edited by Susan Bee and Mira Schor (2000), Tokens? The NYC Asian American Experience On Stage, edited by Alvin Eng (1999), Queer Looks, edited by Martha Gever, John Greyson and Pratibha Parmar, and Mediating History, edited by Barbara Abrash and Catherine Egan (1992). As a performance artist, he has created over 30 performance pieces from 1976 to 1985. His play The Dialectic of Enlightenment was published by Theatre Communications Group as part of their Plays-in-Process series in 1983. Currently, he maintains a cultural blog, Documents on Art & Cinema (www.d-a-c.blogspot.com).
June 29, 2010
When I was growing up, there were certain books which really galvanized me, making me think that critical writing was as richly evocative as any other kind of writing. One such book was Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation"; it was so inspiring that I rushed out to get her second collection of essays, "Styles of Radical Will", the minute it was published. (I still have the hardcover, though the jacket has long since disintegrated.) But then I read her novels, "The Benefactor" and "Death Kit", and I was stumped. I couldn't understand how someone with such a keen, critical mind could turn out such ... crap. Soon after, I remember reading Gore Vidal's review of her novels in "The New York Review of Books", in which he explained how the analytic sense and the intellectual enthusiasm, which made Sontag such a formidable essayist, were not the same as the imaginative and emotional qualities needed for a novelist. He noted that Sontag was one of the few American writers well-acquainted with the most recent developments in European literature, but ticking off the influences (a little Sarraute here, a dollop of Robbe-Grillet there, Tomasso Landolfi coming in during the final stretch) wasn't the same as being transported into the imaginative realm of the aesthetic.