Affinities: On Art and Fascination
A principled approach to critical work, one that illuminates connections without insistence, proposes without foreclosure and reflects, of course, the path of art itself: observations, juxtapositions, alliances — affinities, indeed — that resist easy determination. One might say, then, that Dillon makes of criticism an artistic practice.
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If these pictures appear to have little in common beyond Dillon’s predilection for them, their heterogeneity is in part his point. He is intrigued by the obstinate opacity of affinity, which is so misty as to defy definition ... Dillon’s forays into what he calls 'the mundane miracle of looking' are both impenetrably personal and so rigorously attentive to the external world that the critic sometimes seems to dissolve into the art. He has an affinity, in effect, for affinities — attractions so pronounced that, far from sequestering us in our private passions, they briefly annihilate us.
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In lesser hands, Dillon’s essays would have been used simply to make the case for the benefits of close attention. Dillon’s discussion of these photographs forestalls this reading – close attention is one thing. Loving attention, another. And Dillon does love. That shines out from each essay.
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