I like it when a writer manages to skewer someone's pretension without doing anything more than reporting exactly what they do and say. Thus, in an article about some actress, Tad Friend in the New Yorker manages to demolish a gallery worker, without a word of criticism:
'After her breakfast/dinner, she headed off to Gavin Brown's Enterprise, a nearby gallery that had opened its doors just for her. "Hi, Thor," she said to the tall assistant who greeted her.
"It's 'Tor,'" he said. "The 'h' is silent."
"Right, no hammer."
He showed her around an installation by Martin Creed, a Scottish artist who, Thor said, "always works within a set of confines or deliberate restrictions." Indeed, Creed's pyramid of nearly three thousand cinder blocks was restricted by the height of the ceiling ...
... Thor pointed out some bloblike portraits Creed had made when his restriction was that he couldn't look at the canvas. Then Thor took out his iPhone and showed a similar portrait that Creed had made of him. "I like to think I have nice lips, and he got that," Thor said, referring to a red paisley shape in the middle of his quasi-face. Eve pointed to another no-look portrait on the wall, which featured an identical paisley shape in pink: "But this portrait has nice lips, too - maybe lips are just his forte." Then, softening her demurral, she murmured, "Martin is good with lips."'
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