18 July 2021 • 5:00am Riot at the rite: the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring caused an outcry (illustration by Neale Osborne) Credit: Bridgeman Library The critic baffled by anything modern used to be a familiar figure of fun, because he (and it was always he) so often turned out to be wrong. You could almost guarantee the painting he damned as a “childish scrawl”, or the piece of music he dismissed as an “unutterable cacophony” would turn out to be the modern masterpiece that everybody now praises. Nowadays we critics tend not to damn things. Mindful of our forebears’ embarrassing howlers, we tread carefully and give the benefit of the doubt. And in any case the entire grab-bag of “shocking” modernisms has long ago been emptied. We critics are beyond being shocked. We’ve seen and heard it all before.