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Thu 05 May 2007An Irishman's DiaryThe New York Review of Books was fretting recently about the rise of "garbology" in art criticism. No, this is not a reference to the use of obscure or pretentious language by critics trying to appear more profound than they are. It describes instead a sort of sub-field of archaeology, named (with ironic intent) after the practice of going through celebrities' refuse in search of evidence that casts new light on their public personae.The NYR raised the obsession with "object-based information" in the context of a book about the studio of the painter Francis Bacon. As you probably know, the studio used to be in London. As you may also know, it was a mess, packed with thousands of objects ranging from dried-up paint-brushes to old magazines, most of them thrown higgledy-piggledy around the floor.