This is a question I struggled to find a definitive response to. Through my research it seems I am not the only one labouring to define a clear and concise model for the evaluation of critical writing in contemporary art. What has become apparent is a consideration, on the part of some, that the field of critical writing across the arts is in a troubled, unsteady, unregulated and undefined state. It also appears that discourse surrounding the merit of criticism is not a newly conceived debate. One key aspect is that there has been a failure to define the role of criticism since its inception. Any attempt to close the field into a set of qualities is met with problematic outcomes. In trying to narrow and articulate a response to the aforementioned question, I will respond to some of the varying arguments set out in the publication The State of Art Criticism (The book presents an international conversation among art historians and critics that considers the relation between criticism and art history and poses the question of whether criticism may become a university subject.
Contributors include Dave Hickey, James Panero, Stephen Melville, Lynne Cook, Michael Newman, Whitney Davis, Irit Rogoff, Guy Brett and Boris Groys.)(Elkins, 2008). I narrow my focus to the responses of two contributors in particular, James Elkins, art historian and art critic and Boris Groys, art critic, media theorist, and philosopher. Elkins articulates exactly how problematic it might be to confine the practice of art criticism to a rigorous academic discipline or equally, to an ephemeral position dictated by time or context. He suggests that if a critic adopts a particular ‘stance’ or ‘position’ this might be inclusive, problematic and unhealthy for the discourse. Groys touches upon the impact the avant-garde had in scuppering the historical function of the critic. In the course of my response I will make continuous reference to an idea that arose in conversation with a musician friend of mine, which seemed to draw attention to the lack of a coherent critical convention across the field of the arts. I will build upon this idea, while questioning the authority of contemporary critical writing and the possible responsibility it must assume today. By restricting my response to the texts of the aforementioned authors, I seek to narrow my input to an open ended question, which continuously generates responses, articulations and suggestions that would be impossible to touch upon in such a short piece of writing.In conversation, my colleague and I discussed the notion that perhaps critical writing in art and music can no longer hold the relevance or significance it once did, due to the sheer volume of writing that exists and the public’s ambivalence towards it. While everyone has always had an opinion on matters of taste, meaning, and value in cultural practices, today everybody can state their theories to a potentially infinite audience via the internet. The contemporary art writer does not have to be university trained or employed solely as a writer. The field has opened up and readers of critical writing are inundated with vast amounts of material available for consumption. It is on the basis of such an unregulated freedom that led my colleague to proclaim the death of the critic across all contemporary culture. I must say this declaration somewhat irked me. Open any weekend newspaper and there are still the same writers in residence reviewing albums, exhibitions, and new cinema releases. Publications like Frieze and Artforum exist and remain popular on the basis of the collected contributions from widely regarded commentators. Popular online blog spots boast a healthy number of hits on a weekly basis, based on what the owners of such sites deem in fashion. I had to disagree with my colleague’s statement and found that Elkins (2008, p.72) sees that art criticism has is in fact flourishing, attracting large numbers of would-be professionals. At the same time, he does acknowledge that even with its large-scale distribution it remains largely ignored by academics and absent from contemporary debates. It is not taken as seriously as writings on aesthetics or art history. This, I hoped, accounted both for my colleagues’ statement and my objection. Elkins hones in on a key question; why is critical writing ignored or considered inconsequential, and if so, what purpose does it serve? Another way of interpreting the decline of the critic’s importance would be through John Kelsey’s statement that, possibly, it is not such a bad thing to herald the end of the critic if ‘he’s not up to the task of reinventing himself to meet the conditions he’s working under today’ (Kelsey 2008, p.66). In Groys’ writings we shall look further at the idea that the dictates of history and popular culture have had the most demonstrable impact on the ever-shifting role of the critic.
At its best, critical writing can serve as an admiration for and response to an artists’ work or an exhibition. It extends the life of the exhibition, generates a context for the viewer who might not otherwise see such work, and further contributes to practices in art theory and history debates. At its most cynical, contemporary critical writing can be nothing more than the rewriting of press releases and promotional texts to sell work. Poorly written, entirely subjective, spat-out reviews that offer little in coherence or clarity regarding the work they are supposed to be engaging with; or alternatively - as the academic approach is routinely accused of being - overly theoretical, marginalised, nothing more than showboating for and between colleagues. The latter account seems a little harsh while the former feels a little overreaching. Oversimplifying is an obstacle to meaningful discourse, and so in his essay Elkins explores the accusations and reforms that have been pitched at art criticism. For Elkins, the indefinable and insecure are positive traits for criticism. As there is no thorough history of art criticism in the same vein as aesthetics, or art history, and no set academic practice of criticism, the critic must take advantage of the possibilities of such a freedom. Criticism does not concern itself with the historical but is more ‘akin to creative writing’. But he is quick to defend this practice stating [that] ‘just because a field has no academic platform does not mean that it is [any] less rigorous’. However, while criticism is afforded luxuries such as gathering influence from differing disciplines, this very freedom can also feed the idea that such unregulated practice can be for ‘[the] steady reader...stultifying’ (Elkins,2008, p.76). It from here on that Elkins thinks about the options art writing could assume. On one side there is the October ideal of what criticism should be; firmly theoretical and serious, encompassing a historical (re)view and producing aesthetic judgements. This call comes from academics such as Rosalind Krauss and Michael Fried. But Elkins sees a problem in this dogmatic reformation, sensing that these considerations might be built on ideas of a nostalgic longing for a prominence gone by, namely the age of Greenbergian method (or perhaps the celebrity of the figure of the art critic). He suggests that to revive the language and methods of a time gone by will prove defunct in trying to explain and engage with contemporary art, ‘How is it possible to judge a work using criteria...that belong to another time? When concepts all belong to past writers, criticism becomes chronicle, and judgement becomes meditation on past judgement. The present is immersed in history...’(Elkins, 2008, p.86).
Elkins finds a critic of the academic ideal in Jerry Saltz, former art critic for The Village Voice. He believes that criticism should be ambitious but sensitive to changing art. One cannot ‘[Look] at art in narrow, academic, or "objective" ways... Art is a way of thinking, a way of knowing yourself. Opinions are tools for listening in on your thinking and expanding consciousness’ (Saltz, 2005, p.1).He accuses academic art theorists as, ‘[having] demonized and belittled art, insisting that its essentially a gratuitous, semi mystical, merely beautiful, formal entertainment, [forgetting] ‘the fact that art is, first and last, about experience, not about ideas’ (Saltz, 2003 cited Rubenstein, 2006, p. iv). According to Elkins, Saltz contradicts himself in the text he provided for Elkins when he states that he wants to provide clarity via context, explain artist’s progression by looking at their techniques, and make judgements that will become something more than just his opinion (Elkins, 2008, p.88). Here he is engaging in historical art information. Here he is appealing to the idea of building meaning from his assessment. This functions on a building-upon some version that has come before - a history of assessments. It is not just about the experience of an artwork first and last. All this implies that neither the theorist nor the non- theorist seem to satisfy a healthy, accurate account for a development in critical discourse.
Boris Groys acknowledges the social and historical implications leading to the divergence in critical writing. According to Groys, it germinated with the establishment of the avant-garde. This is partly why criticism can no longer assume the authoritative role asserted at the beginning and middle of twentieth century Modernism. What was once the activity of society - to judge art - was now subverted by the work of the artists themselves. They did not seek favour or welcome from the public. They certainly did not seek interpretation. The movement presented art that critiqued society. By refusing to conform to a vision that art existed most importantly as the communication of ideas beyond our reach, of that ‘otherness’ that we ritually apply to artistic production, they succeeded in ‘introducing a rupture in society not reducible to any previously existing social differences’ (Groys, 2008, p.62) This left the critic, who traditionally functioned to judge and critique work on behalf of the public, in an awkward position. Some writers during this period followed the avant-garde’s lead, standing with the artwork, advocating a critique aimed at society under the care of art. These ruptures in critical commentary asked questions as to where critic’s allegiances lay: with the artist and their vision of the world, or with the public and their vision of the world through and within art. ( I am considering here a ‘public’ that treats art as the communication of that which cannot be grasped in an alternative medium, the ‘other’ as it is referred to in Groys’ text.) Groys maintains it is this moment which has lead to uncertainty. ‘[T]he paradoxical task of judging art in the name of the public while criticizing society in the name of art opens a deep rift within the discourse of contemporary criticism and one can read today’s critical discourse as an attempt to bridge/conceal this divide’ (Groys, 2008, p.63).
While the influence of the critic has waned and become decentralised, it does not mean that critical writing is redundant. The role of the critic needs to remain confused, as this is a more accurate reflection of the complexity and confusion of a discipline grappling with itself in the postmodern, rudderless reality of the contemporary world. Relieving the critic of a ‘role’ altogether will, as Elkins and Groys agree, allow for ‘ the most diverse theories, intellectual takes, rhetorical strategies, stylistic props, scholarly knowledge and examples from all walks of life’ (Groys, 2008, p.67). The critic must exist for the sake of dialogue itself. While everyone can practice critical writing, the ones who have been successful enough to make a legitimate contribution to the discourse of art culture hold a responsibility to the reader, not to mystify the work but to offer clarity and coherence. By mystify here I refer not to what John Berger refers to as ‘the process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident’ (Berger, 1972, p.15). Audiences today are sophisticated enough to know when they are being fed meaningless jargon. But rather, a writer’s descriptive narrative plays an important role in helping a reader visualise the work; contextualising what we see is important for the work and for its location in the world. Ultimately, the pluralism of contemporary art necessitates an acknowledgement that no single position can be given precedence over another. Art criticism’s greatest strength lies in its ability not to anchor and bind movements, moments, and creations in a set of codified, historically bound concepts and frameworks, but to act, much like the art itself, as a fluctuating mirror of the endlessly shifting world we find ourselves in. I would like to end with a metaphor taken from Elkins text which I feel illustrates the dynamic nature of critical writing’s contribution today. ‘Art criticism is diaphanous: it’s like a veil, floating in the breeze of cultural conversations and never quite settling anywhere.’ (Elkins 2008, p.74)
Bibliography
· Berger, J. (1972). Ways of Seeing, London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books Ltd.
· Elkins, J. (2003) ‘On the Absence of Judgement in Art Criticism’, in Elkins, J. and Newman, M,. eds. (2008). The State of Art Criticism. New York and London: Routledge
· Groys, B. (1997) ‘Critical Reflections’, in Elkins, J. and Newman, M,. eds. (2008). The State of Art Criticism. New York and London: Routledge
· Kelsey, J,. (2007) ‘The Hack’, in Birnbaum, D. and Graws, I,.eds. (2009). Careers and Canvases Today, New York Berlin: Sternberg
· Rubenstein, R, ed. (2006). Critical Mess: Art Critics on the State of their Practice, Lenox MA: Hard Press
· Saltz, J,. (2005). Seeing Out Loud, The Village Voice, New York. available at: http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-12-13/art/seeing-out-loud/ accessed (17 November 2011)
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