Editor’s Note: This is a part of a package of stories about the state of criticism. See the links at the end for the related stories.
Last year, the popular art podcast Bad at Sports shut off the comments section to its weekly website component. Responders got out of hand with insults, and it seemed the negativity far outweighed useful commentary. In those four years of unmoderated feedback, some discussions ran on for more than 200 comments, which in the realm of Web 2.0 equals a successful dialogue. And isn’t the art world always begging for more “dialogue”?
Withstanding the attacks of a belligerent audience is just one challenge of living on the web. The other challenge is content, or how to craft responsible, poetic and meaningful criticism when there’s no overhead, little foresight and no time. Worrying about editorial is “like organizing the kitchen cupboards while some dude bleeds to death in the living room,” writes Kathryn Born, publisher of a new art criticism website, Chicago Art Magazine. “We publish two unedited articles each day. It would be nice to have someone look them over, but we just don’t have the money.”
It may not matter whether or not art criticism is vetted, edited and consciously published. Published criticism means exposure, and exposure means free publicity, or just another line on the resume, as several artists confessed to me.
“Public acknowledgment is primary, critical assessment is valued to a much lesser degree,” says critic and artist Michelle Grabner. She continues, “The fact that recognition takes the form of criticism doesn’t matter to artists. Poetic reflection or a mention in the society pages is just as touted by artists and their dealers.” Is this true? Gallery owner, and former art blogger, Scott Speh tells me that he’s disallowed several local critics—both web and print-based—from interviewing the artists he represents at Western Exhibitions, and if they review a show, he won’t list it on their resumes. Reviews do pad an artist’s resume, but a strong resume leads to more opportunities to make more and better art. Granting institutions, residencies, curators and dealers often consult resumes. It’s an attempt at professionalism in a highly unregulated art world.
Whether ignored or acknowledged, clipped for PR or thoughtfully considered, reviews help spin the art world on an axis of its own making. Anyway, making money from an art career shouldn’t be so stigmatized. It feeds the monster. It perpetuates the machine.
But sometimes the machine is a website called The Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator, which randomly pieces jargon into strings of art speak. This website reveals how easy it is to praise mediocrity. It could pass for published art reviews.
Artist and critic Elijah Burgher draws out an interesting conflict. As an educator, he believes that “knowledge is common property,” to which we all contribute. He co-published a short-lived art journal called Blunt Art Text, in print and digitally, and believes that “criticism makes for healthy discourse, which makes for better art.” However, he says, “If I want to know something, I’m not going to read Jerry Saltz’s Facebook posts. I’m going to hit the library.”
We meet in public, shake hands in public, exhibit art there, publish reviews there. With Web 2.0, the public field has been torn open, perhaps inelegantly. But that’s how revolutions go. As things settle, taste levels thin out or flatten. “Group thinking tends to create the average,” says Elijah.
With the entire public sitting online, we need something to occupy our time, and there is enough content on the Internet to fill it. Pile on the monthly art magazines and there’s almost too much to digest. But there are tools to better organize all this information, new and old (as old print becomes archived online). “There is a reason for newspapers to exist, but magazines and newspapers have to adapt to digital audiences,” says Alicia Eler, who worked for Chicago Now, the Chicago Tribune’s new blogging enterprise, and is now a freelance social media consultant and art critic. Digital audiences like to be able to search information easily, talk to themselves, and be heard.
There aren’t more artists in the world since the dawn of the Internet; it just seems that way because they all have personal websites. As a tool for artists, Web 2.0 is hugely successful. “The art community is more active on Facebook than Twitter,” says Alicia. It’s a good place to organize, build fan bases and post new art for instant response.
Positively, online social media increases the size of one’s network, which increases the possibilities for collaboration and the exchanging of ideas. Negatively, information tailored to a digital audience promotes emotionally reactive and flippant responses, and somehow seems unserious. This is not, traditionally, how critics like to proceed.
As the Internet is all about audience, and its influence expands, the voice of the critic fades. For some types of art, like community-based or social practices, this is ideal. For others, it’s an unwelcome flood of amateurs, hobbyists and Sunday critics. Today, anyone who posts anything on the web is heard and receives attention. But the need for expertise, and good writing, will resurface. The public should demand it.
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My opnions is that there are two issues not addressed that I feel contribute to the issue of non-interest in reviews: 1. the review form – the literary piece known as the art review – has lost its way. 2. Our relationship with experts/authority is in crisis or in flux. So point 1 – the review, as we know ’em and write ’em, has become so nebulous, that’s is only one step above the worst art writing form ever – the artist statement. What’s an artist statement supposed to be about? I’ve never read a good one, and most are… Read more »
I think that Kathryn’s right that the 350 word format has become so monotonous and irrelevant that it sometimes appears equivalent to a press release. Regardless of length or format, I think that the written word breathes to life and makes concrete the opinions and issues important to art of a specific moment. There are other reasons for the continued importance of art criticism and reviews in contemporary art practice, but I believe that critics shouldn’t shy away from talking about what’s important and what’s relevant (albeit in a shorter, more incisive format since this is after all, “web 2.0”… Read more »
The audience for reviews is pretty small, usually consisting of the artist being reviewed, and the writer. But it’s an attempt at engagement. For an artist exhibiting in public, it is disappointing to receive no critical feedback. (The worst review is no review). Kathryn, the analogy of reviews to artist statements is interesting but I think a better comparison is to the studio visit or the art school critique. It’s a formalized exchange of ideas and information. If the 350-word format is inconsequential and too wordy, as Corinna suggests, then I’d like to see more poetic, experimental, weird and unique… Read more »
The premise that no one reads reviews is false, based on traffic to this site, which is largely review-based. In fact, I just took a cursory look at our Google Analytics for the last 30 days, and it’s not unusual for reviews published a year, two years ago, to still get read more than a hundred times a month. Reviews function in a multitude of ways, one of the strongest of which, I believe, is to foster dialogue between two people who’ve seen a show; that is, the critic and the audience member. Consumer reports are fine, but I think… Read more »
But what about the state of (visual)art (criticism?) in Chicago? Can we expect that as part of the upcoming “package”?
[…] the pleasure of discussing these questions with Newcity Art Editor Jason Foumberg for his article, The State of the (Visual) Art, which is part of this week’s cover story, Everyone’s a Critic: Yelp, Twitter and the […]
It’s been well covered previously here and elsewhere. How do you think it’s faring?
The problem is that we don’t know why people are reading review. I get a good long tail on reviews, but I always suspect it’s because people are googling the artist and they want to see pictures. The trick is to see in Google Analytics what the keywords are, is it “Steve Jones” or “Review of Steven Jones exhibit at Bob Gallery”. Also, I look at time on page. If the average is 2 min, then probably not, as that’s the average. That’s the person who left the window open for an hour by accident averaged out with the person… Read more »
[…] criticism amidst the rise of blogging, online websites, and other forms of interactive media titled The State of the (Visual) Art. I didn’t read this as a piece on the status of art criticism in Chicago per se, as I think […]
As Chicago currently does not have a strong representation in print right now or a nationally recognized critical body. Do you feel like the bloggers are shouldering an additional editorial responsibility to print worthwhile criticism? And that those who make venues to post unedited content then really do take on the role of editor and become responsible for that content placed in the blogosphere?? I guess what I am getting at is the question of is just posting content enough? Or is it possible that larger critiscim projects should be saceld back so etidors can be added to the fold… Read more »
Daisyrose, I agree that quality is better than quantity. With blogs, there’s a tendency to pump out information (or “content”) to keep readers engaged and coming back. This perhaps mirrors the daily newspaper format, but often lacks editorial oversight. I tend not to agree with Kathryn’s quote about the guy bleeding int he living room. That’s not my editorial philosophy, but it is something I see across the spectrum of blogs. On Bad at Sports, Claudine has done a nice job of clarifying the need for editors (comment #9, above). Reading uneditied content is not fun. ‘Selection’ is essential to… Read more »
Eh, I think it’s all about goals. If the goal is a focus on the review form, then yes, go over that copy with a fine tooth comb. For me, (chicagoartmag.com) what’s most important is that we have a big group that has a good pulse on the art scene – almost everyone in the Friday Night Army has an advanced degree from the SAIC. And we have a rule – no panning of shows, and I’m even starting to put my foot down about pot shots that occur within perfectly pleasant reviews. So the effect is that we’re picking… Read more »
I think the art review is a great format for online criticism. Given that a copy provided by the artist and gallery is almost always insufficient for satisfying curiosity or describing the artist’s intentions, I usually go to the critical cloud for more on the art that interests me enough to want to know about it. Most of that cloud however is made up of art reviews written by unfunded writers, which makes a lot of sense since art reviews provide non-economic incentive to the writer. What you’re essentially doing with a review is using a first-person critical element to… Read more »
1. Michelle nailed a widely misunderstood aspect of this whole conversation. What weight criticism does still hold is in acknowledgment, in the doling out of attention. It doesn’t really matter what the review says, but the fact that one exhibition is covered as opposed to another one signifies visibility and influence. But because other things, like the artforum.com society pages, can serve to signal visibility for an artist without the other implications of a review (judgment, interpretation, etc.), criticism becomes less necessary. Before, critics were a key source of conferred legitimacy. Now that legitimacy comes from the reputation of exhibition… Read more »
Forrest, web 2.0 also refers to user-generated content. The more I think about Michelle’s quote, that selection and/or recognition in the society pages equals good enough ‘criticism’ for an artist or dealer, makes my stomach turn. I think an artist will be glad to see their name in print, but also an artist wants people to understand and connect with their work. That’s where reasoned or expert criticism comes in. Right now I’m reading a great book by Noel Carroll called “On Criticism” that lays out an argument about this. He says that evaluation must be part of a critic’s… Read more »
Artists may be gratified or something by reviews they agree with, but it doesn’t help them any more than being photographed at a party. Both are comparable indicators of visibility, which is a metric of success. Touting by dealers (moreso than artists) is about justifying an artist’s prices: “look, such-and-such is at a party with Hans Ulrich Obrist. Clearly things are going well for him.” It’s not a good or bad phenomenon, it’s an economic one. I, like many people, wish there was a situation where an abundance of insightful, decisive writing about the work I care about. But until… Read more »
“I, like many people, wish there was a situation where an abundance of insightful, decisive writing about the work I care about. But until critics wield some power again, there won’t be a situation like that.” So, in other words, you need critics to justify why you like the art that you like. And if we only covered the art that you like (the 10 venues you mention), then we would be writing for an audience of 1. But this is a newspaper with citywide circulation, so we cover art in Chicago. You are free to pick which articles you… Read more »
Didn’t mean it as a criticism of you, rather as a lament of a general situation. I don’t really think you should be doing anything way different. But let’s be clear, I’m not saying that the problem is there are ten shows that appeal to me, I’m saying there are maybe ten shows with any life outside the city whatsoever. It’s not about preference at all, it’s about regionalism. I think we need more shows that matter, not a news company that covers different shows.