Merrily Kerr
Has anyone noticed that art critics seem to be talking a lot about themselves lately? In conferences, articles, and a major national survey, they’ve been working through their issues in public. Haunted by a diminishment of power and challenged by implications that their writing has been reduced to a kind of free advertising, critics are rethinking what they write about and why. As a result, they’re writing candid articles about criticism, either taking colleagues to task for bad writing or giving personal insights into life “in the trenches” as a critic. It’s a moment to take note of, considering that most contemporary critics have spent years writing about how other people work, but rarely make public what’s at the heart of their own practice.
The debates come at a time when the art world has never been larger, and the critic’s role never more in question. In a March ’03 article titled, “A Quiet Crisis,” Art in America Senior Editor Raphael Rubinstein described how he used to write about painting he liked, but recently began, “to feel that something more than explaining and advocacy is called for. . . . Value judgments must somehow be made, and articulated.” Rubinstein’s realization came on the heels of a 2002 survey by the National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP) of 230 art critics at news publications across the United States, which revealed that, “rendering a personal judgment is considered by art critics to be the least important factor in reviewing art.” The responses to the survey were various and heated, and included Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight’s point that “the art world has exploded into a global multibillion-dollar industry, in which critical acuity would seem more necessary than ever.”
The boom and bust cycle of the market in the late ’80s and early ’90s impacted magazines and newspapers in different ways. In the early ’90s, recalls Eleanor Heartney, co-president of the US chapter of the International Association of Art Critics, “A lot of magazines folded and a lot of them became much thinner. What happened was that when the economy took off again in the ’90s, for some reason, the magazines didn’t follow suit.” The number of art magazines shrank, but newspapers were a different story. Their publishers came to understand that the arts in general are a major source of interest for readers and, hence, advertising income.
"We are one of their glories,” says New York Times critic Roberta Smith of the paper’s arts sections. “I like to think we’re one of the good parts of the paper.” This may be the case, though critics stand out in the newsroom by doing the opposite of reporting—they state the facts, while adding healthy doses of personal opinion. No other paper in the US comes close to covering the arts as comprehensively as the Times; and as the “paper of record,” the Times’ visual art staff become the “critics of record.” The paper balances art criticism with art writing in a near even split between the Friday Weekend section with its reviews of gallery shows and larger articles on museum exhibitions, and the Sunday Arts and Leisure section, which has an eclectic national focus, but which favors art reporting over criticism. Although the art world is now literally spread across the globe, thanks to an international circuit of biennial exhibitions and art fairs, the bias in the Times is clearly towards coverage of New York exhibitions.
In an interview with NAJP Deputy Director András Szántó, New York Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman acknowledged, “In the last 10 or 15 years, the art world has diversified enormously, racially, sexually, geographically, and this has changed the dynamics of our coverage. A lot of galleries can’t get reviewed every time. There is triage.” Sorting according to quality is also the basis on which writers at the Village Voice, another rich source for opinionated criticism, face the challenge of choosing subject matter from hundreds of exhibitions a month. “I try to have as much variety as possible in terms of the voices and the things we cover,” says Voice art editor Vince Aletti. “But I think that the primary thing for all of us is that we’re covering the great shows.”
Deciding which shows to write about involves an implicit, multi-leveled quality judgment. Even for those making the decisions, it can be a mysterious process, “like wondering who you’ll marry,” wrote Village Voice critic Jerry Saltz, who explained that, “You’re constantly dangling the line of your responses into the stream of exhibitions. For better or for worse, the shows usually choose you.” Kimmelman approaches artwork and artists one at a time by, “looking at each piece of art and each artist’s work . . . individually, one by one. Maybe that’s a weakness, but I think it has allowed me to do my job more precisely, honestly, and it dovetails with our pluralist and rather diffuse moment.” His Times colleague Smith admits that the paper’s coverage, “is never quite as various or complete as we want it to be, although we make a conscious effort to do things that are unpredictable.”
If a young dealer who opens a gallery in his bedroom can have multiple shows reviewed in the New York Times, that should tell its readers something about how intent the writers are on locating the up-and-coming. Times critics Holland Cotter and Smith are particularly devoted to scanning the horizon for new trends. In a review of the group exhibition Today’s Man at John Connelly Presents in Chelsea last summer, Cotter discussed a show of art by and about men in the context of changing marriage laws and gay clergy, arguing that the exhibition picks up on an altered viewpoint about masculinity in contemporary culture. A month prior, Smith elaborated on what she called the “Summer of Art,” an across-the-board effort on the part of New York galleries to lay out new developments in contemporary art. “I like it when people start dealing with larger issues,” comments Aletti. “That’s, for me, a perfect kind of criticism.”
The Times’ regular fare, however, consists of longer reviews for museums and approximately nine slots per week for short pieces on gallery shows. In the first two months of this season, Times critics reviewed shows all over Manhattan, as well as art exhibitions in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. In one week, a mid-career American photographer showing in midtown can share page space with a deceased furniture designer in Chelsea, a German video artist in SoHo, and artists exploring African-American and Latino gay subculture in the Bronx. In another context, acknowledging that level of diversity would be followed by the statement, “I love New York.” Not so, in the competitive art market.
"Most constituencies you ask feel that they’re getting short shrift in the newspaper,” comments Szántó. However, “to say that everything deserves to be covered may not be to advocate what’s best for the art world. If a newspaper set out to write about everything that’s happening, it would be as long as the Encyclopedia Britannica.” Although that level of coverage would provide plenty of work for aspiring art critics, writers at the Times and Voice explain that their chief concern is to write to what they consider important and what attracts their interest. “I try not to have an agenda,” explains Saltz. “I try to respond piece by piece. For example, I just walked past the Gregor Schneider piece under construction at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, and it caught my eye. So it’s definitely on my radar, and not just because he’s an up-and-coming or well-known European.”
Critics at the nation’s largest papers explain that they approach art on a work- by-work basis, engaging the pluralist art world by constantly evaluating art, with an aim toward objectivity. They explain the importance of identifying and writing about their own responses, making their practice personal while maintaining an overview of which artists are being talked about. Before choosing what to write, they make quality judgments; and by questioning their own reactions and possible preconceptions, arrive at judgments. By daring to air their opinions, critics resist assertions that their work is simply aiding the marketing of artists by gallerists. “It doesn’t seem like many sections of the art world value a notion of criticism that is independent of promotional aims,” notes Heartney. And yet, says Smith, “It’s up to you to make . . . a review that isn’t just a consumer report.”
A pluralist art world should mean a plurality of tastes. Rubinstein explains, “There is a widespread reluctance to criticize other people’s positions, whether they are aesthetic or political. That comes from living in a multi-ethnic society and not wanting to look like you’re trying to impose your set of values on someone who is coming from a very different background.” So how can critics claim to speak for others? Many don’t even try, choosing instead to unapologetically acknowledge that their writing is coming from their own perspective. To determine the best is, in their opinion, their only job and the only thing that will make their writing relevant to the art world at large. As Smith explains, “I don’t know of any other area of our lives where we disallow quality. I don’t disallow quality when I decide who to spend time with or what music to listen to. So why should I disallow it in art?”
Merrily Kerr is a writer and critic living in New York City. She writes regularly about contemporary art for Flash Art, Art on Paper, and Tema Celeste.
