Art & Criticism

If you refer to one of my previous posts, "The seven types of art market players", I talked about the role of the art critic in today's society. They aren't as sought after for their opinions like they used to be. 

Since the 1990s, critics have believed their role in shaping the art consensus has been devalued by the art world. You can find art reviews, exhibition reviews, and reviews on the art market on the web in a thousand opinionated blogs, journals, books, and online newspapers written by writers - writers who probably didn't go to SVA for theory and criticism. All I can say is art critics aren't the only positions being devalued or manipulated through these sources of information. 

Critics are the "whistleblowers" of the art world. They should investigate the art industry's values, infrastructure, and practices - if they didn't who would? Art is subjective to the viewer, but who tells the viewer what to look at? Who tells the viewer or the collector what they are viewing or buying into is a huge mistake, or time and money well spent? If you were willing to spend millions of dollars at a restaurant, would you not read the review on the chef or the service or the wine list? 

THE MARKET

John Coplans and Max Kozloff sought to turn ArtForum into an anti-market publication in 1971. They wanted to expose the way in which investments and money in art was becoming harmful to the art world. Coplans, in fact, attacked a group of collectors who were treating the art they were buying like stocks and bonds - who were museum trustees and curating shows. Galleries refused to advertise in ArtForum if they didn't feature their artists. They wanted to control criticism and eventually Copland was fired. 

PLURALISM 

Aside from the art market, there's another reason why critics have lost most of their influence. 

The growth of pluralism in the postmodernist era. During the Modernist period, critics took sides for or against avant-garde art such as Color Field or gestural paintings, assemblage, pop, minimal, earth, conceptual and so on. They debated against movements and ideas and their opinions were demanded by the art world. In the postmodernist period, critics were reduced to picking one artist at a time, like or dislike, and focus on them individually. Debating in the art world has become unfocused and undramatic, and some might say irrelevant.

Questions for today's art critics:

1. What should art criticism be doing?
2. What are the issues or polemics, if any, for art criticism?
3. Is there a crisis in criticism?
4. Has art criticism been marginalized in the art world consensus? Is it influential in terms of what readers think and do?
5. Who and what is an art critic?
6. How would you define yourself as a critic? Reviewer? Essayist? Theorist? Artist-critic? Blogger?
7. For what audience do you write?
8. Has the Internet been good or bad for art criticism? Does it raise the issue of elitism versus populism?
9. How do you deal with the proliferating mediums in the art world today? 
10. How has globalization of art and the art world changed art criticism?
11. How has the enormous growth of the art world changed art criticism?
12. How do art magazine policies affect art criticism?
13. Are gender-based and political issues still viable in art criticism today?
14. Is it a function of art criticism to analyze art world institutions?