The Ends of Art Criticism

By Patricia Bickers

At a time where there are repeated claims of the impending demise of art criticism, The Ends of Art Criticism seeks to dispel these myths by arguing that the lack of a single dominant voice in criticism is not, as some believe, a weakness, but a strength, allowing previously marginalised voices and new global and political perspectives to come to the fore. An essential book for anyone interested in contemporary art criticism, The Ends of Art Criticism benefits from an author whose 30 years of experience as editor of Art Monthly magazine allows her to offer opinionated and thought-provoking insight into the many questions and debates surrounding current critical writing on art, including the relationship between artists and critics, the academicisation of critical discourse, and the relationship between art history and criticism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lund Humphries
• Release date: May 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781848224315

Book preview

Preface

The title of this book is deliberately ambiguous, referring to often repeated claims that art criticism is dead or dying, while also suggesting a range of possible aims and outcomes of art criticism that indicate the contrary: that art criticism is thriving. As someone who has spent half a life professionally engaged in reading, writing, commissioning and editing art criticism, I am bound to refute the claim that criticism is either moribund or actually dead. However, I do so not merely from a sense of obligation to all those I have worked with, but from conviction.

In making my case, I draw heavily both from what I learned from my experience of teaching art students and from material published in Art Monthly magazine, a British-based magazine albeit with an international perspective. I make no apology for this because I have been associated with the magazine, first as a contributor and then as editor, for over 30 years; but I also hope to show that magazines have played, and continue to play, a vital part in identifying and engaging with new ideas in art and in disseminating them – arguably one the chief ‘ends’ of art criticism. Much of the material is recent, since nothing makes the case for the continuing vigour and relevance of art criticism better than the quality of so much new writing on art.

Some disclaimers: while a degree of historical background is required by way of context, this is not a historical study of art criticism but a thematic and occasionally polemical one. Also, while all writing on art is necessarily informed by theory, not least because it forms part of the context in which art is made and understood, neither Art Monthly nor The Ends of Art Criticism are theory-driven. Theory as applied to art is exactly that – applied theory – and to that extent it is contingent on the art that is being addressed, or at least it should be. The American painter and sometime sculptor Barnett Newman (1905–1970) spoke for many artists when he said: ‘Aesthetics for me is like ornithology must be for the birds.’ He was speaking at the Fourth Annual Woodstock Art Conference (held jointly by the American Society for Aesthetics and the Woodstock Artists Society in 1952), and though he didn’t say that aesthetic theory per se was ‘for the birds’, he insisted it was irrelevant when applied to an artist’s work without reference to the artist’s own values.¹ It is surely a legitimate requirement, but it is equally legitimate for critics to question the degree to which the artist has succeeded according to those stated values. It is one of the ends of art criticism, after all, to get close to the art, the very opposite of the now somewhat discredited ‘twenty-five year rule’ intended to ensure that art historians keep a proper distance from art.²

Artists draw from a range of theoretical sources and disciplines: aesthetic, anthropological, cultural – including popular culture – economic, feminist, historical, political, psychological, sexual, social and environmental, sometimes in the same work. Critics, too, therefore must cast their net accordingly, or risk excluding work on the basis that it doesn’t accord with a particular theoretical position – unless, of course, that is the somewhat etiolated point the writer wishes to make. To take just one example, while the late, great Susan Hiller (1940–2019) drew from her background as an anthropologist, as well as her interest in psychoanalysis, her work is unmistakeably art not anthropology, as any anthropologist would probably corroborate, nor is it psychoanalytical in any therapeutic sense. Similarly, while any critic engaging with her work should at least address those aspects of it, to focus on them to the exclusion of all other possible avenues of engagement would be a disservice both to the artist and to the reader. The alternative is theoretical orthodoxy, which belongs in the academy.

Art creates a space in which alternative and even opposing ideas can be engaged with at the same time. An example of this is the three-channel film triptych, No Permanent Address (2010, fig.1) by Mark Boulos (b.1975), for which he spent three months in the jungle with the New People’s Army in the Philippines. While no one is more aware of the limits of art’s reach, and of the ethical issues and inequalities raised both by his relatively safe position as an artist amongst fighters and by the presentation of the subsequent work miles away in the context of a gallery, arguably the artist is also uniquely placed to test those limits and to articulate those contradictions. Boulos refers to this space, or ‘gap’, in an interview with art historian and critic Jonathan Harris:

I wanted to explore love from feminist, queer as well as psychoanalytic perspectives. Love as the basis of queer politics, for example. The necessary ethics of communist politics, beyond Marx, may be something that comes from Christianity and other elements: love and agape. I first became interested in the New People’s Army when they performed the first gay wedding in the Philippines. That love could suture a gap in theoretical Marxism, a gap in its ethics … Between Marxism, feminism and Christianity, the common denominator is love.³

Fig.1 Mark Boulos (b.1975), No Permanent Address, 2010

3-channel video, 27 minutes

Video still

Boulos here makes a play on the words ‘a gap’ and the Greek ‘agape’, suggesting that what could fill the gap is not merely love but agape, the highest form of love according to Greco-Christian theology, because it transcends the self. It is a beautiful idea, an aesthetic idea in the original Greek sense, but it is also for Boulos a political idea, and it could be said to be a model for art – and for art criticism – whereby the acknowledgement of difference paradoxically enables reconciliation and even gestures towards resolution. To put it another way, a condition that psychologists describe as ‘cognitive dissonance’, is grist to the mill for artists. To adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation in the introduction to his collection of short stories, The Crack-Up, titled after the 1936 story of the same name, the test of creative intelligence is ‘the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function’.⁴ Art critics must be able and willing to negotiate this challenging terrain. The artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) famously described his work as acting in the ‘gap between’ art and life, and it could be said that critics work in the gap between art and its potential audiences, while also always being part of those audiences. By virtue of their closer engagement with art as critics, however, they are usually lucky enough to occupy a front row seat.

Chapter 1

Criticism: Crisis? What crisis?

Art criticism is routinely described as being in – usually terminal – ‘crisis’. In 2003 James Elkins, for example, brought out a booklet with the provocative title What Happened to Art Criticism?, published by Prickly Paradigm Press, which has the stated aim of ‘publishing challenging and sometimes outrageous pamphlets’. If the title had not already alerted readers to the tenor of the publication, the opening sentence leaves us in no doubt: ‘Art criticism is in worldwide crisis.’¹ Elkins subsequently became a sought-after speaker at symposia and panel discussions on art criticism, delivering the annual lecture to the International Association of Art Critics at Tate Britain in December 2010, and has been regularly cited since in discussions over the state of art criticism.² His text is perhaps then a good place to start, beginning with that first sentence.

The extrapolation from a perceived crisis in western art criticism to the claim that it is a ‘worldwide’ crisis is problematical; such a comprehensive and western-centric view appears to ignore the ways in which art and criticism have been changed and reinvigorated by postcolonialist and non-western perspectives, both from within and without Europe, as well as by previously marginalised voices making themselves heard, including from ethnic minority, Black and LGBTQI+ communities. However, for Elkins, this ‘expanded field’ of art criticism, to appropriate Rosalind Krauss’s famous iteration with regard to sculpture,³ is partly why he believes that the ‘voice’ of the art critic ‘has become very weak’ in what is now an overcrowded field. Yet, despite its impending death there is no dearth of criticism; but this only compounds the problem: ‘Art criticism,’ Elkins observes, ‘is massively produced, and massively ignored.’⁴

Is he right? There are several points to consider here. To take the last point first: the 21st century has indeed seen a ‘massive’ increase in the production and circulation of art criticism, made easier by digital technology and by the internet which has facilitated the emergence of new outlets for all kinds of criticism, including art criticism. However, that all this production, or over production of art criticism as Elkins would have it, is ‘massively ignored’ suggests either that readers simply ignore it, or that potential readers have splintered into a multitude of mutually exclusive special interest groups, each representing a different art constituency, dissipating the power of art criticism and ‘weakening its voice’ in consequence. I would argue, however, that far from undermining the impact of art criticism, such alternative critical platforms find their own, self-selecting writers and readers, who navigate easily between different formats while, yes, ignoring others.

Art criticism works like osmosis: it is gradually, indirectly – even unconsciously – assimilated and transferred via these online and other platforms and, while some are indeed ephemeral, or are replaced or even integrated into other more conventional outlets like magazines and journals, they are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, social media can be a means by which readers can pass on information directly, including long-form articles, by posting links or likes. One example of this is a comment from 2019 posted on Art Monthly’s Instagram account: ‘I found Kader Attia’s current show at Hayward Gallery engaging but pretty sprawling. Maria Walsh’s review for @ArtMonthly helped me find a route through it by focusing on the linking theme of repair.’⁵ The post not only demonstrates the way in which digital media, including social media, can extend art criticism’s reach, but also its efficacy. It could also be said to define one of the ends of art criticism: to help audiences, some of whom are engaging with it for the first time, to ‘find a route through’ contemporary art.

To the post-internet generation, the digital arena is just another platform and, thankfully, there is no shortage of new writers keen to contribute to analogue and other long-form formats. Many, indeed, relish the challenge of writing for a magazine of record and altering their approach accordingly, taking more time to develop an idea or response, while also agreeing to the editing and fact-checking process, after which proofs are exchanged until both parties are happy.

The massive output of criticism doesn’t render the art critical voice – or voices – weaker, merely more diverse, more far-reaching and, arguably, more influential.