who cares who killed the art critic?

Kriston:

I'm inclined to believe that film has lapped visual art in public life.

Like, about 70 years ago.  Even Panofsky wrote about the movies.

I don't mean to be snippy in response to what is a thoughtful post.  But I think a lot of this oh-woe-is-art-criticism talk going around takes as a given that which really needs to be shown: that many people ever paid much attention to art critics in the first place.  I've written enough in the past about dialectical approaches to art criticism, I don't want to rehash any of that now: let's stick to the (more-or-less) empirical.  The kingmaker that always comes up in these discussions is (and I'm as tired of it as you are) Greenberg, but let's face it: he wrote most of his work for little magazines that, while influential among intellectuals, weren't read by many others.  Most of the readers of those magazines, for that matter, were probably far more interested in the latest word on Kafka and Eliot than the stuff about paintings.  And at a number of points, he got by not only on the little checks The Nation or Partisan Review provided, but through doing things like being a bit of an art consultant.  When Art and Culture came out, things changed in some respects; but even then, the kingmaker role was relatively short-lived, never unchallenged and ultimately within a fairly limited area.  In the decades since most of his readers have come from his essays making their way into academic circulation.

And so it has ever been.  How many really important art critics have ever existed?  In terms of their criticism per se, not as people involved in a scene who were among those who helped it into being.  Very few, I think.  And visual art, in this country at least, has never been the dominant mode of culture: literature and music lapped it in past centuries, theater did in its heyday, and film has for decades.

I'm not sure "the deprofessionalization of the critic affects the continuity and archivability of art criticism".  Obviously it's not the same as adding another roll of the microfiched Times to the shelf, but professional criticism has only ever been a small and recent part of the writing about art that nonetheless has managed to continue and be archived.

A host of factors, some of which Kriston discusses, made the past cultural moment and its arrangements possible and seemingly natural.  A broad mass media; a relatively small art world that for reasons aesthetic and otherwise was ready to command attention; a middlebrow social consensus (a good thing, in my mind, in case anyone's wondering); increasing levels of education, economic dominance and relatively cheap urban living, just to name a few.  And even in those fortuitous circumstances, the art critic wasn't as big a deal as we sometimes think.  Addison DeWitt is fictional, after all (also a theater critic, which is a whole different ball of wax - the LA Times article mixes all types of criticism together but that's not the way things work.)

I'm rambling, I know.  Anyway, bottom line: people have been writing about art for thousands of years.  They aren't going to stop now, although the ways they do so, in terms of medium and interest, will continue to change as has always happened.  The impulse to evaluate and to interpret can be found acting itself out in different ways throughout that history.  But art criticism as we think of it in a modern sense may turn out to have rested on a certain set of arrangements.  And if those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, then one can certainly wager that the art critic would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.

Comments

[sarah]

Oh, snap!

[Kriston]

OK, well, fine, JL, I'm not contesting that this is an exceedingly tiny goldfish bowl we're discussing or that any discussion of its tiny waves are of import to the larger public. I think that's in my post, beyond the line you've snipped. So, granting that, I have this impression that there used to be a vague cultural consensus that visual art was a very high, very worthwhile pursuit that one ought to have some idea about, if for cocktail party conversation alone. Sure it was an elite who put more effort toward art than that. But the data show that far fewer newspapers publish art criticism today than they did in the past. I don't think the ratio of elite to nonelite has changed wildly, so my explanation is that fewer nonelite vaguely believe they ought to know something about art, while more elite put their efforts into film.

So in response to the data I wager that art criticism (in newspaper print) has suffered to some extent from changing consensus about what comprises the highest or most desirable pursuits in society. Sure, it'll rebound in other forms. I agree that it's not worth a lot of handwringing. But it is an interesting media phenemenon and it is worthwhile to consider. Just not the way the newspapers have been writing it, I think.

[JL]

Thanks for the comment, Kriston. I should say first that I'm not entirely happy with the tone of the post above, which makes it sound like I'm engaging more directly (and in criticism of) your post than I intended. I was just too lazy to go over all of the responses to the LA Times article and yours seemed to me the most interesting and viable jumping off point.

I believe you're on your way out of town, so I'm not going to start going on about all the above now. But I think focusing on newspaper criticism moves the question away from one of elites and toward the idea of the collapse of middlebrow culture. In that way, the decline of art critism and the need of educated people to know something (anything) about art goes along with similar declines in classical music. The elites are probably still there, as you say (I don't know what else to call the buyers at auctions, after all.) But the broader middle looking for edification and enlightenment are not, at least not in the same numbers or for newer art. But of course, a lot of new art doesn't want that kind of role, anyway.

On the other hand, I think more people are engaged by contemporary art than the amount newspaper coverage reflects. Just not enough for newspapers to get a significant financial boost from increasing their coverage. Many of those people, after all, are the educated sort who will read the newspaper anyway; and the others probably have already turning to other sources for more arts coverage and don't look to a newspaper for it.

A new slogan for the visual arts: we're still more important than ballet!

[Dick Puddings]

Have you read George Steiner's "Real Presences"? He gives secondary criticism a good spanking in the first couple chapters.

[JL]

I'm sorry to say I've never read anything by Steiner, though I've long meant to. Perhaps I should start with that one.

[Todd]

Middlebrow social consensus is a good thing? And what's up with "relatively cheap urban living"? Dude, turn off the sitcom re-runs for a while. And have you looked at the price of Manhattan real estate in the last 15 years?

[JL]

And have you looked at the price of Manhattan real estate in the last 15 years?

It's my own fault for not being clearer, but I wasn't referring to anything in the last fifteen years in that passage. I was thinking more along the lines of 60 years ago, give or take (I'd also underline the "relatively".) Nor is the price of real estate the same as cost of living, for that matter.

Middlebrow social consensus is (or was) a good thing, not necessarily all the time or as the highest good, but definitely in this context. Middlebrow was an aspirational culture, one that admitted high art to the party along with the sports idol and movie starlet. The idea of art as something a person should know a thing or two about, if only, as Kriston says, for social purposes, is essentially a middlebrow one. It did set a certain limit on what was possible, at least before the broader public, which is part of why many find it intolerable; but it did so with an ultimately civilizing aim. The "brows" are an outmoded way of discussing culture, if they were ever truly useful, so to mix metaphors, I'd say there's something to be said for middlebrow as opposed to our a la carte culture that so often, as Kriston complains, leaves art off the menu. I'll be picking this up in a post sometime in the next couple days . . .

[Vvoi]

"But the broader middle looking for edification and enlightenment are not, at least not in the same numbers or for newer art. But of course, a lot of new art doesn't want that kind of role, anyway."

well, 2 things:
1) the word "enlightenment" sounds scary. makes me think of foucault and his critique of language as power. this seems to be (?) extremely hierarchical thinking, with high and low art, the worthy and the unworthy. i believe the contemporary art philosopher richard shusterman has an answer or two to this sort of perspective.
2) indeed, a lot of new art doesn't want that kind of a role, maybe because it's extremely heavy, doesn't allow for a real space of dialogue, there is space for the enlightened ones and the others, who have to "understand" in order to be "enlightened", which is very undialogical, so to speak (though i could have come up with a prettier word).
it seems to me the question of access and accessibility is different today than it was, say, 50 years ago. i've written on my blog about the podcasted guided tours of the moma. it often appears to be more about reaching the spectator than about portraying/analyzing/introducing the work in a "authoritative" or "competent" way. yes, maybe it's the moving away from the discourse of competence?

new-art.blogspot.com

[JL]

Thanks for your comment. As I said above, I'm trying to put together another post on this topic, so I'll wait to try and adequately address your remarks there (I don't have time to do so right now.) But one small point in regards to this:

the word "enlightenment" sounds scary. makes me think of foucault and his critique of language as power. this seems to be (?) extremely hierarchical thinking, with high and low art, the worthy and the unworthy.

While I'm happy to talk about Foucault, the Enlightment, etc., I'd have to say that in this case, I wasn't really thinking of all that, though I suppose it's part of the subtext whenever one uses the term. In fact, my use of it was more or less unthought, and my main emphasis was really on the related-but-not-the-same concept of edification as it has played out in this country in an overly earnest, perhaps slightly naive and very American kind of Bildung. Which may be equally objectionable, of course, but just to clarify.

[Dick Puddings]

Another great read is James Elkins' "What Happened to Art Criticism?"

[JL]

James Elkins' "What Happened to Art Criticism?"

Oh yes - I read that last year, shortly after starting this site. There was quite a bit of discussion of it here and elsewhere (at Iconoduel, and other sites, if I remember correctly) back then - I'll try to gather some links when I can. I had some criticisms, but then, it is a brief part of a work in progress. And while I don't agree with everything Elkins writes, he's an interesting guy and refreshing in the way he seeks out new topics and remains open to wide range of views.

[Dick Puddings]

Got it. Thanks.

http://modernkicks.typepad.com/modern_kicks/2004/08/elkins_again.html