Modern Kicks

the time has come when we must leave you

I'm heading out of town for a while, and I doubt I'll have the chance to check email, let alone write, while I'm gone.  Back in town on May 1, posting to resume some time after that.  See you then.

why have there been no great art history bloggers?

The Art History Newspaper asks why so few art historians blog.  It's something I've wondered about myself a bit, and these are the best ideas I've had:

- There are considerably fewer art historians than there are English professors, sociologists, lawyers, etc.  The fraction of art historians blogging is still lower than the (admittedly low, but influential) number of those in other fields doing so, but one would expect a lower absolute number in any event.

- Art history as a field has always seemed to me more status-conscious, tradition-bound, and cautious in its attitude toward the public realm than other fields.  To put it a different way, social scientists' attitudes toward how one engages in public speech may range from scrupulous neutrality (or, in the eyes of detractors, pseudo-scientific posturing) to outright advocacy, but there's a presumption that their work has some relevance to discussions of public policy.  Philosophers, historians, literary types, and even lawyers can find within their field some significant (if at times disrespected) models of the public intellectual upon which to rely when engaging in public speech.  Art history has little of the same tradition, at least in this country.  Even further, the field's ties are closer to the world of diplomacy and even espionage (seriously) than to any sort of public voice.

- For those art historians not in the academy but in museums, the above weighs even heavier.  It's a milieu in which discretion can be a necessity (openness can be, too, but that's a separate question from what I'm talking about here.)  Negotiating the difference between speaking for one's self and for the institution works differently in this context.  Art historians in museums also may actually be blogging--but as part of a museum blog, one run through the institution with varying levels of intermediaries.  Or they may not; in many institutions, the website and related phenomena are the province of marketing and publicity types, or a web team of some sort, and speaking out on one's own becomes more difficult in that context.

- A lot of art historical work doesn't lend itself to blogging.  What are you going to do with that new insight into the meaning of an Latin inscription on a Rubens copy of a Holbein, blog about it or try and work it into an article or research note?  What'll do you more good, or cause you less trouble with your colleagues or advisor?  The answer looks pretty clear to me.  That doesn't mean that art history blogging shouldn't happen, or couldn't be done productively or in an interesting way.  But to some degree the nature of the work combined with the incentive structure of the field (to an even greater degree than others) work against it.

- It's less true every day, but certainly within the older generations of art historians, technophobia and the disdain for computers runs much stronger than in other fields, at least in my experience.  Sure, younger art historians and grad students don't share these attitudes, but as yet, they're not the ones setting the norms.  If I were still a grad student, I'd as soon want my department to know that I blogged as I would to want them to think that I was a nudist.  A lot of people in academia don't trust or understand blogs (yes it's an old article, but nothing has changed that much, especially in fields where blogs are scarce.)  Why make it hard on yourself?

- While the Art History Newsletter stands out in paying attention to scholarly questions as well as art news, a lot of blogging revolves around the latter.  Art historians certainly follow art news (generally), but publicly commenting on it is a different matter (ok, I'm repeating myself a little.)  Art reporters and critics do, of course--but a significant and growing number of them do blog.

All the above is anecdotal, and simply my view, but it's the best I've been able to come up with.  I hope the situation changes, but in the meantime, I'm happy with the lack of competition.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that Meyer Schapiro could serve as a counterexample to my claim that American art historians lack a model of a public intellectual in the field.  And he fits, but I'd say that one counterexample does not a powerful model make (no disrepect to Schapiro intended), especially in light of the other tendencies I mentioned.  Add to that the fact that not all art historians see Schapiro as a model of practice (by which I mean some disagree with him and his orientation to the field, not that he wasn't great) and that anyone who has reached the state of freedom to write as widely in the field as he did hardly needs a blog, and his use as an exemplar grows attenuated.

art criticism: the turtle problem

Peter Plagens had a long article on the state of art criticism in February's Art in America to which I've seen several people refer without linking to it: here it is, or at least the bare text.  It's long, and I read it late last week, so now it's a bit hazy in the mind.  If I remember correctly, I thought it mostly good, if entirely familiar.  It refers to and seems occasioned by the new book Critical Mess: Art Critics on the State of their Practice, which I have not read.  I . . . probably will, eventually, I guess.  The sentences of Plagens' article that received most attention among online writers, of course, were those in which Plagens performed a fairly predictable dismissal of blogs.  To repeat them:

More and more people in the audience for contemporary art would rather read Tyler Green snark somebody in his blog, Modern Art Notes, than ponder the considered judgment of Michael Kimmelman on a MOMA retrospective. Many art writers have either added unpaid blogging to their activities or been squeezed into it from want of other, traditional outlets--for which many bloggers don't have enough writerly inclination or discipline, anyway. Each of those art bloggers has a following of fans and other bloggers, and each of those bloggers has ... and so on. A growing form of art criticism consists of posting links to other people's criticism, which consists of posting links ... and so on.

Tyler defended himself, as he's quite able to do.  More recently, Charles Giuliano has delivered a one-two punch, first reviewing Critical Mess, and then reflecting on his own experiences in a changing world of art criticism while defending blogs and online art writing more broadly.  I'm not going to dwell on any of this, at least at the moment, except to say that to the extent that professional art writers have begun blogging, it's probably been to their benefit (I'm sure the added work isn't always fun, but then, it isn't always for the rest of us, either.)  Nor does Plagens' "turtles all the way down" view of the internets really do him much credit--I'm not sure there's any online regressions happening any more extreme than writing an article of meta-criticism that mentions a volume of the same in which one of your own essays appears.  The idea that linking actually constitutes a form of criticism, rather than being a way that people organize and, well, link information online is also a silly one.  He's definitely right about the lack of discipline, though, I'll grant that.  Anyway, it's one churlish moment in an otherwise sober look at the field.  If you like jeremiads about the state of art criticism, then it's the sort of thing you'll like.

updates

When I started this site, I don't believe there were any others like it focused largely on art in and around New England (blogs, I mean--Charles Giuliano and the Big, Red & Shiny crew were already out there.)  I didn't know of any, at least, and I was looking.  I used to joke that it was like Kierkegaard's joke about being called the greatest philosopher in Denmark--"I'm the only philosopher in Denmark."  That's long since changed, and good thing, too, as I'm barely able to keep this place going.  So to add two new links to the sidebar, Leslie K. Brown of the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, and The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, by freelance journalist Greg Cook.  So check them out.  Why, Greg's site even can boast of praise from a former local gallery:

I have to note that this blog is not self indulgent nor is the art criticism cloying or over wrought. Greg's reads are clean and honest.

And so articulate!  Not like the filth you find here.  So go, check them out.

of note

It's been too long since I've done any maintenance to the sidebar, which sorely needs it.  It's taken me much too long to add a link to Eva Lake's blog, where she continues to bring the smart writing and strong visual sense that made her old diary site one of my favorites.  Also new to the links is Hatchets and Skewers, by DC-based artist and critic Jeffry Cudlin.  If you've been paying attention to other art sites, you've probably seen both of these already, but it was past time for me to catch up, or at least begin to try.

signing off (for now)

Off to New York in the morning--thanks for all the suggestions below.  Back on the weekend, and who knows?  I may actually get motivated to finish a post.  That would be novel.  Until then, it's wandering the streets of New York just as the cold weather decides to finally hit.  Couldn't be better.

intermission

So some of you probably thought that the recent lack of posts followed by greater activity this week meant I was done moving, huh?  In truth, I'm just getting started.  And so we've now reached the moment where they cut the cord and I lose internet access for a time.  How long?  Who knows?  I'll be able to check email at the office, of course, but (looking pious) I never blog at work.  So I'll see you when I see you, alright now?

not much else to say but

I agree.  It's only natural that people drop out of doing this--while I've no plans to stop, I find it hard to picture myself still here in 10 years--but Todd's absence definitely is missed.  I had the pleasure of having dinner with him a few weeks ago when he was in town on business--and he's as terrific a guy as you'd imagine, for those readers who haven't encountered him--and I hope he doesn't mind me revealing that he tended to speak of his blog in the past tense, though he also at times indicated that he hadn't made a decision to completely abandon it.  With an intense, travel-filled job, a family, and the desire to have a life of his own, I'm sure it's hard to find the time to sit in front of a computer fiddling with HTML, but if he ever gets a chance, I hope we'll see more from him.  Not only better than most of us other bloggers, myself definitely included, but better than 99% of art writing out there, period.

as they say, "the man," and so forth

You know, Dan's been posting a bit at Iconoduel again lately.  Worth seeing, if you haven't already.

at the mfa

So after a few moments confusion--in retrospect, it might have been wiser for us to indicate how to recognize each other--I met up with Franklin of Artblog.net this morning at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  I'm happy to say that he's an engaging, relaxed guy, who I would have guessed to be seven or eight years younger than his actual age.  He seemed very happy with his move north; we'll see how he feels in January.  Anyway, we did stop by the Degas to Picasso--I'm having trouble not calling the show D2P, as much of a tool that would make me--and admired a few things, and laughed at more.  Then it was up to the newly opened Americans in Paris, 1860-1900, about which, more to come.  I will say this: although it covers an area well-known to New England viewers, there are yet some surprises in the show.  Some lesser known artists make strong cases for themselves, while more prominent figures are shown in different lights from what one might expect.  The show was previously seen in London, and reviewed then, favorably though not uncritically, here; the Globe, meanwhile, is now lukewarm.  In some instances perspective is everything, and I think that's part of what's at work here.  While the reception differ in New York?  Now that would be interesting.  But more on the topic soon, I think.

We also took in one of the current exhibitions in the Asian galleries, Tradition and Transformation: Japanese Art, 1860-1940.  I've been getting more interested over the past couple of years in the Japanese response to Western art and modernism, so this show was catnip.  The last gallery, as Franklin has said, is extraordinary.  Yet how can the Museum use as the online image for the show the blurred, utterly inadequate photograph of Tateishi Harumi's Clover--when it has a far superior image ready and waiting in its online database?  And do click to enlarge--you won't regret it.  I wonder if Alex Katz has seen this stuff?