Death of the Art Critic

The Guardian’s Adrian Searle has an interesting article on the uselessness of criticism and art critics today (including on Dave Hickey, Jerry Saltz, and Donald Duck). Nothing in this article touches on law, but being that Clancco does partake in online writing and criticism we felt the need to comment. Although Searle makes some interesting and on-point observations, we feel he neglects some other pertinent issues, such as the role played in the death of relevant (and interesting) criticism by the redundant and moribund theories still being kicked around universities and art schools. Perhaps if critics accessed other discourses more relevant to our times and dispensed with the laundry list of canonical writers, more people would not only read their criticism but actually “take them seriously.”

In general Searle has some good thoughts and comments with the exception of this Rodney King feel-good moment: “The fact that we can’t all agree on what is valuable (and why) keeps things interesting. It also keeps criticism alive.” One thing he doesn’t mention is the fact that no critic (as far as we know) has yet looked for an alternative to the obliteration of the critic and criticism. It’s not so much the market stupid, as it is the forces that helped to create the market of writing. After all, criticism itself is a market, and who better to blame than the borderless pomos who helped to create “American Studies Departments” and the proliferation and expansion of comp lit departments, to the extent that they will gladly provide any fuzzy caterpillar with a PhD based on a dissertation entitled, “The Barbie Doll, Pez Dispensers, and neo-Post-Transgender Colonialism: A Reconsideration of Kantian Categorical Imperatives.” Never mind that some of these soon-to-be “critics” are also receiving public funding to write article that only 200 people will read—in their whole lifetime. More of Searle’s words here.