Who Needs an Art Critic: Law and Art Criticism, Part II

Who Needs an Art Critic: Law and Art Criticism, Part II

Mamet continues to make insightful and on-point comparisons between John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush, and by foresight, a comparison of W. Bush and Obama (“Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson.”) Mamet questions his “hatred” for corporations, “the hatred of which, I found, was but a flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.” (This, incidentally, reminds me of the knee-jerk reactions on my Facebook page over the recent Supreme Court decision granting corporations free speech rights. The irony is not missed: people complaining about this “apocalyptic” decision as they type on Apple computers, Blackberrys, via Facebook while using web servers maintained by Microsoft.)  

any criticism worthy of not only being relevant and timely, but also unique and fresh? Let’s be honest. Many of us art world connoisseurs, when asked what we read for art criticism unapologetically respond with a rolling of the eyes. Complaints are followed with a disparaging comment or two about Artforum, Frieze, and October. So, what do we read for good art criticism? Or, perhaps the question is better framed, what constitutes good art criticism?

Last October, during a media law conference in London, the editor of a major newspaper proceeded to berate the New York Times. This time the critical attack came from The Guardian’s Editor-in-chief, Simon Kelner. Kelner stealthily and poignantly detailed why The Guardian had opted to follow The Huffington Post’s model (of hiring a wide and diverse range of writers) rather than that of the NY Times when it reassessed its enterprise, articulating that it is impossible to think that eight op-ed writers could ever know anything about everything that is going on around the world at any given moment. Kelner expressed his excitement for the confluence and amalgamation of voices, seeking instead multiple writers who could each write on one specific topic in both print and digital publications.  

Like many critical thinkers in this digital-cum-Twitter generation, I wonder what will happen to art criticism in an age of 140 characters, and in an age when bloggers have more impact than traditional media critics. You see, it’s not just about what you write and how long it is, it’s also about how you’re going to get my attention in 140 characters or less.  It’s also going to be about transparency and accountability. Bloggers, and traditional critics moving on to the blogosphere, don’t have the protection that traditional critics do.  

Take for instance Hal Foster and Artforum. I would be pleasantly surprised if any “right-wing” or conservative thinkers read this journal. If they do, what would be their most immediate response available to counter Foster’s? Write a letter to the editor, write a letter to Foster, writing their own article, their own book, organizing a conference? In the blogosphere, you have two main options: the comments section of the writer’s blog or your own blog.  

Additionally, it is now possible for political analysts, historians, economists, war historians, and legal scholars to make available your writings to a wider and more-informed public via the internet while simultaneously making available an avenue from which others may counter-attack. No longer will “critics,” art or otherwise, be able to get away with gross generalizations, naïve assumptions, and grandstanding without the possibility of facing embarrassing unveilings.  

There’s a reason people read Twitter and Facebook with much more gusto and engagement than they do the New York Times, Time Magazine, or any other news-oriented publication: with the former, readers are also writers, contributors, editors, copy-editors, fact-checkers, publishers, and distributors. They’re not passive consumers, they are aware that there are multitudes of sources who may not only know more about that specific subject matter, but more from a different and informed perspective, than any of the eight sedimented writers for the New York Times. In effect, this may be our “relational aesthetics” model as theorized by Bourriaud and Google’s very own William Patry. My recent Facebook experience countering uninformed and naive assumptions over the First Amendment is a perfect example, and an example of how law can invigorate an obscure, unintelligible, boring, and superfluous type of art criticism.

Tags: art criticism and law, Art Law, CAA chicago 2010, sergio munoz sarmiento