Another round of heavy, chin-in-hand ruminations about the decline of the art critic, this time by the LAT. One thing I've noticed about this recent line of conversation is how regularly Arthur Danto is cited to explain the art critic's looming extinction. This article expands from Danto's belief that we've reached the end of art, that we live in a posthistorical age in which critical mediation is futile, a state Danto terms "objective pluralism" and describes as a state in which there are "no historically mandated directions for art to go in" (citation: Timothy Quigley). Familiar territory for the postmodernist, sure, though Danto unmasks the culprit who killed art (Andy Warhol, in the Gallery, with the Brillo Boxes).
Though I don't think I've seen Donald Kuspit cited in the same articles in which Danto's name is dropped, it's clear that, among his other works, Kuspit's recent article "The Contemporary and the Historical"—a cousin to Danto's thesis—would be fertile ground in this discussion, too.
Except, not really. Posthistoricity offers a plausible explanation as to why the critic no longer plays kingmaker—if, as Danto claims, "there are no historical possibilities truer than any other," the critic is denied large realms to bequeath to kings or schools through which succession can be traced. Fair enough—but the question isn't about how the critic came to lose his elegance (from Addison DeWitt to Jay Sherman, as the LAT puts it), it's how the critic came to lose his job.
Here's the skinny: Fewer newspapers and broad-circulation outlets are hiring art critics. Few newspapers have art critics on staff to begin with. The why of that is a market question that begs for a structural answer. Danto and Kuspit are invoked in this conversation to lay the blame with art, but that's still insular. I'm inclined to believe that film has lapped visual art in public life. I'm thinking especially of the smart, broad middle class of films that attract large audiences but also do, or purport to do, aesthetic work (e.g., Palindromes). Even relatively dumb movies have gotten smarter (e.g., Sideways). Film—not movies, but film—is the high culture common denominator, the cocktail party benchmark; newspapers and other outlets have followed suit.
Perhaps art critics were boxed out of the public sphere; they're also seeing competition in the art world in the form of art consultants, independent curators, and other new strategies. While I don't think much authority has been diverted to the blogs, for better or worse a good chunk of the art writing has moved in that direction. I'm a little less sanguine than Todd and Tyler about this—I think the deprofessionalization of the critic affects the continuity and archivability of art criticism—but it's definitely the case that there is a lot of strong writing about art out there to be found.
ALSO: On a side note, forgive the LAT for one oversight: Only in the last week or so did the newspaper make its art section freely available online to nonsubscribers. The fishwrap may not realize that the clever, new media-ish thing to do when citing heavily from András Szántó's instructive visual art critic survey for the Columbia University National Arts Journalism Program is to link the damned thing. Click (zipped PDF file). Some interesting (and dispiriting) data from the report: more women are visual art critics than men, but men hold positions of higher prestige and make more money; 3 percent of art critics identify Republican; 90 percent of art critics are white; the majority of art critics make the majority of their income by means other than art criticism (sigh). So not only is art criticism potentially becoming extinct, art critics turn out, in fact, to be dinosaurs.
Posted by Kriston at May 25, 2005 9:42 AMWhile I usually enjoy reading Danto's work I must disagree with his theories about the end of art. If you attempt DEFINE art, then, like Heisenberg's uncertainty principal ["The more precisely the POSITION of something is determined, the less precisely the MOMENTUM (future) is known"], you can't predict where it's going. Art is not dying or dead. It's redefined itself, as it always has. And always will. Art is a slippery fish.
I agree with you as to the causes of the supposed demise of the art critic and the acendancy of film as the premier medium for reflecting human culture. Other mediums have retained validity, but not their popularity. Like vocal languages change over periods of time, so do visual languages.These methods of communication always ride the wave of technology.
Posted by: Joseph Barbaccia at May 25, 2005 2:24 PMI guess that makes art the ultimate channel surfer.
Posted by: David at May 25, 2005 3:41 PMDanto himself continues to work as an art critic, doesn't he? I know that when he became emeritus at Columbia, he was writing criticism for The Nation.
Joseph, I don't know who you are so it's with some reluctance that I say this, but I think that if you object to Danto's theorizing on the grounds that "art is not dying or dead", then you've misunderstood him. He doesn't think art is moribund at all (quotation from After the End of Art, the first chapter to which is, IIRC, a reasonable laying-out of what he means by "end of art": "It was quite consistent with the end of the era of art, as [Hans] Belting and I understood it, that art should be extremely vigorous and show no sign whatever of internal exhaustion ... Neither of us was talking about the death of art..."). The end of art is more like the endlessness of art; whereas before you could define art (or so it appeared), now it's clear that you can't.
Posted by: ben wolfson at May 25, 2005 8:54 PMBen,
I don't know who I am either.
How about: "The end of definitions of art?"
Well now, if I can't be an artist, exactly what am I?
Posted by: Joseph Barbaccia at May 26, 2005 10:48 AMBut you can be an artist.
Posted by: ben wolfson at May 26, 2005 4:23 PMBen,
I'm not so sure anymore. I'd like to create another word for what I do. If I can't define art, (Which is OK with me.) That leaves the definition of what I do kind of up in the air. If I tried to define what I do I would have to say that I manifest art. Or I realize art. I actualize art? Art being a pure "artness" that is channeled through me only to be manifested in a not quite so pure form. I never think of the things I create as "art." calling them art objects is as far as I can go.
So where does this leave us for a definition of self? How about Art Manifestor? No. Art Manipulator? No. Art Facilitator? No.
I'm still stumped, but I'm getting closer.
Posted by: Joseph Barbaccia at May 27, 2005 8:44 AMWell, Danto tries to give a definition of art in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace and elsewhere. I don't think it works but he clearly doesn't think the project is doomed from the get-go. What he thinks is ruled out is any sort of developmental history of art. (I'm restricting myself to talking about Danto since I don't know anything.)
Posted by: ben wolfson at May 27, 2005 5:04 PMEdwin Dickinson once remarked that he wanted his tombstone to say "he was a painter in oils." That sounds good to me.
Posted by: Dick Puddings at May 27, 2005 10:01 PMAs I see it, the development of art is just a history of the development of human culture and technology as humanity struggles to manifest it's vision of the world. The question is; is there any pattern in this development? The kicker comes in when we pull back to view exactly WHO is deciphering the pattern. If it's a middle aged white Westerner we might see some bias. As the Talmud says: "We don't see things as they are; We see things as WE are." Defining art is like pinning a butterfly to a board. It immediately loses it's vibrancy and is dead.
As far as Dickinson goes, perhaps "a painter" IS all he was. (Though, I admire his work from a distance and believe he was being falsely modest when and if he made the statement).
Posted by: Joseph Barbaccia at May 29, 2005 8:57 AM