Pardon the Interruption

Of course the great advantage to the blogosphere over print media is its boundlessness; and after reading the Art in America roundtable on art blogs by Peter Plagens with Regina Hackett, Tyler Green, Jeff Jahn, Roberta Fallon & Libby Rosof, and Edward Underscore, my one complaint—beyond the fact that the article isn't available online—is that Plagens's questionnaire really calls for a survey. Art bloggers can demonstrate the topics at hand by exploding some traditional boundaries of a print article.

So I'm going to answer Plagens's questions here, and then I'll kick this to a few bloggers I know will contribute smart answers. Any writers out there with blogs and opinions about art should give it a go. Forgive the navel-gazing, and apologies for the meme—very 2003 of me—but maybe this will help Plagens to understand. "In a sideways version of the time-honored Dewey-esque tradition of learning by doing, I decided to do a story on art blogs," he writes. We can help with that story.

Click below for questions and answers. In proper meme fashion I want to trouble a few select bloggers for their answers—Jen Bekman, fellow District writer Jeffry Cudlin, Global Warming Your Cold Heart, Hungry Hyaena, Paddy Johnson, JL, Arthur Whitman—but the list could go on and on and anyone who wants to take the time for a little self indulgence should give it a go.

What's the purpose of your blog?

It's a medium for writing about art, politics, and rhetoric. In the past I have done some original reporting here, although I tend to reserve that work for traditional media outlets these days. Once or twice I've published Q&As, panel writeups, that sort of thing. It's a decent journal for keeping track of things I've read, and blogs are one way for writers to keep up with friends and colleagues. There on the sidebar are links to recent articles I've published so I suppose my blog, like all writer's blogs, helps to promote my work.

It's an appropriate place for the odd news tidbit—for instance, the suggested attire on the invitation to the Corcoran Gallery of Art's annual ball is "natural glamour in black and white". Is "black tie" always couched in a euphemism? Note the British spelling. (I did not get an invitation.)

What are the boundaries of your blog?

The length and height of your monitor? I don't advertise artists or shows; I'm no cheerleader. I don't particularly think of myself as a blogger who is democratizing art though I know others who claim that mantle, and I'm sympathetic to that view. Peter Schjeldahl said something like, "If people don't like art, bully for them," saying he wouldn't do a dog-and-pony show to try to bring viewers (or readers) under the big tent.

On the other hand, promoting visual literacy—that's something that Roberta Smith talks about—sounds like a worthy goal, but I would hardly suggest that everything I write here serves that function. Some bloggers are very disciplined and write only about a single topic; I'm easily distracted and can't resist writing about politics, literature, and Texas football. I seek out journalism that is never concerned about going over my head. There's no reference to obscure for my blog, if it's a helpful one.

Tyler has cited Joy Garnett's NewsGrist blog [hyperlink added —ed.] as doing a great job of "placing art within a sociocultural and political context." What I see on NewsGrist is a magazinelike interspersing of short profiles, exhibition reviews, op-ed pieces on how other people are covering things, and Village Voice–like political takes. But what does Tyler's comment mean to you, and why are blogs in general better positioned than print to do what he describes?

Le race, milieu, et moment, n'est pas? Medium notwithstanding, it's the critic's goal to do this work.

Funny to me that here Plagens relates Garnett's blog back to print in all these ways, but it's important to consider that there are aspects of blogging that are unique to the medium. Newspapers have the same Web technology as bloggers now, and they've adopted some Web-based practices but few newspaper blogs resemble blogs by the grassroots.

Why can't blogs go further, to the point where there's hardly any discernible difference between artist and critic/commentator, blog and work of art?

I don't know if I understand what Plagens has in mind, but I don't I suppose there's anything preventing a blogger from doing what he envisions. Suggesting that all blogs might do something, though—sounds like herding cats.

What scope and degree of editorial control do you exercise over your blog?

Complete. Absolute unlimited power!

What about posting comments from readers, and what about anonymity?

I'll allow it. I might give someone hell who jumps into a thread to attack me or someone else from the veil of anonymity, but only if I'm cranky.

What's "trolling," and why don't some of you allow it?

Here I defer to Ben Wolfson, who has written widely on the art of trolling. Would that a troller were to come along with a proper troll, such a figure would be permitted, even welcomed. Alas, today's pale imitations are urged to peddle their pathetic wares some other place.

Is trolling really so easily identified and universally bad? Is having posters register a solution?

Again, see above. But comment registration isn't a solution for much anything, especially in a low-rent (i.e., low-traffic) niche of the blogosphere like art blogs.

What about liability coverage?

Like if I fall and break my rib? I don't have any. With all due respect asking a blogger whether he has liability coverage for his content betrays a Web-ignorant mentality.

What's the economic model of your blog?

There isn't one although I do get enough clickthroughs from the Amazon widgets there to occasionally buy a new paperback. It's still an open question of how online publications with far larger audiences can make money, so I'm not surprised that a model hasn't emerged specifically among art blogs. There might be money and readership enough to sustain a nationally focused macro-blog—something that would in some ways mime and other ways sidestep the art glossies—but so far no model has yet to emerge. It's something all of us are thinking about, though.

How do you see your blog's relation to the established print art media?

Blogs are or can be part of the art media. They stand to note errors and injustices, expand coverage, and praise good work; bloggers can perform meta analyses that print media rarely will. Of course, the media-hound-dog role is an especially cherished, privileged position: It's the reason blogs came up in the first place.

Tyler and Regina, what's the relationship between your blogging and your work in the print media?

I'll hazard an answer on this one, too. The blog is one more pocket—some things I think to write, I'll tuck into an article, whereas other things wind up on the blog. It's hard for me to establish a narrative the way that, say, Tyler Green has, because I end up moving the little ball under all these shells and that's hard to follow. Over time I think this blog will find a bit more structure and narrative.

How do you attract readers/posters other than by word of mouth?

It helps to have friends and colleagues whose blogs are more prominent than mine—that accounts for a lot of eyeballs. Readers who stick around, though, stay for shared interests, I'd guess, and I wouldn't know how to reach those people except by word of mouth.

In general, is blog art criticism more open and liberal, and print criticism more closed and conservative?

Not strictly speaking, no. I think it rarely lines up so neatly as "liberal" and "conservative" or "open" and "closed"—more like "discriminating" and, well, "not."
Here in the District, bloggers and others in the arts community clamor for more coverage, no matter the coverage. I'd rather see (and write) more expansive consideration of shows and artists and issues that merit the coverage.

Some people say that there's a dearth of art criticism at length on blogs. Is this true? If so, does it have more to do with reading on a computer in general, or with art criticism in particular?

It has nothing to do with reader on a computer. I subscribe to only a few romantic notions about print media—I like my Sunday Times in print—but my brother, who's seven years younger, thinks that's totally ridiculous.

I agree that there's a dearth of longer-form art criticism on blogs. I can't actually afford to write things on my blog that I could get paid to write, but if I were in a position to I'd love to use the blog to publish some off-beat arts critical ideas. JL at Modern Kicks writes long-form on his blog and we're all the better for it. Frankly, those with the knowledge to write art criticism just aren't inclined to write blogs. We're talking about a small number of people total.

Art magazines come out once a month. Newspaper art reviews usually appear once a week. Blogs appear more or less daily, and sometimes have updates by the hour. Do you think that the faster pace of blogs will start to affect the pace of art-making.

No. I just don't see why bloggers updating more frequently would affect practice any more than Artforum changing its print stock or the Times switching from Times to Georgia might. To say that this sphere of commentary has that sort of reach risks hubris.

Tyler just said that there's more good art being made by more artists in more places than at any time in history. Is this true? And if so, what's the reason?

In the West, possibly. Artists, designers, and media figures make up only a small percentage of the creative class but that group is expanding or has expanded over this generation. I'm not sure Tyler's making the sort of claim that can be proven out entirely, but for restricted fields of comparison I'd guess that he's right.

Do blogs help correct the geographical bias in print art criticism, i.e., the tendency to think that most of the important stuff happens in New York or Los Angeles, and the difficulty of art outside those places to get national attention?

Yes—for people living outside New York and Los Angeles.

One index of a city's gravity as an art center is young artists—perhaps recent MFAs—from elsewhere coming to set up shop. Is that happening in Philadelphia and Portland?

Erin Killian wrote a piece in the spring for the Washington Business Journal about city planners who were brainstorming ways to make the District a larger destination for artists than it is today. Here's a crucial item from the report: "Closer to home, Arlington, Fairfax and Montgomery counties each fly the 'creative economy' banner, promoting their areas' abilities to attract and retain all types of creative professionals." Jessica Dawson glanced on these issues in the Washington Post in her report on arts in Bethesda, Maryland.

It can't be overstated the degree to which municipal divides in the region frustrate the city's art scene. There are two states suburban to the metropolitan center of Washington, D.C., both of which hope to skim the profits generated by the urban creative class. There's only so much pie in the greater metropolitan region, and suburban areas like Arlingon, even exurban places like Reston, establish art centers that each take slices from the whole. There hasn't been a viable creative downtown in D.C. and to the extent one exists, it is retarded by the drag, the creative "sprawl," of outlying arts nonprofits. This city can't support the number of arts nonprofits that exist here. Do es the city need a Wpa, a Grace, and an Mpa? To some extent these organizations' programming is redundant—the defining difference is geographical base, and between these there's a difference of dozens of miles at most. It would certainly be better for the District if there were fewer of these nonprofits and those that existed put on better, bigger-profile, and more differentiated shows.

Is there any constructively negative edge to your blogging and, if so, what is it?

This is probably a question to ask the people and institutions I've taken on. I don't think I ever write anything snarky or angry that doesn't implicitly or explicitly suggest how to shape up.

Let's throw something back into the mix: naked human ambition. Unknown bloggers want to be little bloggers; little bloggers want to be bigger bloggers; and bigger bloggers want to be called, as is Tyler's Modern Art Notes, "the most influential of all the visual-arts blogs" by the Wall Street Journal.

I like Green's answer here: "Readers are excellent at distinguishing the Anchor Steam beer from the generic Natural Light." If the question is what do I want to be when I grow up, it's a hybrid journalist, the sort that new media is inoculating: writing investigative journalism, criticism, and meta-media ombudsman–type blogging.

Where will your blog be in three to five years?

One plank in my formidable media arsenal? The last embers of my burned-out career? If I'm still doing it I don't suspect it will be so different. I hope that in three to five years the visual template has changed once or twice.