A few reasons why I don't interact with contemporary art criticism:
A lot of it sucks. To be more specific, a lot of it is self-serving. A lot of it has agenda of a White House Press Secretary, never badmouthing the regime. Some of it is hiding in the back pages of text-heavy egghead magazines. Some of it remains unread in the forewords of over-designed exhibition catalogs shrink wrapped on museum gift shop shelves. The rest of it exists in the audience-of-one land of blogville.
That refers to the formal branch.
The good kind is overheard waiting in line for the bathroom at openings. It's spontaneous and unsolicited. It's snarky, but good-natured. It's conversational, between friends.
Art pushes a lot of envelops. Art that engaged the audience, turning them into a community of participants, came into vogue in the
early nineties. Way before digital social networks. So if art makes a solid attempt at staying ahead of the curve, why are the apparatuses with which we digest and reflect on it so Victorian?
There are exceptions. Jerry Saltz (of NY Magazine) is funny, accessible, and relevant. His most
recent column provides an apropos critique of exhibition space— the imposing, expansive, anachronistic kind in which most art is still viewed. A lot of contemporary art is critical of previous movements, or self-critical. And we are certainly not want for publishing/conversation platforms.
Here's what I want:
For critics and gallery types to take off their black sweaters, roll up their Paul Smith sleeves, and give us some straight talk. Match the criticism to the audience, to the work. To stop taking the art speak lexicon for granted and using an appropriate frame for the conversation.
For museums to stop being so museumy, especially when exhibiting contemporary work. Some "art as reliquary" objects are appropriate in hush rooms protected by a rectangle of sandpaper tape on the floor, but others beg to be discussed, to be engaged. Audio tours are a joke. Who cares what the unoffensively British lady has to say? I want RFID museum plaques that let me passively engage a historical work, to learn about the collector, the artist, it's exhibition history, all information they already store in a database somewhere. What's the provenance? Where's the marginalia?
OR... to fix the audio tour. Invite the curator to take a walk through an exhibition with a critic or interviewer and record the conversation. Let me listen to an audio tour of discourse about the show. Let me hear the interviewer call bullshit on the curator. Give me the inside scoop. Why is the white cube so blackbox?
I'm pushing for this to be the topic of our next Junto. If I can convince anyone else that contemporary art criticism is relevant, that is. I want to call some bluff and create some room for constructive shit talk.
