The Trouble with Art Criticism

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Permalink Reply by Baz Jan Van de Rijke on December 19, 2011 at 10:30

There seems to be two (related) issues here. One is about art criticism’s capacity to scrutinise art and the other is about the role of the art press in scrutinising the art system. And can either function really be performed properly when art magazines are paid for by advertising from commercial galleries? Or does the structural set-up of the art system mean that the art press exists simply to create value for a $15-billion industry?

 

I’m aware of the Peckham Hotel exhibition you mentioned by art collective psychoanalYSL, which pointed to the second of these issues. This show was a thinly-veiled satire on the implosion of a prominent London commercial gallery which has lost at least seven artists in the last few months. If half the clients had left a major advertising agency or half the bands had left a big record label, I’m sure it would be investigated by the trade/industry press. But why does this go without a single mention in the art press? Of course with this particular gallery there might be legal reasons why the rumours of hedonistic impropriety and unpaid artists can’t be reported as fact (and this should be investigated properly) but not even the names of the well-known artists who have recently left the gallery have been published anywhere – Steven Claydon, David Noonan, Michael Baur, Carter, Alastair Mackinven, Juliette Blightman and probably others.

 

This particular gallery has been quickly taking on new artists and there could be terrible consequences for these artists - like lambs to the slaughter - if they don’t know the potential trouble they’re getting into. So why doesn’t the art press investigate this? Looking at the link you posted, it seems the collective psychoanalYSL have also done shows about art's fetishisation of Jacques Ranciere and about the monetization of activism (in relation to the festival of protest surrounding Ai Wei Wei's detention). Much like the collective BANK used to do in the nineties, at least psychoanalYSL are playing their part in holding the art system to account through satire. But shouldn’t it be the art press doing this through proper journalism?

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Permalink Reply by Bradley Manning on December 22, 2011 at 3:44

He who pays the piper usually chooses bland rubbish to keep everybody happy and make sure the rent is paid…

 

Several points spring to mind:

 

I agree with some of what you say, but not much, it was an observation in the 1990's that the only art critic with balls was Brian Sewell, sad but true.  What about Ben Lewis in the noughties, he tried to be critical and got dumped from the Evening Standard (he now writes for Prospect, which hardly has a hard on for getting arsey with the art world).

 

You placed an ad for the ICA in your text… Would the ICA ever really host a critical discussion on anything? I mean if they step out of line they will have to say sorry to the ACE (which BTW sucks massive balls).  Here the problem is a lack of public money in art, or rather there is NO way for central government money to be spent in London on art via the elected mayor, it all comes from central government, unlike the 80's and the GLC which had a massive arts budget for diverse projects and sometimes (OMG) critical left-wing groups got the dosh.

 

Our culture is moving more and more into the private sector.  The private sector hates criticism like it's AIDS

 

Proper journalism isn't even been practiced by the broad-sheets anymore, it's too expensive let alone the gutter press (art world mags) The 2 recent big 'investigative' stories were the NoW phone taps and the MP's nicking public money, both were down to information received as the boys in blue say.  The last big investigative set-up was the Sunday Times Insight team (this was broken up saving News Corp nearly half a million quid), but these teams are very expensive to run, and nobody does it anymore.  Even TV journalism resort to asking the public to email in with 'your stories,' because margins are too tight to pay people decent money for 'proper' journalism. Let alone the art press. Are you seriously asking Bickers/Higgie/Fox to set up teams of private detectives to spy on mentally ill gallerists? Or to send, say, Peter Suchin down to Bethnal Green to ask some difficult questions?  I would seriously love to read that copy…

 

Were critics seen as gatekeepers?  If one looks back to Ruskin, one sees the same old network at work, all pals together agreeing on what was in and what was out, what 'good' painting was and what it wasn't.  He like all so-called critics was only feeding an audience what they wanted, which was and is overseen by the editors of the publications.  In short journalists write for the editor not the reader.  Ad sales are the God to which all must obey and humbly serve.

 

I remember Simon Ford's text from the old days in AM, even then he got his copy butchered, in one pre-press text the phase describing the art world as like a Pro-Am golf match was cut as it was thought to be just too risky and offensively true…

 

As for the web, there's little difference, well the riskier elements are usually placed here, so the editors can gang up and defend their writers (this happened when someone dared to suggest that Adrian Searle was less than up to the job a few years back, Dan and Amanda weighed into save his sorry ass from getting a beating).  The writer tries to make friends with the editors so they can graduate from web to print.

 

And look at Cathedral of Shit, it died, rumored, to be squashed because it got too big for its converse.

  

The old joke about Frieze was that if you wanted a review, you had to take out a full-page ad for decent copy.  Today the art world press only type over press releases, I mean look at this:

 

a) “The figures have hollow eyes, so the portal to the individual, to a personal psychology, is sealed off. Upritchard has set a stage for archetypes. The iconic martyr staggers across the landscape of 'Echo Cabinet', and 'Breath' is a kind of psychedelic Jesus, in character with beard and prosaic expression.” 

 

b) “The eeriness of the work belies its political urgency. If the countercultural movements of the 1960s sought to liberate the collective as well as the individual soul, to give social meaning to the notion of losing oneself, now a nihilistic darkness prevails. Such a darkness is evident in these figures’ inward-looking eyes.”

 

Without checking on the net, can you say which one of these texts is by Zoe Pilger (who was btw the winner of the Frieze Writer’s Prize 2011) and which one is the PR from the Frances Upritchard show at Kate Macgary (Sept/Oct 2011) show?

 

OK, so the art press (art mags as well as the broad-sheets) doesn’t scrutinize anything, I mean has anyone seen the dross at the Whitechapel - the Wilhelm Sasnal show?  The WC should be ashamed, and when you read the reviews the critics are queuing up to give it 4 or 5 stars and say things like, "Sasnal's Whitechapel exhibition is a rich and varied experience" (Searle, Guardian 18/10/11) The independent (5 stars) and Telegraph (4 stars) all basically say the same …WTf, are these idiots, idiots?  This show was so bad I wanted to stick a brush up my arse and paint little brown stars on the walls and call them 'arsehole - self portraits' …

 

So the Peckham massive - psychoanalYSL and the Peckham Hotel. 

 

The idea that the art press would have ago at (investigate) Hotel gallery for being inept or doing what it seems many galleries and gallerists have done in the past  (and will do again and again) is wishful thinking (I like the Billy Bob Thornton joke in Bad Santa, great movie btw, where he says to a child wanting a Christmas wish to come true, ‘wish into one hand and shit in the other, see which fills up first).  I mean what’s to know?  Those guys have failed to run a business with any much integrity; they have lost their friends, lost the money and lost the love. Really it’s a tale of trust broken and hubris run riot, this isn’t news. I can’t recall any such texts ever being commissioned.  Why?  Don’t shit where you eat springs to mind.  It’s not in the interests of anyone who runs the shows, mags, and the money…  It would seem that the Peckham Hotel show was a way for the artists to try to workout their own problems with the art world and what this is about is really saying it’s not fair that we don’t have our hands on the right levers of capital transfer.  What I mean here is that the 3 artists who made the show can claim to have a handle on the human capital (labour, culture and intelligence), and some grip on the manufacture/structural knobs, but the financial buttons are in a different and protected room.  For what it’s worth the show was actually pretty good, funny, sexy and quick.  But not like Bank, more like Nang gallery actually (web-search NANG GALLERY, check out the myspace and Saatchi sites, ignore the stupid Andrew Hunt review on Frieze, or actually read it for an example of what I’ve been ranting on about i.e. write sucks off editor shock horror).

 

Baz Jan Van de Rijke goes onto say “psychoanalYSL are playing their part in holding the art system to account”.  Well are they?  If they were going to hold this system to account surely they should start with themselves, as they are clearly part of the system.  They need to turn the weapon through 180 degrees and ask themselves if they feel lucky punk, well do ya?  Are you willing to attack your own ideas, your own desires?  Surely this is where the real enemy lurks?  Isn’t it ‘in there’ (or in here), that the source of the problem of reproduction lurks?  Picking on DF is just too easy, and as for the statement “This particular gallery has been quickly taking on new artists and there could be terrible consequences for these artists - like lambs to the slaughter”, by far the best advise is to understand that all galleries are thieves and liars.  That the artists are the ones who are the exploitable is purely because they are so desperate for shows/fame/money etc.  So many ‘young’ artists popping out from the art schools believe in some really demented lies.  Why should you have shows, Why should you have a CV?, Why should you have a gallery? Who says so? Your mum?

 

And the Peckham Hotel.  A bad mix of Berlin squat scene meets Disney meets proto rightwing kids on holiday.  Really it seemed like all the wrong moves had come into play at the same time. Reminds me of a Rebel track - 'Why must all you whit eEuropeans turn the world into a museum?" -  I thought the point was to reject your parents, not serve up their diabolical recipes for ones own reproductive fantasy saga. South is the new East which was the new West… Notting Hill, Dalston, Peckam, all I will say is thank God you missed out Camden on your vicious circle of recertification.

And one last point, look at this web page, all those ads by those mega corp scum, see it’s all around you… Oh dear, I hear the moderator making an Iphone call to the editor as I lie in my bunk chillaxing and chuckling and wondering when the next corporate attack will come and shit on my idea of freedom…

 

Bradley Manning proudly lives in Camden, London, and apologies for any errors in the text, it’s 3:54:51 a.m., I’m tired and I’m not a writer…

 

And I  wish I were represented by FUMF gallery, not that it exists, yet.

Regards,

Brad.

 

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Permalink Reply by ABEL on February 21, 2012 at 7:16

Constructive criticism no longer exists because the so called critics are too scared to tell the truth.

If a piece of artwork is bad nobody has the courage to say so because the truth might offend.

Its a case of "the emporers new clothes".

This is the reason why so much garbage is showcased!

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