Untitled

Critical Reflections
For some time now, the art critic has seemed a legitimate representative of
the art world. Like the artist, curator, gallery owner, and collector, when an
art critic shows up at an opening or some other art-world event, nobody
wonders, What’s he doing here That something should be written about art
is taken as self-evident. When works of art aren’t provided with a text—in
an accompanying pamphlet, catalog, art magazine, or elsewhere—they seem
to have been delivered into the world unprotected, lost and unclad. Images
without text are embarrassing, like a naked person in a public space. At the
very least they need a textual bikini in the form of an inscription with the
name of the artist and the title (in the worst case this can read “Untitled”).
Only the domestic intimacy of a private collection allows for the full nakedness
of a work of art.
The function of the art critic—perhaps “art commentator” would be a
better way of putting it—consists, it is thought, in preparing such protective
text-clothes for works of art. These are, from the start, texts not necessarily
written to be read. The art commentator’s role is entirely misconstrued if one
expects him to be clear and comprehensible. In fact, the more hermetic and
opaque a text, the better: Texts that are too see-through let works of art come
across naked. Of course, there are those whose transparency is so absolute
that the effect is especially opaque. Such texts provide the best protection, a
trick well known to every fashion designer. In any case, it would be naive for
anyone to try to read art commentary. Luckily, few in the art world have hit
upon this idea.
Thus, art commentary finds itself today in a confusing position, at once
indispensable and superfluous. Other than its sheer material presence, one
doesn’t really know what to expect of it or desire from it. This confusion is
rooted in the genealogy of contemporary criticism: The positioning of the
critic within the art world is anything but self-evident. As is generally known,
the figure of the art critic emerged at the end of the eighteenth and beginning
of the nineteenth century, alongside the gradual rise of a broad, democratic