Untitled

Critical Reflections
public. At that time, he was certainly not regarded as a representative of the
art world but strictly as an outside observer whose function was to judge and
criticize works of art in the name of the public exactly as would any other
well-educated observer with the time and literary facility: Good taste was seen
as the expression of an aesthetic “common sense.” The art critic’s judgment
should be incorruptible, that is, bear no obligation to the artist. For a critic
to give up his distance meant being corrupted by the art world and neglecting
his professional responsibilities: This demand for disinterested art criticism
in the name of the public sphere is the assertion of Kant’s third critique, the
first truly important aesthetic treatise of modernity.
The judicial ideal, however, was betrayed by the art criticism of the
historical avant-garde. The art of the avant-garde consciously withdrew itself
from the judgment of the public. It did not address the public as it was but
instead spoke to a new humanity as it should—or at least could—be. The art
of the avant-garde presupposed a different, new humanity for its reception—one
that would be able to grasp the hidden meaning of pure color and
form (Kandinsky), to subject its imagination and even its daily life to the
strict laws of geometry (Malevich, Mondrian, the Constructivists, Bauhaus),
to recognize a urinal as a work of art (Duchamp). The avant-garde thus
introduced a rupture in society not reducible to any previously existing social
differences.
The new, artificial difference is the true artwork of the avant-garde.
Now it is not the observer who judges the artwork, but the artwork that
judges—and often condemns—its public. This strategy has often been called
elitist, but it suggests an elite equally open to anyone insofar as it excludes
everyone to the same degree. To be chosen doesn’t automatically mean dominance,
or even mastery. Every individual is free to place himself, against the
rest of the public, on the side of the artwork—to number himself among
those constituting the new humanity. Several art critics of the historical avantgarde
did just that. In place of the critic in the name of society arose social
critique in the name of art: The artwork doesn’t form the object of judgment
but is instead taken as the point of departure for a critique aimed at society
and the world.
The art critic of today inherited the older public office along with the
avant-garde betrayal of this office. The paradoxical task of judging art in
the name of the public while criticizing society in the name of art opens a