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Critical Reflections
artistic revolutions, movements, and countermovements, the public in this
century has finally come around to the position that a negative review is no
different from a positive one. What matters in a review is which artists are
mentioned where and how long they are discussed. Everything else is everything
else.
As a reaction to this situation, a bitter, disappointed, nihilistic tone
pervades the art criticism of today, which clearly ruins its style. This is a
shame, because the art system is still not such a bad place for a writer. It’s
true that most of these texts don’t get read—but for this very reason one can,
in principle, write whatever one wants. Under the pretext of opening up the
different contexts of a work of art, the most diverse theories, intellectual takes,
rhetorical strategies, stylistic props, scholarly knowledge, personal stories, and
examples from all walks of life can be combined in the same text at will—in
a way not possible in the two other areas open to writers in our culture, the
academy and the mass media. Almost nowhere else does the pure textuality
of the text show itself so clearly as in art criticism. The art system protects
the writer as much from the demand that he convey some kind of “knowledge”
to the masses of students as it does from the competition for readers
among those covering the O.J. Simpson trial. The public within the art world
is relatively small: the pressure of a broad public forum is missing. Therefore,
the text need not meet with the concurrence of this public. Of course, fashion
does emerge as a consideration—sometimes one should sense authenticity in
an artwork, at other times perceive that there is no authenticity, sometimes
emphasize political relevance, at other times slip into private obsessions—but
not a strict one. There are always those who don’t like the prevailing fashion
because they liked an earlier one, or because they’re hoping for the next,
or both.
But above all, the art critic cannot err. Of course, the critic comes under
repeated accusation of having misjudged or misinterpreted a particular art
form. But this reproach is unfounded. A biologist can err, for instance, if he
describes an alligator as being other than an alligator is, because alligators
don’t read critical texts and therefore their behavior is not influenced by them.
The artist, in contrast, can adapt his work to the judgment and theoretical
approach of the critic. When a gap arises between the work of the artist and
the judgment of the critic, one cannot necessarily say that the critic misjudged
the artist. Maybe the artist misread the critic But that’s not so bad, either:
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