Think or thwim

ArtForum, Sept, 1993 by Glenn O'Brien

I was in a hospital the other day and I saw a guy sitting in a wheel chair wearing a tuxedo. I said "What are you in for?" He said "I'm getting a vasectomy." I said "Why the tuxedo?" He said "I figured if I was gonna be impotent I should look impotent."

And that's why every art critic should own a tuxedo, aside, of course, from gala openings at MoMA and the Guggenheim and part-time waiter jobs.

But seriously, folks, art writing. ... No, seriously folks. Art writing is not what it used to be. I went to the psychiatrist the other day. He said "What's bothering you?" I said "Nobody listens to me." He said "What do you do for a living?" I said "I'm an art critic." He yelled "Next!"

I'm not even an art critic anymore. It wasn't that I couldn't afford it. It's certainly a lot cheaper hobby than golf. It's just that it's hard enough to get people to take you seriously these days. But seriously folks, when was the last time you read a good piece of art writing?

INTERMISSION

It's not all the fault of the writers. Many of them mean well. And writing about the arts does require a certain devotion and a considerable amount of sacrifice. Art critics are giving up the high pay that they would earn if they were writers for Seinfeld.

And that's just one reason art writers are mad. And because they're mad they write Stygian impenetrable prose because if they're not having any fun, why should you? Art writers are also mad because they don't have much good art to write about. Actually the fact that bad art rules should be a boon to art writers, but they don't understand that. This is not all their fault. It's their parents' fault, or the fault of the art dealers who raised them. This generation of art writers was raised to think "If you can't write something nice it's better not to write anything at all."

Art writers should take their cues from Robert Hughes. Just because you don't agree with him doesn't mean you can't learn something from the man. Art writing, at best, is a form of entertainment. So is teaching at its best. An amusing style doesn't detract from the substance of one's argument. Art writing is also its most amusing when it's on the attack. And only if art writing is amusing, only if it works as a piece of writing, is it worth snuffing a tree for.

Muhammed Ali said, "Writin is fightin'," and the best nonfiction writing often performs that function. The painter Norman Bluhm said: "If you're in love, you don't explain, you itemize. After all, the Song of Solomon reads like a grocery list. For myself I don't like to talk about what I'm for, I like to talk about what I'm against."

Sure art writing isn't what it should be, but neither is art. Most art writing today is apologia for art that can't stand on its own four feet. Most art writers write press releases. You could say that this is because of the depressed nature of the art market, but the fact that is that it goes back to the days of the '80s boom, the most kiss-ass period in the history of art criticism.

During the boom, reviews didn't matter. Good reviews didn't hurt. But they didn't make artists either. The big money winners of the '80s, generally, hit the big time without anointment from the critics. Dealers wielded whatever power the critics once had. But why? Why didn't anyone pay attention to the critics anymore?

What killed criticism was its parochialism. Art writing separated itself from writing. It circled the wagons into a closed system of self-referential language studed with fancy opaque buzzwords. I've been reified till I felt refried. Art criticism began to look like it was written by lawyers. It was written in a clubby language and this club was pre-dated. Its semiotic shoptalk sounds like bellbottoms look. And despite the seemingly political correct posture of the most flagrant practioners of this jargon. Collins and Milazzo for example; it was inherently elitist and obscurantist. It said considerably less than could be said in a similar volume of plain language, although with an infinitely more precious veneer. In short this sort of critical writing was a joke that didn't know it was funny.

Art writing should expand the audience for art, expand the understanding of art and empower powerful art. Art writing should be written for a big audience, not an inner circle. Generally, today, it is written not to be read at all, but to frame the pictures in the catalogue with important looking markings, texts so impenetrable the seem intelligently by default.

Art should be a catalyst for the imagination of the writer, not a cryptographic problem with a predetermined solution. The art critic should come up with something new, not just reworkings of trendy formulas imported from France.

What's the remedy? Art writers should be writers first and foremost, respecting the medium they employ. I might not agree with what Peter Schjeldhal writes, but at least I can read it. I might not worship the same geniuses that Rene Ricard worships, but at least I am amused by his elaborate rites and precious liturgy. And Gary Indiana, well I'd read a can label or street directions by him because he writes right.