Dream Tate

ArtForum, Oct, 1995 by Richard Flood

NS: I'm dead!

RF: You're dead? You must in some way anticipate indulging them.

NS: Of course I do. I'm deeply involved in the gallery's acquisitions. All recommendations for acquisitions pass through me to the board; I try to take to the board only those works that I'm convinced by, works or artists that I feel strongly should be represented in the collection. On one level my responsibility and my commitment are to stay in touch with what's happening here and elsewhere, as far as I'm able, given that I have a whole host of other things to do. I have to try to see things and talk to people and just use my experience and intuition.

RF. Can you get to see things with any degree of ease or freedom?

NS: I can't trawl the studios in New York or even in London the way I used to. I get information through the curators, through artists I respect, and, rather rarely, through key magazines, because it's usually too late at that point. Principally by talking to people I respect, and then using my judgment.

RF: In the British press you have a critical mass of writers who seem to be running around opposing anything that even implies that the culture is changing. Traditionally the English press really seems to be the enemy of contemporary art. You have one magazine, Frieze, that shows a generation dealing with its own generation, and that's it. What are your hopes for British criticism and critics?

NS: Well, there are many more of them than there are in New York, in terms of their access to an outlet.

RF: London has a lot of newspapers; in New York it's really Roberta Smith and Michael Kimmelman at the Times, and Peter Schjeldahl in The Village Voice.

NS: Exactly. And I'm always struck in New York by the extent to which everyone hangs on two writers in one newspaper. At least here we have six or eight people, some of whom will contradict one another. My principal hope here is that some of the newspapers will begin to treat the visual arts the way they treat theater or music and will engage some younger writers to work alongside the people who have been writing for 10, 15, 20 years. It's a pretty soul-destroying task, always writing about shows that other people have conceived, being obliged to go through all the gallery shows irrespective of whether they're showing the Renaissance or contemporary art. Over time, not surprisingly, people become slightly jaundiced. There are a few, though, like Richard Cork and Richard Dorment, who remain generous, interested in the new, prepared to listen and look.

RF: The general lot of being an art writer is, I agree, awfully difficult. But what about the presumption that a critic can also be a curator, or will have curatorial acumen? Do you think the two necessarily go band in band?

NS: Not necessarily. There are critics, sometimes good critics, who are quite distant from artists, but a good curator almost inevitably has to be close to artists.

RF: I think this is a difficult moment for art publications. My own perception is that the ones that are doing the most interesting work are the ones that are depending increasingly less on the visual art as their major thrust but are trying to contextualize the visual arts within a larger culture.