The new grass roots: in which five bloggers, based in Seattle, Philadelphia, Portland, Washington, D.C., and New York, provide an inside look at the growing presence of art writing online

Art in America, Nov, 2007 by Peter Plagens

When I wrote "Contemporary Art, Uncovered," about the decline in visual arts coverage in the popular press [see A.i.A., Feb. '07], I made an offhand remark about blogs that said, "mere people in the audience for contemporary art would rather read Tyler Green snark somebody in his blog, Modern Art Notes, than ponder the considered judgment of Michael Kimmelman [in the New York Times] on a MOMA retrospective. "Although it wasn't my intent to diss Mr Green (indeed, I share the preference for sharking over considered judgment), I was roasted in the art blogosphere. Which got me to thinking: how much do I--who merely peeks semi-regularly at two or three art blogs--really know about them? In a sideways version of the time-honored Deweyesque tradition of learning by doing, I decided to do a story on art blogs. But almost immediately, the standard format of a "through-written" story seemed beside the point. If anything characterizes blogs, it's that they speak--and answer back--for themselves.

There are dozens of art blogs out there--perhaps hundreds, depending on how loose your definition is. They range from merely more-frequent-than-usual opinion columns attached to commercial print publications, through virtual exhibitions and endless debates about art theory, to on-screen kaffeeklatches for the naive undergraduate. Sometimes it's hard to tell where hard-core art publishing leaves off and blogging begins. Walter Robinson, editor of the most conspicuous online art magazine, the price-tracking and marketing services site artnet.com says, "I sometimes joke that we're a blog disguised as an international art magazine." I asked the proprietors of five disparate blogs to participate in a roundtable discussion about the vicissitudes of blogging. It was conducted via e-mail, with everybody privy to everybody else's responses and to ray editing their words into a story of manageable length. The participants are:

Regina Hackett, Art to Go, blog.seattlepi. nwsource.com/art, an extension of Hackett's notable art criticism for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Her blog is less than a year old. She posts five to 10 times per week, and garnered 18,000 hits in the most recent monthly tabulation.

Jeff Jahn, PORT, www.portlandart.net, the closest thing to the virtues (paid critics, office help, etc.) of a print art magazine on the Internet and dedicated, mostly, to covering art in Portland, Ore. Jahn launched PORT in 2005 and recorded 65,000 hits in August ("a dead month when the art schools aren't in session and people are at their beach houses, "he says). New material appears daily.

Tyler Green, Modern Art Notes, www.artsjournal.com/man, a peripatetic op-ed blog out of Washington, D.C. Green is an almost manic blogger who's been posting up to four times daily on weekdays since he began his blog in 2001. His monthly hits approach 90,000.

Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof, artblog, fallon androsof.blogspot.com, an all-purpose blog (news, notes, reviews, feedback) that covers Philadelphia first, but branches out when the occasion demands. Fallon and Rosof post new material approximately three times every two days. They started artblog in 2003; it registers about 20,000 hits every month. Fallon and Rosof have also gone deep enough into cyberanalysis of their blog to discover that the average hitter slays with their site for six minutes or so. In bloggerland, that's considered a pretty long time.

Edward Winkleman, edward_winkleman, edwardwinkleman.blogspot.com, a New York art dealer's blog. Like a good, orderly businessman, Winkleman posts once a day Monday through Friday, and his routine earns him about 30,000 hits a month. Winkleman, a former political blogger, started his eponymous site in 2005.

What's the purpose of your blog?

Regina Hackett: I've been the art critic at a mainstream newspaper in Seattle, the Post-Intelligencer, for roughly two decades. Less than a year ago, my editor asked me if I wanted a blog. I said yes because I want to be more optimistic than Matthew Arnold, who said at the end of the Victorian Age that he was "wandering between worlds; one dead, the other powerless to be born." In a blog, instead of the old critical monologue, there's the potential for real dialogue with an art audience. The print versions of newspapers can't offer that, and neither can art magazines. Eventually, online criticism is going to bury anything in print, from newspapers and magazines to books, because of its interactive and transparent qualities.

Jeff Jahn: PORT serves a niche audience of art aficionados. Because of a massive influx of artists, Portland's scene demanded more informed and in-depth criticism. We are insiders to the scene, not spectators like some journalists are, so we don't get fazed by the money or ideas that get flashed around. We began with four staff writers and as a result Tyler dubbed us a "macro blog." After all, Portland has a caffeinated reputation for tech, design and consumption of words to uphold.

Tyler Green: The purpose of Modern Art Notes is to write critically about art and art institutions, to break news when possible, to fill in the gaps in the arts media landscape, and to have some fun while doing it. For example, I think the art market--in particular the auction market--is over-covered and that museum acquisitions are under-covered. So I write about museum acquisitions, big and small. I originally thought MAN would be a place where I typed about what I was seeing and thinking art-wise, and that my chums and I would then discuss the contents over drinks. I wrote that no art critic besides the Washington Post's Blake Gopnik had, of late, written as much. A day later I received an e-mail saying something like, "Check again," from Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight. It was my first realization that someone other than my drinking buddies was reading.