Responding to Peter Plagens

I think one of the most masturbatory discussions in the art world is about whether art criticism is dead. (Translation: Is anyone reading me?)

In this month's Art in America, former Newsweek critic Peter Plagens broadens that discussion by looking at what's up in the newspaper and magazine worlds. Most of his analysis seemed pretty in-touch, but I respectfully disagree with him on this paragraph:

"Exceptions [to reader disinterest in art critics] exist -- as with the lead critics for a few of the major dailies -- but they don't abound. More and more 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 on a MoMA retrospective. Many art writers have either added unpaid blogging to their activities or been squeezed into it from want of other, traditional outlets -- for which many bloggers don't have enough writerly inclination or discipline, anyway. Each of those art bloggers has a following of fans and other bloggers, and each of those bloggers has... and so on. A growing form of art criticism consists of posting links to other people's criticism, which consists of posting links... and so on."

Comparing a blog -- which is a medium -- to art criticism -- which is a writerly, often journalistic format -- is like comparing film to a Henny Youngman one-liner. Some blogs claim to be repositories of criticism, many make no such pretense.

And to the extent that critics such as Kimmelman have lost their audiences, they have only themselves to blame. (Plagens' choice of Kimmelman is odd -- when it comes to retros Kimmelman has nearly completely ditched "considered judgment" for mini-biography, usually hagiography. He is not so much the NYT's 'chief art critic' as the NYT's chief art-features writer.)

Why have bloggers found an audience -- and a growing one at that? Bloggers are writerly entrepeneurs. Instead of expecting an audience to come to us in the musty art magazines, we work to earn readers, to build audiences, to be a writerly 'brand.' Many bloggers, myself included, have consciously rejected the 'traditional' art criticism model because it's confining and appropriate only for dino-media.

And on MAN: Snark is about two percent of what I do here, and most of the snark here is short-hand for years-old, oft-repeated positions (such as virtually anything I type about Malcolm Rogers). I'd like to think that there's plenty of art criticism on MAN, a lot of considered judgment, plenty of only-on-MAN news, information, and hopefully some fresh ways of thinking about art and about issues in the art world. If the site isn't that, I'll have to work harder to get it there.