Dave Hickey plants the flag of judgment

Dave Hickey lists his ten favorite works of art in the new Believer magazine, says The Stranger's Jen Graves.

Everyone who admired the Monet poster above their fourth grade teacher's desk has a similar list in mind. I know I do, but I've never committed it to pixels. Honestly? I didn't know you could -- the whole idea seems unserious, irreverent in the wrong way. After all, a silly, Letterman-like top ten list makes a mockery out of hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of years of art history. It elevates a few arbitrary pieces over the sanctity of the whole. It abolishes respect for the timeline of achievement. It diminishes artistic practice and progress.

Which is why Dave Hickey kicks serious ass. Consider, for a moment, the critical and curatorial problem of the moment (a problem that inflicts other adjectives as well): The apparent passing of judgment -- that is the death of judgment, oh that it were the other kind! -- a widespread, systemwide acquiescence to mere popularity. Right now everyone wants to be invited to the right party, the right scene event, to be liked rather than respected. As a result, there's too much going along to get along.

This trend brings to mind two Peter Schjeldahl stories. One is from about 2002, when in a Brice Marden review (I think) Schjeldahl pined for the days when art lovers had a favorite abstract painter to which they were committed. You were a Kline guy, a Hassel Smith woman, and so on. Schjeldhal noted that this was no longer the case, that people now tend to line up by medium: He's a paintings curator, she's a fan of installation art, and so on. That trend has accelerated, leading to more validation of media and less judgment.

The second Schjeldahl story that comes to mind is a story about an experience. Somehow, about four years ago, I found myself across a Hollywood dinner table from Schjeldahl. When Dean Schjeldahl asked me to -- and I quote -- "Please pass the bread," I worried that I might do it wrong. (I spent the meal with my mouth shut and my hands busy funneling baked goods toward the distinguished ex-sportswriter from North Dakota.)

Something Schjeldahl said that night has stuck with me ever since: When discussing a minimalist gone south, Schjeldahl sniffed, "He is not an artist," and then asked for the butter. My dining companion and I nodded. The dean's speech was plain, it came with conviction, and it concluded just in time for him to discover that he needed the butter. It was as fair a place to begin a discussion of said artist as any. Where can I go to hear a conversation about Richard Prince started that same way?

Back to Dave Hickey. Top ten lists force judgment upon you. In some ways they're a pretty good exercise because they make you pick and choose. They force you to think about what you like, what you really, really like, and why. They force you away from the ever-so-safe 'This is what's important' to the much riskier, 'This is important but it doesn't touch me in an affecting way.' To commit to a list is to commit to judgment. (I'm guessing that they don't do this at SVA's much-advertised grad program in art criticism.) So I look forward to seeing what Hickey includes in his top ten. And I'm going to make my own. And I hope a few other people do too.

Update: Ronald Bladen's The X is not a hint. Of any kind.