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The Rules of the Game<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n Brought in by my poetry elder John Ashbery in 1961, I was interviewed and then hired by the editor of Art News, Thomas B. Hess, a famous critic of that time. The avuncular Mr. Hess offered two rules:<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n 1. Never write a review of artworks you have not actually seen.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Reviews were supposed to be published when the exhibitions were still up o readers could cross-check your descriptions. (Only newspapers manage that now.) This meant the Art News reviewer had to make studio visits. Or, if the art were by a dead artist or someone abroad, you had the dealer pull the canvases out of some rack in the back. In both cases there could be a switcheroo, but you were mostly covered.<\/span><\/p>\n I n<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font>ow think that some reviewers must have been caught not seeing the art, relying on photographs supplied by the gallery, if anything at all. Studio visits and\/or dealing with art dealers was a lot to ask for $4 a review.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n Reproductions were not appended to each entry, by the way. It was all definitely on the cheap. And there lingered over everything Harold Rosenberg’s hatred of color reproductions as misrepresentations of artworks. Better to have nothing at all. Did he foresee the MoMA Syndrome?<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In his diatribes, Rosenberg did not compensate for a lack of imagery by peppering his words with vivid descriptions. He did not even cite titles of particular paintings. Despite his passion, and insights that were closer to the art and the artists than Clement Greenberg’s formalist frames, one had the feeling you were thinking about art in some dark room — a very large dark room, but a dark room nonetheless. Is a dark room better than a brightly lit Greenbergian morgue?<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n If reading this, you feel you have slipped into a time warp, don’t worry. You actually have. Back in 1961, critics at Art News, which was pretty much the only game in town, were chosen from the latest crop of poets, not from graduate programs in art history or art “theory,” as became the pattern at places like Artforum, with dire consequences.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Poets Ashbery and Frank O’Hara had worked out, so why not try the next generation of poets, such as Carter Ratcliff, Peter Schjeldahl, David Shapiro and even long-haired John Perreault? And if Perreault, why not Vito Acconci? <\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n <\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n <\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/span>#2. Never write about your friends<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n <\/span><\/i> <\/p>\n Hess’ reason for urging his army of poets not to write about their friends — notice the assumption that poets would have artists as friends, which was likely then, but certainly not now — was that no matter how much you praise your friends, it will never be praise enough. Oh, that Tom Hess, he certainly knew artists.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The point is not that one should or should not write about friends. My point is this: Hadn’t Hess himself written about his buddies Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers, Barnett Newman, and Fairfield Porter?<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So in the spirit of Hess’s “good for the goose but not for the gander” advice, I offer some new rules for art critics, poets or not.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n And of course, in the sprit of Thomas Hess, I will break my own rules.<\/font> <\/font><\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/font><\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n <\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n <\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n Judith Bernstein: <\/b>Are You Running With Me Jesus? <\/i>(1967)<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span> <\/p>\n <\/span> <\/p>\n <\/span> <\/p>\n I Wrote the Rules Today<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/span><\/b> <\/p>\n <\/span><\/b> <\/font><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n #1. Never judge an exhibition by the title. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “The Last Newspaper” (New Museum to Jan. 9, 2011) is billed as “<\/font>A major exhibition inspired by the ways artists approach the news and respond to the stories and images that command the headlines.” If it is an exhibition about how artists have used newspapers in their art, it cannot in any way be about what the title says it is.<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n * * * <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
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