The Whitney Museum’s current Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue, soon to be abandoned for the new Renzo Piano space downtown. Photo: Gryffindor, via Wikimedia Commons.
As controversies are already abounding regarding the opening of the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney Museum (The most visible being John Yau‘s recent essay in the Brooklyn Rail, The Difference Between Jerry Saltz’s America and Mine), I have been thinking about art criticism and what it means to me as an artist and maker. I have no interest in Koons or in seeing the show, but responses to his work may at times present a narrative that is of interest. Now that’s a curious thing, when art with which I have no connection can create a conversation around it that can be compelling.
A passage I found in Rebecca Solnit‘s essay, “Woolf’s Darkness”, from her new collection, Men Explain Things to Me, addresses some of this.
Referring to her years as an art critic:
I used to joke that museums love artists the way that taxidermists love deer, and something of that desire to secure, to stabilize, to render certain and definite the open-ended, nebulous, and adventurous work of artists is present in many who work in that confinement sometimes called the art world.
The proclivity to “make certain what is uncertain, to know what is unknowable” is an ongoing challenge for any artist whose work is to dig deep into that which is uncertain and unknowable. “What escapes categorization can escape detection altogether,” says Solnit.
But there is also a kind of counter-criticism that actually expands the work of art, that opens up its meanings and its possibilities. Criticism of this kind can liberate a work of art and will engage in a conversation that keeps feeding the imagination. That is when criticism achieves a whole new level.
This is a kind of criticism that does not pit the critic against the text, does not seek authority. It seeks instead to travel with the work and its ideas…this is a kind of criticism that respects the essential mystery of a work of art, which is in part its beauty and its pleasure, both of which are irreducible and subjective. The worst criticism seeks to have the last word and leave the rest of us in silence: the best opens up an exchange that need never end.
That is how it feels to read the really good writers about art. I put John Yau in that category along with W. S. Di Piero, Lawrence Rinder, David Levi Strauss, Sianne Ngai, Dave Hickey, Michael Kimmelman, Sebastian Smee and Donald Kuspit. And of course my all time favorite writer about contemporary art—the great Carl Belz.
Wonderful: “The worst criticism seeks to have the last word and leave the rest of us in silence: the best opens up an exchange that need never end. “
I agree with Solnit’s more open-ended view of art criticism. I’m not familiar with all of the critics you mention above, but would certainly add John Russell, Clement Greenberg and Karen Wilkin to the list of critics I admire. Greenberg is a contentious figure today, but had a wonderful eye and championed some great artists.
Good ads to the list Diane. Thanks.
Deborah,
I very much agree with the feeling and idea in Solnit’s comment about the worst and best of criticism. I am not familiar with ANY of the critics, as you well know. I am, however, familiar with the tone which feels condescending in criticism of someone’s creations. Facility with words combined with a sharp tongue often sink the ship of creative genius – especially for new and tentative forays into art. Thank you for sharing that quote. It is worth keeping and thinking on!
Thanks Ann. There is something about someone speaking with utter authority with no room for discussion that sets me off, in the other direction…
The role of art critics so often runs parallel to the role of grammarians and codifiers of standard English (or French, whatever…). David Crystal calls them, prescriptivists of language, those who want to make some kind of order out the messy, evolving vivacity of art (or writing) & act as authorities.
The linguists whose work I most enjoy are those who are zealous about the living, changing aspect of language, curious about the threads that get us to new works…even though some of the creations are weak, ‘corrupt’ or flashes-in-the-pan. Because you never know what WILL stay, influence, make a lasting impression on culture/society/human beings. So the idea of “traveling with the work and its ideas” seems spot on. Critics being part of the society and part of the flux.
Of course, I have not read as much art criticism as you have–not much of Solnit, for example–but the critics I most admire are those who can analyze without pronouncing timeless judgments, the ones who make me say, “huh–interesting perspective!” and then I want to seek out the art and see for myself.
What an interesting analogy, one I have not thought of but I find very useful. Thanks as always for bringing the writer’s viewpoint on things that have deep significance to both of our metiers.