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CRITICISM [1] |
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For some time now the pages of the Butlletí have expressed a concern with the necessary task of criticism: in January, Magali Arriola considered the responsibility of writing in art, and in March, Julià Guillamon reflected on the role of literary criticism. Convinced of its importance, and committed to making a first approach toward understanding what is happening with criticism and what is happening tocriticism, this and the forthcoming Butlletí are special issues devoted to… art criticism.
We begin with a text by Eduardo Pérez Soler addressing the critical situation of contemporary criticism in terms of the state of art, the institutions, the market… And the first part of a survey, also prepared by Eduardo Pérez Soler, in which, for the present, we have asked the leading and most regularly published critics in Catalonia to respond to the question ‘Does criticism exist today?’ This is an invitation to reflect on the loss of stable referents, relations with the communications media and the institutions and mediation with the public and, above all, to take up a position in relation to the state of art criticism today. The responses of those who accepted the challenge are printed here.
SURVEY: DOES CRITICISM EXIST TODAY?
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MERY CUESTA
Tending as I do to think of art criticism as a practice that is carried out in the print media, it seems to me that most of it is polarized in two postures. On the one hand, the criticism that is published in the generalist media often amounts to no more than a monotonous series of decaffeinated opinions and rehashed press releases with no critical positioning which, in addition, demonizes subjectivity. On the other hand, the criticism that appears in the specialized media, self-absorbed and affected, is frequently corseted in a codified language that has no interest in being intelligible to anyone outside the professional circle. (NB: there are always laudable if rare exceptions in both cases.)
To conclude —and to make the most of the occasion— I would like to note that I have recently frequented certain critical circles in sectors other than that of the visual arts and found there not the least sign of any resistance to the changeover of generations or any propensity to disparagement and haughtiness of the kind encountered in the realm of art criticism. We, too, have things to learn.
LUIS FRANCISCO PÉREZ
THE BLOOD IS MISSING
It seems to me that there is more speculative and functional mileage in asking what kind of criticism should be practiced in our city today than there is in wondering if ‘art criticism’ exists or not — a question that is in itself ‘old’, docile and modern avant la lettre… Let us be clear: the question would, in the best of cases, be perfectly suited to the ambiance of a Bohemian café in Baudelaire’s Paris (hence its noble and just modernité) and, in the worst of cases, there is no need to undertake any retrospective archaeology or prospective adventuring, since this desolation is that of the art criticism being carried on at the present moment in Barcelona, and let us include everybody here in this sad and boring bloodless battlefield. For such it is, and there lies the tragedy, the blood is missing, and a battle without blood can never be credible. But before anyone runs away with the wrong idea, I am not asking the art scene, with its ridiculous, trashy crusades, truces and routs, to turn itself into the blood-spattered set of some local gore production. No. It’s all much simpler and maybe also more complex than that. I am asking for blood in order to situate speculative and theoretical practice in relation to contemporary artistic production in its most appropriate scenario, that which is immersed in the essential question that so exercised Foucault’s thought in the last years of his life: ‘What is the nature of our present?’ Yes, we need more blood, in order for the much needed ‘new criticism’ to be, in its essence and its project, a critique of the aesthetic dimension of the revolutions (no capital lettters, and in the plural) and for that aesthetics to be coupled to the mutant conditions of life and artistic practices, and prepared to fight (it is important that certain words recover their nobility) for the always unconcluded project of a life in which each and every one of us is in charge of our own party and our own art.
JORDI FONT AGULLÓ
Clearly, art criticism today exists. It even enjoys a considerable presence in the communications media in comparison with other periods. However, what I think is important is to determine what kind of criticism ends up being hegemonic. In other words, if it really has a ‘critical function’, both in the sense of getting to the roots of the various mechanisms that operate in the art field, and in another —crucial— aspect such as its communicative dimension, and to some extent the pedagogical dimension, too. In general, the typology of the criticism that predominates in the communications media has very little to do with these premises. There tends to be an abundance of lightweight ‘writerly’ criticism very much in the line of the most recalcitrant postmodern praxis that usually confuses the reader and often loses sight of the object to be dealt with, wandering off in irrelevant digressions. All in all, a writing that is none too precise, lacking in rigour, at times innocuous, and tending toward the mere de-historicised and decontextualized presentation of artistic artefacts. Saving a few notable exceptions, It seems to me that art criticism in this country suffers from triviality, a debility that, back in the 1980s, was generally manifested as a penchant for the indigestibly cryptic, and that lingers on the present by means of a mutation that consists in the display of a fixation with what is often most anecdotic or has some relation to the most banal spectacularization. In short, the result of the combination of the puerile postulates of the supposedly freshest ‘emergent’ criticism and the mumbo-jumbo of a certain criticism of a neo-conservative cast is the continued presence in the field of art criticism of trite, humdrum approaches to the products of art that obscure the material processes that configure the world and art itself.
FREDERIC MONTORNÉS
The fact that there are platforms from which art criticism is exercised is a good symptom of its continuing survival. This does not tell us, however, whether it is better or worse that at any other time. Art criticism today seems to be more about informing than offering ‹positing, debating, discussing‹ new points of view on the themes addressed. Without forgetting the egocentrism of which it has often made such a show, art criticism today displays an especially servile attitude to the institutions, the communications media, the galleries, the artists and even the exhibition curators. While it is true that the task of criticism is not only to mediate between artistic proposals and the public, it is also true that its informed criteria should serve to encourage people to see with their own eyes what it is talking about and contrast their evaluations with those put forward by the critic. Only in this way will it take another step forward in this always sought-after dialogue between art and the public. There is nothing stable today. This being so, it is impossible for the judgements or the starting point of a critic to have that basis. It is in terms of the characteristics of the time that criticism evolves.
NEUS MIRÓ
The question as formulated inescapably invokes another question: the question of what we think criticism is. To put it another way, whether criticism exists or not depends on how we conceive of it.
Criticism is an exercise of writing that occupies a space in mediation, an in-between space, between the work and the public and between the institution and the public. As a result, the reading public is always its ultimate receiver, and the nature of the medium in which it appears will condition the form (the register) —without forgetting that every author has a voice— and the content of the text. Not to do so would be to ignore the reader: a newspaper is not the same as a specialist review or a magazine of general culture that includes a section on art practices.
Criticism can include appraisals, interpretations and value judgements on the work or the artistic practice considered in the text, but it must also provide certain contextual elements: those elements tangential to the production, presentation and perception of the work that facilitate its appreciation by the reader-public-visitor and are not necessarily supplied by the work itself. The frequent complaints from the art sector about the lack of interest in contemporary art ought to be a motive for self-critical reflection on the part of us all.
PILAR PARCERISAS
It is the eternal question that ends up receiving an affirmative response from the critic with a desire to survive. For all the diversity of methodologies that can be used to engage with contemporary art, the fact is that everyone has their own referents, their own sources, their own particular training, background and experience of art. The relations between criticism and the communications media are always delicate. Criticism is at the tail end of the culture supplements in a position of total inferiority to cultural industries such as the theatre, the cinema, music or literature. The space devoted to art in the communications media is tiny and, in general, pays poorly. The relations with the institution are cordial, but criticism still has no specific weight as far as the public institutions are concerned. There is a need to bring to bear the professionalism and the informed advice that art criticism can offer to the institutions. There has probably never been an art critic among the advisors to the institutions. In contrast, there is genuine public interest in art and in the opinions the critics. There are many more people than we might think who read —and look forward to— art criticism. In our context here, in the absence of art magazines, it still has a major role to play, something that the newspaper editors and the institutions do not always bear in mind.
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Survey done in collaboration with
Mireia Ferrer. Photographs: Consulta Mind the gap. |
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