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CRITICISM [i 2] |
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We present the second part of the special
double issue devoted to criticism, thus completing the survey conducted
in conjunction with Eduardo Pérez Soler in which the leading
most regularly published art critics in Catalonia replied to the
question ‘Does criticism exist today?’ — an opportunity
to clarify their positions with regard to the current state of
criticism. We would like to thank all those who agreed to take
part, and conclude this first dossier devoted to criticism with
a short text that attempts to draw a few conclusions.
CRITICAL THOUGHT: A PLEONASM
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DAVID G.
TORRES
It is difficult to draw conclusions from a short survey on the state of criticism
such as which have presented in these last two issues of the Butlletí,
an enforced survey in which the question does not seem to have been very well
received. Of course, that displeasure may simply bear witness to the healthy
state of criticism — a criticism that seeks to be critical even of its
own assertions. In the light of this, the question has clearly been well understood.
All in all it has given rise to some vehement statements of faith, and that was
precisely the intention: to provide a little space in which, however briefly,
to express a personal position and try to identify some of the crucial issues
in art criticism today. Hence the apparently ingenuous question ‘Does criticism
exist today?’ After all, portraying oneself and being portrayed may be
ingenuous, but it is a minimum requirement for beginning to discuss.
What is curious to say the least is that together with the unanimous
affirmation of the existence of criticism it is possible to detect
a similarly generalized pessimism as to its present situation. And
this is all the more curious in view of the committed tone of the
responses, which in effect bear witness to its vigour. In other words,
the problem is not that the critics surveyed were unwilling to express
an opinion, but that those opinions seem to fall on barren ground.
What is more, there seems to be no lack of appetite for dialectical
confrontation; the problem is that the means of doing so are in short
supply. And it is here, without a doubt, that the spectre of the
lack of independence appears. This lack of independence asks to be
read in terms of a lack of interest on the part of the media —basically
centred on information— as a result of a kind of omnivorous
power that the art institutions have achieved and, no less important,
a lack of real independence, linked to the apparent inability of
the sector to generate private initiatives.
This missing of the moment to begin discuss has to do with a nostalgia
for the modern condition of criticism. So Eduardo Pérez Soler
was clearly on the right track when he said, in the article that
preceded the survey in the last issue, that ‘everything is
possible in art today except making critical judgements about art’.
Quite simply, what seems to have disappeared is the value of opinion:
not that it has been swept away by information, but simply that it
has lost its efficacy. And if I speak of efficacy I do so not to
wipe some artist off the map, but simply, as Carles Guerra observes,
to generate more opinion.
This being so it is genuinely surprising that from time to time a
well established criticism, formed from opinion, vaunts its courageousness;
surprising because it serves to underpin a strange state of received
opinion according to which criticism is in a critical state, when
in fact it is the art institution that is in a critical state. Such
a stance ultimately serves only to disarm criticism’s discursive
capability, endorsing the cliché of a pervasive cowardice
or simply of criticism’s subservience to the curators and the
institutions, and hinting at a supposed connivance between the two.
As if there were a lot to lose from passing adverse critical comment
on an institution.
Who loves Henry?
Let’s take this point by point.
In the first place, in a sector so squalid there
is very little to lose. Clearly, if your reasons
for dedicating yourself to criticism are financial,
you’re not much of an economist. We should
at least be allowed to have fun. In second place,
is not the case that the omnivorous power the
institutions acquired is perfectly at ease with
dissent; as we have seen, it is erased: two can’t
argue if one doesn’t want to. And in third
place, if the institution is sufficiently intelligent —and
this goes with its voracity— adverse criticism
can be a way not only of not antagonizing the
institution, but exactly the opposite. On one
occasion a critic joked about publishing a critical
review of an exhibition because the last time
he did so the institution in question offered
him work. What at first sight may seem decidedly
perverse may not be perverse after all. Since
we are in the World Cup season, let me give an
example from football. It is possible that the
Arsenal striker Henry decided to stay with the
London team after before losing to Barça
in the European Cup Final. But clearly the best
way to make Barça all the more interested
in signing him would not be helping them to victory
but by scoring a couple of goals against them.
That was the real way to show his credentials.
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| Some time ago now Manel Clot remarked
that curating an exhibition is merely an extension of the
critical endeavour, or one of the ways of exercising criticism.
If politics is the continuation of war by other means, maybe
we need to see curating once again as a way of exercising
criticism by other means. Perhaps in this way criticism will
recover its independent role, not so much a mediating as
a discursive task; it might even displace that annulling
power of the institution and the tide of information, affirming
the value of art as critical thought. |
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