Even the metaphor itself is flatlining!

While I love the title of this article on the future of art criticism, ‘Total Eclipse of the Art’, I can’t help feeling that the metaphor and subject should be marked ‘DNR’.

I agree that the art news sector has grown hugely and that often, reporting on art celebrities takes centre stage in the mainstream press. But I would argue that in its traditional form, art criticism is definitely dead. I can’t understand why people misuse the notion of the ‘death’ of a discipline or genre. It doesn’t mean it has ceased to exist, it means it has lost its cultural edge and art criticism has definitely lost its former power.

Art criticism is dead, not because there aren’t great art critics out there writing wonderfully insightful pieces, but because the written response to art no long reigns supreme. I am not just talking about the fact you can now very easily use video to represent a response to art, for example, showing your ideas somehow differently than in print. But I am also talking about the types of art that resist written comprehension. There is a wealth of art being created today that is off the mainstream art world’s radar simply because it’s very difficult to write about. These art forms engage participants in a mode of interaction and comprehension that is based much more on being a producer within the piece than standing outside it at a critical distance. This kind of work is about doing it to understand it and moves the art experience far away from the literary techniques that have become embedded in the act of reading art.

I’m also a little appalled the writer implies that the ‘art blogosphere’ is part of the ‘art news’ network bearing in mind the number of artists who write very richly on their own and other people’s art – and who are the last people to bother with celebrity art news!

(And thanks to Bridge McKenzie of Flow Associates for the inspiration for the title of this post!)

Posted via email from Charlotte’s posterous