Imagine there's no compensation...

So what if art criticism disappeared from print publications, newspapers, magazines, and the only game in town was online art criticism? So far there haven't been any successful business models put forward. The combination of applying for grants and requesting cash donations from readers can only do so much, but in the long term, these means of raising cash will not be consistent or reliable.

Advertising is tricky because galleries are very reluctant to start paying people for advertisements if they are used to being promoted by said people for free. Would a reader be suspicious of a review if it appeared on a website that received advertising dollars from the gallery the exhibition appears in? Would online art criticism turn into the fluff pieces, the uncritical art speak that appears in the glossies? Would art critics have to hold down two or more jobs because their writing about art earns them nothing?

Many professional art critics are also adjunct professors or lecturers, simply because they can't earn enough as an art critic. So that will be nothing new. Writers over at artsjournal.com sound like they are barely scraping by and are often reduced to holding fund raising drives everyday of the year. Will art criticism be written by fans only, those people so dedicated to visual art that they would gladly spend chunks of time seeing exhibitions and writing quality reviews of exhibitions for no compensation? Will art criticism become nothing more than thousands of people wielding tiny megaphones who communicate to small audiences consisting of a hundred readers or so, give or take?

Obviously in their current manifestations, art blogs do a wonderful job of doing the things that print publications do not do, and paying attention to things the print publications do not. But what if the distinction between "professional" art criticism, the stuff that Ken Johnson and Christopher Knight publish, and the "reviews" that appear on art blogs disappeared simply because there was no longer a financial justification for having art reviews appear in newspapers and magazines? Would the discourse improve, be more inclusive, become more interesting and complex, if the role of editors disappeared, and all art writing was the product of individual obsessions and/or interests, and not the product of journalistic practices and ethics?

Most likely the combination of art writing appearing in print and art writing appearing on the Internet will continue for some time. So this is simply conjecture.

Mountain Dirge

Art Blog Ethics/Goodbye Follower

I lost a follower yesterday. Goodbye fair weather friend.

Here is a hypothetical. If I was a popular art blogger and I waged a fund raising campaign, which successfully raised thousands of dollars, should I make public the donor's list? If said art blogger provides links to or writes about any of the said donors is there a conflict of interest? Is it pay to play? What if this art blogger is an art critic? Does this fund raising campaign compromise their ethics? How would we feel about an art critic that appears in a print publication who had been given money by artists, gallery owners, etc., in order to continue working as an art critic?

You are dead to me

My deep thoughts about Art

I am just glad that I have a job.

XXX

I got a plan

Commie

The blog lives on

When I think about the list of people who hate me because of something I said on this blog, I want to delete the blog. Why should I create new things to feel bad about and to lose sleep over when real life offers up so many opportuntiites for this? But when I think about the handful of people who enjoy the blog and interact with me in cyberspace in a fairly civil manner it all seems worth it. So even though I am embarrassed by certain posts floating around the archive, I will go forward.

Faith

EAGEAGEAGmusic

You are not an artist

Abstract Art

Abstract
4 : having only intrinsic form with little or no attempt at pictorial representation or narrative content

Intrinsic
1 a : belonging to the essential nature or constitution of a thing

The elusiveness of the term 'essential nature' lies at the heart of abstract art. Who determines what is 'essential' about a thing or person? When does an image cross the line from representation to abstraction? What one person considers realistic another person might consider abstract and vice versa. Contrary to the dictionary definition of the word abstract, isn't there abstract art that has representational elements and/or narrative elements? Who determines whether or not an artist is concerned with intrinsic form? Aren't most painters interested in some version of 'intrinsic form'? Should all paintings done from the imagination, no matter how abstract or representational they are, be considered abstract (that is, if you believe that dreams or the unconscious has a direct connection to 'intrinsic form')? And if it is true that a painting that all viewers would consider to be abstract is actually a highly realistic rendering of a fragment of sky, couldn't representational imagery in fact be considered highly abstract by the artist who made it? Is a better definition of abstract painting, something the viewer can't readily identify? Can the viewer experience a stronger feeling of identification and acknowledgement of intent with an abstract image than they would with a representational image? Don't examples of photorealism end up summarizing reality in some way? The photorealist looks for ways to capture the essence of a photographic effect. Since paintings, no matter how painstakingly rendered will not be able to exactly duplicate a photograph is it correct to assume that all paintings are abstract?

I love art more than you do.

art world

Art critics who made ArtReview Power 100

61. Roberta Smith

65. Peter Schjeldahl

73. Jerry Saltz

I would really love to know how they decided what order these three art critics should be placed in. Bizarre. So Smith is the 61st most powerful person in the art world. What does that mean? We all know they are the top of the heap in terms of the art critic pecking order. Does this mean that ArtReview still feels that art critics deserve a place in the Power 100 list? Why?

100. Glenn Beck

What about this one? Beck discusses art twice on his lame cable show and now he is part of the Power 100 list? He has absolutely no influence over anything in the art world. He was discussed briefly when his comments about art first appeared but how is this anything but a diverting flash in the pan, a short lived controversy undeserving of attention?

Anti-plug

Paying attention to the art world, even in the tangential way I do, amounts to putting together an "avoid like the plague" list, that grows with each passing day. Should the art world stay small and insular forever? Should art be the play thing of overeducated and cliquish white people? Should art be a secret code, created by a small group of people who have superiority complexes, that no one is interested in decoding? Should contemporary art remain cut off from the majority of human beings (who aren't stupid cattle) because it doesn't hold a person's attention or interest? I really don't care but I thought I would ask these questions. I am fine with chugging away at making stuff that only a handful of people will see online. I am also fine with abandoning art criticism entirely because its function within the context of the contemporary art scene is dubious at best. I do not want art speak (or the marketing of art through use of academic jargon) to live on forever or to perpetuate its continued existence. The only wisdom I can impart to people is this: network network network. It is ALL about who you know. The work itself is secondary. Start a blog. Take lots of pictures at openings. Praise and promote as much art and as many artists as you can. Choose your enemies carefully, meaning only critique/attack people who couldn't help your career in a million years, and if there is time left over, make a sellable product. Visit a lot of galleries so that you can figure out what is selling. (Most likely none of these things will lead to success in the art world because the deck is stacked against you, but without networking nothing is even possible. There are also a large number of art blogs out there, the number of them growing each day, and this makes it more difficult to stand out from the crowd.)

EAGEAGEAGvideo

Avant Garde and Kitsch

phonecall with my dad

Art Critic's Lament

Personal Attacks

Could everyone visiting this blog please lay off the personal attacks? I realize that the subject matter of the blog might get under the reader's skin. I realize that some people might want to reach out and help the little cyber persona this blog presents, but I really don't need life advice and I really don't want strangers, you people, to assume that you know me because you read the blog, and then tell me what I should be doing. I just had a nasty exchange with a reader of this blog and the thing that amazes me is that, besides obviously enrgaing them because they didn't like the negativity rampant on this blog, they attacked me personally more than once, were truly nasty, while I never so much as said a single word about them from that perspective. The thing that is horrible about online interactions is that people you have never met mindlessly cross the line from friendly chat to personal attacks. There are no boundaries. As if I want to hear people tell me how self defeating I am or whatever. I don't want to go online everyday and slit my eyes and wince as I look at the comments on the blog. If someone makes you angry you should avoid (them) their blog like the plague. I am thinking of doing what Tom Moody did and shut off comments. Then I can just use the blog to post content and whoever wants to look at or read it can and if they feel the need to communicate they can email me. I would rather not do this. I have never attacked any of my readers personally, told any of you that you are awful or fucked up, mainly because I have never met any of you, and I wish you would all do the same.

What if all working artists were funded by the government?

If someone has the ability to and interest in making art on a full time basis year after year, should their efforts be subsidized by the government? In order to continue receiving the government funding artists would have to provide tangible evidence that they were making art, in whatever media, and they couldn't be coy and say "My art is about not making art" etc. They would have to produce on a consistent basis, with some allowance for brief dry spells. The government would the working artists with salaries, enough to allow the artist to live a modest middle class existence, and health coverage, the same way they do for state jobs, teachers, postal workers, etc. If such a fantasy scenario were to happen how would the world be improved (besides making the lives of the individual artists who participate better)? This post invites the reader to speculate.

Vomitus Eruptum (I like feelings)

Art Bloggers United

Just to let you know what the rest of the art world and the art blogosphere think about my art cartoons...I posted a link to the cartoon I posted earlier today on James Wagner's art blog (no I won't link to it). I posted it in the comment thread he had going about the New Museum, and he deleted it. So there you have it.

The New New Museum

Anatomy of an art critic

Discussing the gallery system (with addendum)

"It is ironic on the heels of Mrs. Obama's recent art-is-essential speech that the basic elements of artmaking and art showing (studio space, gallery space) remain unavailable, or onerously expensive, for so many people, and that help in the form of grants or institutional support is never quite within reach for most." (This is a quote taken from the comment thread of another art blog and belongs to Joanne Mattera, art blogger extraordinaire.) I bolded the text that is relevant to this post.

After speaking to people in the business I feel comfortable making the following assumptions: established galleries receive anywhere from 1-20 legitimate hardcopy portfolios from artists everyday. The Internet has fooled many artists into thinking that it is approproate to send galleries images of their work with a short email note as a means of attracting their interest. Galleries receive anywhere from 5-50 of these email inquiries everyday. Taken as a whole at least half if not more of these legitimate and illegitimate attempts deserve their fate, the cyber or real trashbin. But what about all the rest of those people who want to pursue their art as a career and who show some budding talent but do not fit in with any gallery program? How does the gallery system help them once they have been rejected by it? Of course people will float the idea out there that galleries aren't right for everybody. For the most part that is self serving claptrap.

Galleries shape their programs in accordance with the demands of the market. They follow and shape the market simultaneously. They are the magic white rooms that bestow upon whatever is exhibited in them a magically aura, and this glow is a lure. Collectors want to be told what is worth buying. Some collectors might be prescient and make good investments in unknown artists who eventually pay off huge dividends. But for the most part collectors like to buy a known quantity. The myth of being discovered by somegoody two shoes collector who selflessly wants to help out artists is bankrupt.

For those people who are represented by galleries and who have steady sales with said galleries it is a good strategy to consider the gallery your friend and business partner. Obviously if things work out, which they often don't, there is no reason to do otherwise. What about all of those artists who never get paid by a gallery for works sold or artists who get dropped by a gallery whether or not their work is selling well? How did the gallery system help those people?

Another issue is the validity of the gallery owners aesthetic choices. Opening a gallery, just like opening any business, is a risky affair and requires a huge amount of effort. Often a few years will have to pass by before a business owner will break even or turn a profit. This is obviously true of gallery owners. But just because the merchandise they are marketing and hopefully selling is art does this warrant the notion that gallery owners and artists are after the same thing? Will quality work that deserves an audience win out over obscurity? If artists have to be able to handle the business end of things from top to bottom all on their own, because the existing gallery system simply has no room for them (and this is true for many artists), will these artists even have the time to be artists? Certainly there are statistical aberrations, people who are self made success stories (hopefully before they die that is), and there are a number of successful website businesses set up by artists, which do a steady amount of sales. But success for these artists is spelled out solely in dollars and cents. They are not considered worthy artists by intellectual apparatchiks, the codifiers of taste and trends in academia, and the promotional hacks or art critics. They are literarily and figuratively outside of the historical process.

Addendum: I would like to add that most artists whose work appears in galleries will only become part of art history in the most tangential sense. They might have a token work of art bought up by a museum but it will most likely rot in storage (the fate of most stuff made by art historically irrelevant artists who have work in a museum collection). In other words, it looks good on paper but the museum will never show the stuff. Also, if an academic doesn't take an interest in a particular artist's work and write a book or monograph on them, then the artist will not leave an historical footprint behind them when they are gone, besides a scattered review or two, if they are lucky. So Google will be the only way people will know about them and that is only if the newspaper that published the review maintains an online searchable archive. And then of course we have the art blogs that are looking more and more important with each passing day. Will an artist that never gets written about have a long life in a gallery line-up. Yes that happens. So reviews are not mandatory and art critics' place on the art world totem pole is towards the bottom (except for a select few). Still, reviews generate buzz and galleries crave buzz. So now that things are driven by the tastes and demands of curators and collectors it should be interesting to see if artists can figure out a way to transcend the limitations of the gallery system and alter the whole process so that more emerging artists have the opportunity to make a living making art.

Gallery System

Will someone out there who does not have gallery representation or something to lose, please defend the way the contemporary gallery system works? Thanks.

Secret Cabal of the Art World

To all the whining starving artists out there (revised)

I am 42 years old with two kids and I still make stuff. I don't make as much stuff as I would like to but I still find time to make something each week. You might think the stuff I make is worthless or terrible, but that is just your opinion. I really don't care. If you are an artist then don't give up. No one cares. That is true. But if you have to make stuff you will find a way to keep doing it. And no, it doesn't have to make sense, or lead to something else. Most likely no one will ever give a crap about what you do. Most likely you will never earn a penny with the stuff you make. As romatic as this sounds, none of that should matter. If you are an artist you will keep making stuff no matter what the external circumstances you are dealing with are.

Addendum: If you can quit making stuff and have absolutely no regret about it then you are not an artist. These statements don't apply to you. Anyone who quits the art game and is happy that they did, good for you.

This post has to do with sad little assholes who stop making stuff and then hate themselves and regret the fact that they are not making stuff. They often come up with excuses like, I'm broke, I don't have any free time, no one cares what I do, the art world is so corrupt, contemporary artists are all fake bullshit artists, it will take too long for me to develop a style, etc. In other words, artists can be thwarted for a period of time, have nothing but the urge to make something and not be actually making stuff. But eventually artists have to act.

Artist on Trial

If you are interested in the victim's 1977 testimony here it is.

King Koons

"That artist Colette recently had her video, "Justine & the Boys," confiscated by US Customs on its return from Germany. The video shows Colette taking a bath while discussing art with ex-boyfriend Jeff Koons as they awaited the arrival of Richard Prince . . . " (quote taken from here)

I wonder if Koons was telling Colette about his dream of curating a show at the New Museum. This image of Koons luxuriating in a bath with a beautiful artist will give all of the struggling artists out there something to shoot for. Keep your dreams alive.

In My Head

Rambling Man (redacted)

Who (What) controls art? Before a work of art by a living or recently deceased artist (say since 1950 or so with the exception of the lone geniuses like Henry Darger) appears in the hallowed halls of a museum the artist had to be a success within the gallery system. The gallery system determines what will be called art and which artists will make the history books.

The gallery system is mysterious in the sense that we will never know exactly how much money was made off the sales of contemporary art each year, because galleries don't have to report their sales figures to anyone (except the IRS I guess). So we will never tally these numbers and get an accurate number. The competition between galleries, the state of the economy, the output of artists, and the auction houses have a huge impact on the prices of works of art. If you add up all of the exhibitions that take place in all of the commercial galleries across the world and compare that number to the number of students who are graduating from MFA programs each year it is easy to determine how selective the whole process is. Some people might applaud this because they feel that it is a self pruning process that ensures that only the good art will make it to the top and be shown to the public and be written about by the few remaining paid art critics (redacted).

One could argue that the market drives the beast. Certainly the market plays a huge role in determining the lifespan of a career. Very few artists manage to get gallery representation in a gallery that will really sell their work every year. But getting through the door isn't enough. Your exhibitions have to generate buzz, i.e. press, and sales have to be brisk or at least adequate enough to convince the gallery owner that you are a worthwhile prospect.

Are the people who run galleries worthy gatekeepers? Are they the ones who should, to all intents and purposes, determine what art is for the small sector of the public who give a shit, and should they be the ones who separate the alleged wheat from the chaff , decide which young artists will fall by the wayside and who will be part of the select few who are considered artists, and not artist wannabees by the public, which includes the art press and academia? I am talking about successful commercial galleries, ones that are able to support their artists' careers, guarantee them a decent chunk of money each year and do a good job promoting them. I have also heard about the myth of the selfless gallery owner who does it all because of their pure love of art and artists, but unless a gallery owner is independently wealthy or making money via some other channel and doesn't give a shit whether or not their gallery will turn a profit, this whole notion is ridiculous.

Recent graduates of MFA programs who soon realize that they are not going to have careers as artists must be wondering what they did wrong. Were they not good enough? Was it a mistake to think that you can learn to be an artist? Was getting an MFA a satisfying learning experience, a chance to get novice work critiqued and attend a few lectures, but little else?

People who get MFAs have to have strong opinions about art because otherwise, what was the point of their expensive education? They must maintain their dignity in the face of disillusionment, and support the very gallery system that has more or less rejected them.

Addendum: I don't place much blame on art history professors and fine art professors, the artists and intellectuals who play the game in universities and colleges across America. They are obviously towing the line to a certain extent, polishing the brass with scholarly essays and books and the like. How could PR work get done at any gallery if the PhD holders of the world disappeared? Those members of the endangered species known as tenured professors and a select number of adjuncts or wage slaves, the ones who are doing what they think is right, regardless of current trends, let me say this: Good for you. That is unless you are actually doing more damage than good to the students you work with.

I also don't blame those starry eyed people who set off to begin their MFA programs. How can you blame someone for wanting to live a good life, a life of contemplation. Who wouldn't want to make art for a living? Many of these people are oblivious to the socio-economic conditions they will face upon graduation, and many of them remain that way throughout their course of study right up to the day they graduate. Liquor and pot and food disorders and suicidal thoughts and mindless fuck-fests tends to cloud the perceptions. Student loan debt really sucks, especially when you don't have a cushy job awaiting you and you want to set out on your own.

One would assume that the gallery system would collapse if their suppliers, the artists, disappeared. So that would make one think that artists are really the ones calling the shots and not the people who run the galleries. But the artist who gets chosen by a gallery has to have something in place beforehand that jibes well with market forces and trends. So the qualified freedom of the successful artist still allows them to experience spontaneity and to even put forth impotent critical assessments of existing power structures, but how often will a successful artist subvert the known quantity, or change their recognizable and market proven style in a radical way?

In Draco

***The Fall Season Preview***

I went into galleries and museums and looked at art.

Question

Why is it so hard for the contemporary art world to stomach any criticism? Is it me or are most members of the art world, the business end and the creative end, wimps when it comes to debate and criticism? Maybe I am wrong about this.

Art doesn't belong to a city

Hickey remarks vanish (revised)

According to a statement he made on post.thing.net James Kalm has been asked to take down his video clips of Hickey speaking at SVA. We don't know why this happened. Is this the first SVA lecture that was recorded by a citizen and asked to be removed from public scrutiny by SVA? Will the official version that SVA posts on their site include the comments about Jews? We know that it will include all of the other assinine and false generalizations he made throughout the speech. I wonder how much he got paid for the lecture? Hey art students wake up!

I have been told that the videos have not been taken down. The point of this post is to alert people that SVA wanted the videos taken down. I am not trying to critique Mr. Kalm (pseudonym).

B

Someone who would wholeheartedly agree with Dave Hickey

"Three listed—Pinault, listed at 29, and Gagosian and Pigosi—listed at 84 and 86—are figures in the art world, which is known to be dominated by Jewish interests."

Blog Poll

Why do you read this blog?

It is like watching a train wreck

I hate the art world and am bitter

I am waiting to see if the blog will get deleted again

I am waiting to see if I will be mocked

This art blogger keeps the 'faith'

All of the above

Words about art

Important White Guy Tells Us About Art

fEEL THE HATE

Fight the Power

Cracker

Sisyphus or Bob Ross (revised)

Is making art a magical act, something that transcends the monotony of everyday routine and makes us rise above our baser instincts? Is making art a thankless task that not only humanity could care less about but also _______ (fill in the name of your favorite deity) could give a crap about either?

I don't think it is possible to romanticize failure any longer.

Many artists have compared making art to raising a child. Sorry but this doesn't work for me. The constant attention that a young child requires is not at all like the attention an artist lavishes on their work. As an artist at least you have a choice when you will act. This semblance of free will does not exist for a parent (at least a good one) who has to be on call every second their child is awake. That is not to say that having a child is in any way more important than or ethically superior to dedicating your life to making or appreciating art, but of course if child rearing were to stop, goodbye species, and if art making were to stop...well who knows. Of course many artists can somehow manage to do both.

So does making art improve the quality of a person’s life or is watching television for thousands of hours a year, year after year, which a majority of people do, no better or worse a way to spend one’s life? Is making art only meaningful if the artist is enjoying doing it? How about those artists who struggle with their art (notice I didn't say suffer)? I have known serious artists, people who make art week after week, month after month, year after year, but who do not exhibit or sell their work. This missing component, this lack of satisfying social and financial dimensions to their creative process does haunt them to a certain extent. Try as hard as they can to just focus on the work, they are never oblivious to the fact that no one is looking at the work (besides select family members and maybe a few sympathetic friends) and no one is buying the work.

Of course you have artists who have had some success. They sell something on occasion, maybe some of their works make it into a few museum collections (where they rot in storage never to see the light of day). Often these people have another means to support themselves financially, a trust fund or a well off spouse or partner. How different is the overall shape of their lives as compared to the artist who works in isolation and ends up putting what they have made in closets, attics, and basements across the country?

Does any of this matter? Should Americans simply marvel at the fact that people can make art if they want to? Should we celebrate the fact that we as Americans can spend our free time making stuff? Are these questions about success and the hierarchy of power, which is obviously not fair or democratic, moot? Is the only thing that matters the creative act itself?

Videos videos videos

I plan on making videos for the next month or so. I will try and post one tonight. Putting music or sounds and moving images together is fun to do right?

Set the record straight (revised)

• There are plenty of worthwhile art blogs out there.
• I do not think this blog is more hardcore or legitimate than other art blogs.
• There are plenty of art blogs out there that present negative reviews and commentary.
• Not every art blogger is trying to network and kiss ass. The art blogging world is not a circle jerk or the female version, a clitoris rubbing session.
• My comics are mildly entertaining, but not original. And as Oriane pointed out, they are absurdly reductionist.
• I will never succeed, make money at any of this. Who does, besides the statistical aberrations we are all familiar with?
• I will never get gallery representation or have my work appear in a legitimate art gallery. Well maybe I should try to make some good art before I jump to this conclusion.
• I will never be able to sell my art, even if I try to. Although it is possible that I might come up with a successful business model and sell a whole bunch of t-shirts and pins and baseball caps. I don't think I would have the patience to sell drawings and paintings on eBay because I have no desire to make all of those trips to the post office down the road and package all of that shit. And besides, have you seen the dreck that sells on eBay? (Chris I know all about your experiences with eBay)
• I will never get a grant or win an award.
• I will not get a book deal. Maybe I should try to write something first.
• The only people who will ever hear my songs, watch my videos, see my art, or read my nonsense will be the ones who visit this blog or artcritical.
• My art criticism will not help anyone sell a single work of art.
• My videos will stay posted on youtube and rot there until another person erases them.
• A little over one hundred people visit this blog on a good day. On a bad day considerably less than that visit it.
• I will continue to make stuff until I die or I am incapacitated because I just can't help it. Enjoy the pleasure of making, when it is pleasurable that is, and shut the fuck up already! Yes recognition and all that other stuff would be nice but if you can't place a value on the process of making stuff, separate from all the rest, than you have no right calling yourself an artist.

Arbeit Macht Frei

Kand at the Gugg

Is anyone excited about seeing Kandinsky at the Gugg? What are your thoughts?

(image courtesy of http://www.nga.gov/kids/kandinsky/kandinsky400.jpg)

Still awake

This art blog will be gone for good by 3pm tomorrow. I am done with art blogs, maintaining one, reading them. I plan on focusing my writing efforts on the artcritical.com newsdesk and if I post any original art online it will be at eageageagvideo. I have no idea what kind of stuff I will be posting on youtube, but if you are interested you should subscribe to the channel. If you would like to keep in touch with me please email me at ericgelber@artcritical.com.

I have immersed myself in the art blogging world for over a year now. I am through with it.

Thanks to all of my readers, especially those that don't hate me. Please delete this blog from your blogrolls, if you added it to them for whatever reason.

I will keep updating this entry until the 3pm deadline.

How hard is it to figure out who EAGEAGEAG is? Not very. I know at least four art bloggers who know who I am.

Have I ever mocked people by using the details of their private lives? Nope.

Does the art blogging world need some points of contention in order to thrive? You betcha!

Is being antagonized by talentless and bitter strangers fun? Nope.

Is the art bloggosphere capable of taking any criticism? No and no again.

Are artists sensitive people? Yes indeed.

Do art professors use the young graduate students they work with as crutches for their crippled egos and/or fodder for masturbation? Uh...yes.

Does it mean much if you get gallery representation but still can't make five thousand dollars a year from your art? You decide.

Do galleries like free promotion of their exhibitions? Yesss!

Do artists have to network and meet the right people in order to have a modicum of success? Duh.

What will happen when newspapers all over the country stop publishing reviews of art?

Would the quality of the writing published in art blogs and online artzines greatly improve if they were edited?

Art blogs do a good job of acting as image archives of exhibitions. Everything will be photographed. Everything will be posted online. Will this make the world a better place? Will this ubiquity of certain types of images, exhibition walkthrough photos and videos, gallery openings, etc., make the history of art more democratic, make art mean something to more people than it currently does?

Oh yeah

The newsdesk section over at artcritical.com has been updated. I edit it and contribute to it.

[revised again] On Negative Reviews/Art World People are People Too (with addendum)

NYC's biggest art critic stars, Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith, would never write completely negative reviews of emerging artists, or artists who have never been written about before and do not have an established market and support from the gallery system. Artists who have a thick press kit, have been written about many times, do not really care about negative reviews. They might get annoyed by some art critic's snarky remarks, but so what? Can a negative review destroy the career of an emerging artist? I suppose that sort of thing happened in the past. But now, in the present? I don't think so. In fact, negative and positive reviews are completely impotent in the face of market forces. A review by Saltz or Smith might boost sales temporarily but in the long run if the artist doesn't manage to continue to sell well they will most likely lose gallery representation and the press will no longer know they exist, until after they die that is. Did the negative reviews of John Currin, Damien Hirst, Julian Schnabel, and Matthew Barney hurt their careers? I don't think so. The negative reviews just added to the buzz that boosted their careers into the stratosphere.

Here is an anecdote that should make it clear that criticism is irrelevant.

I wrote a very positive review of an artist's exhibition, which took place at a Chelsea gallery. The artist, as far as I could tell, had never been written about before and it was their first solo exhibition. He was an 'emerging' artist in the truest sense of the word. The review appeared in artcritical.com, which supposedly gets read by thousands of people each month. The problem was this. None of the artist's works sold. Not a single one. So the gallery owner never promoted my positive review (something he would have normally done on his widely read art blog), because he didn't want to "give the artist the wrong idea." I guarantee you that the artist will never have another exhibition in this gallery. So the gallery owner didn't want to encourage the artist or make them think that the gallery would be supporting their career any longer. By posting my positive review on their blog (the only review the exhibition got by the way) they would have sent the wrong message. No sales means no more gallery support (unless of course the gallery is owned by a very wealthy person who wants to make their friends feel good).

The only thing that will truly destroy an emerging artist's career is the lack of sales. Negative reviews do not destroy careers, but they might annoy an artist, gallery owner, or curator. Most big name print critics (there aren't many of them left) review exhibitions by artists who are already well ensconced in the art world, art history books, etc., and who are not worried about their careers failing because of a negative review. When was the last time you read a pan in any glossy art magazine? Everything is positive all the time in these publications, these public relations machines that are the very opposite of what art criticism should be. The only places where negative reviews might appear nowadays is in a newspaper or online. Now that Hilton Kramer is retired, the only place to find negative reviews is wherever Jed Perl's work appears. Mario Naves, who writes (or used to write) for the New York Observer (I can never find his work online because the interface is so awful, and his work does not appear in the print edition) write negative reviews on occasion, but the artists they target consider these negative reviews badges of honor, because they write the critics off as conservative reactionaries.

Blue chip artists do not seek out reviews of their work that appear in the online setting because they are too busy and most likely have intellectuals in their social networks who can critique their work throughout the year. Much art criticism concerns artists who are dead or who are so jaded by success that they don't even bother reading stuff written about their work, unless it appears in the most widely read and prestigious publications (in which case the gist of the review will be overwhelmingly positive).

The last bastion of negative reviews is the art blog. But what does a negative review which appears online really amount to? Charlie Finch and Ben Davis write negative reviews of sorts, but again, they don't write about truly emerging artists. They write about artists who already have solid careers and sales. Negative reviews on art blogs are nothing more than light entertainment. No art historian will be including art reviews written by bloggers in their annotated bibliographies, unless they are specifically writing about the phenomena of art blogs.

Listen up artists! You are much better off 'befriending' or buttering up to art historians. They are the ones who will publish books (not simply collections of their published reviews like Saltz, etc.), who will construct art history, and they are the ones you want to impress. What artist doesn't want to make it into the art history books? So few will do this.

A dollar and a dream...

Addendum: Obviously Saltz and Smith are rather famous for their ambivalence (within the rarified circles of the NYC art world). They often stir a few negative comments into otherwise positive reviews, but this does not diminish the value the review has for the artist and the gallery that represents them. Saltz and Smith also often make sweeping condemnatory generalizations about the contemporary art world, but the art world is willing to ignore these because no one wants these critics as enemies. And based on comments I have heard about Saltz and the way he friends and de-friends people on Facebook, he can be petty. Everyone knows how many exhibitions Smith and Saltz do not review each year. So any attention they lavish upon an exhibition is welcome.

Most artists go through life without receiving any attention by critics, academics, the art market, and society in general. If you can't manage to have fun making art or if your art does not add anything positive to the lives of the people you are close to, give up now.

Drawings 6-10

Drawings 1-5

The problem with many people who write about art is that they are seduced by a pleasing phrase.

Why art criticism found on art blogs is mostly worthless

(A real world scenario with the names left out) Hello. I am an art blogger and artist. I gave money to another art blogger to help them keep their art blog running. At least that is where I thought my money was going. I also made sure that all the readers of my art blog knew about the other art blogger's money raising campaign. Now this art blogger posts links to my art blog quite often and treats me with reverence. I rub their shoulders and they rub mine. At least I got something for my money. What is wrong with that?

Just because writing appears on a blog doesn't mean the quality of the writing has to go down the toilet. More often than not, that is exactly what happens.

Twitter that you assholes.

White Man

Who sold who what?

"I am not of the camp who hates on art students just because they were sold the idea that art could be a lucrative and glamorous career, or who thinks that art dealers are the spawn of Satan..."

It is time to quibble about a Ben Davis article again. In this article Mr. Davis, who is performing a task that more people should be doing, takes the muck–a–mucks at various museums to task for making poor investment choices for the endowments of the museums they run. Hooray! I am all for this sort of research based journalism. A job well done.

I do have a problem with the above noted comments, which appear at the beginning of Mr. Davis' article, and really have nothing to do with the subject at hand.

Why does he have to let us know that he normally doesn't attack innocent and deluded artists or art dealers? Will this put a portion of his reading audience at ease? Will it paint Mr. Davis as a Working Class Hero, a defender of the little guy/gal? This little bit of self mythologizing is intriguing. So deluded artists and all art dealers, with a few exceptions, are okay in his book. But those big bad men at the top of the museum hierarchy, the ones who make the final decisions with regads to endowments, better look out. Mr. Davis is coming to get you.

The central thrust of Mr. Davis' criticism of these rich guys, is that they placed too much museum money under risk. If they made more conservative investments then maybe cutbacks and layoffs could have been avoided. Sounds good right? But why was it necessary for him to tell us that he is not the kind of art writer who would attack artists who were "sold the idea that art could be a lucrative and glamorous career" by a mysterious other at the beginning of his article? Who indeed is selling this cruel and unrelaistic notion to the poor art students? We are left wondering. Maybe in some future article Mr. Davis will reveal to us, the world, who these secretive spoilers of artists souls are. Good investigative journalism Mr. Davis, but we can do without the self aggrandizement next time around.

(Counter-Arguments)

Journey 1

Museum

Today

I am off to take a long walk in Green Wood Cemetery today, my very first. I plan on shooting some video footage. Then it is off to the MET to see the Bacon exhibition. To all of you art bloggers out there who have ever felt personally attacked by one of my comics please listen to me. We all need to lighten up a bit right? My opinion does not matter in the big scheme of things. This goes for my blogging and my published criticism. As an art critic, I can not make or break a career (thank goodness). In fact, with regards to sales of artworks my art criticism has zero impact. Like most art criticism though, it can make an artist who I have written about, an artist that is not a blue chip artist or one that has been written about extensively through the years and probably wouldn't even bother to read something I wrote about them, feel good. I have gotten a few, but not many nice thank notes through the years from artists whose work I reviewed.

Thursday 30th July 2009 - 179 (page loads) 134 (unique visitors) 129 (first time visitors) 5 (returning visitors)

These are the best numbers this blog got last week.

So although I can't help myself when it comes to being the way I am, please don't be hurt or offended by any of the content on this blog. I do really care about art. Making, reading, and writing about it is an important part of my life. Although I will say this. I am a jack of all trades, and would not want to give up working in a number of different media, even though I realize that the overall quality of the work might take a hit because I am not focusing on one or the other.

masks

The Future of Art Criticism

Art Blogging in a Nutshell Part 3 (updated)

I love this work of art made by someone I hope to become friends with soon. So I am posting an image of it! My opinions are important. This art blog is a perfect example of self empowerment and democracy in action!

I am busy in my studio and I just knew you would love to see my important work of art in progress.

Guess what? I just saw an art exhibition and I knew you would love to hear what I thought about it.

This work of art has something to do with computers so it must be important or worth mentioning. I am sure that technology based art will last a long time and have a major impact on art history and the art market.

Here is a pic of a work of art I made years ago. Nowadays, I barely have time to update my blog.

Must blog like a normal person

Hi everyone! Peace be with you.

• The art world reality show will tank after the first one or two seasons unless Bravo is not concerned about the size of its audience. Why make this prediction? Not enough people are interested in visual art. Singing, dancing, whoring, cooking, desgning clothes, that is stuff the people who watch reality shows are interested in. It just isn't that much fun watching artist wannabes humiliate themselves. Watching an artist have a fit of rage because their exhibition was hung wrong or whatever, will not draw viewers in. Sorry Jerry!
• The Rose Museum SHOULD sue the shit out of Brandeis, who betrayed the Rose family and students in every imaginable way.
• The most famous person to leave comments on art blogs, zipthwung, was mentioned and featured in the NYT wasn't he? Anywho, I would love it if he made images of his art, which he refers to fairly often, available to the public online. That way, I would get a much better idea what he is all about, especially when he is pigeonholing other artists.

Guess the mystery art blogger

Which art blogger scolds other art bloggers for deleting comments and then turns around and deletes comments he/she doesn't like on his/her own blog?

People who read art blogs

One of my readers has pointed out how much of a douchebag I am being. I am now back after a very short hiatus! I am a better person and much more professional. Get ready for some high quality art blogging!

I may or may not bring this blog back to life when and if I become a better person and much more professional. Thanks for reading it.

Lamenting the criticism of Dash Snow

This art blogger lamented the handful of critical remarks that have been floating around the art blogosphere post Dash Snow's recent overdose. A comment I made for the post I linked to has been floating in moderation limbo for a few days so I thought that I would post it here:

I would just like to reiterate that the haters or people who don’t like or appreciate Dash Snow’s work are in the minority. The mainstream press portrayed him in their obits in a very positive light that I feel his work did not merit. The art bloggers who beg to differ are in the monority in this case. It isn’t the other way around.

Roberta Smith wrote not one but two full length obituaries for Dash Snow. Her follow up obituary which also focuses on a memorial exhibition that is now open to the public is 824 words. The original obituary written by Smith is 585 words. Yet another feature length piece in the NYT on the deceased artist is 2, 447 words. So in total, the NYT printed 3,856 words on the late Dash Snow. I can't think of a better or more substantial form of validation for an artist and their career. Those people who collected his art must be overjoyed.

And this holds true even if Smith makes her typically ambivalent remarks about the artist. So if you spend the time looking at all of the references about Dash Snow's passing that have appeared in the art blogosphere you will see that most of them are neutral or positive and a handful of them are critical. So I don't really think we need to do a serious revaluation of the artist's work at this time simply because a few art bloggers didn't like his work or buy into the mythology surrounding his career and persona.

Nature

John Berger quotes

(all quotes by John Berger, from "The Sense of Sight")

"All painting, even hyper-realism, transforms."

"Only by considering a painting's method, the practice of its transformation, can we be confident about the direction of its image, the direction of the image's passage towards us and past us. Every painting comes from far away (many fail to reach us), yet we only receive a painting fully if we are looking in the direction from which it has come. This is why seeing a painting is so different from seeing an object."

Dore Ashton quote

"Whether dealing with the painting as as independent object, as is the case with the purist or formal strain in modern art, or with the object itself as an 'extra-plastic' symbol, as is the case with the Dadaist or Surrealist, and more recently, the Pop artist; or dealing with the object as congealed energy, as in the case with the organic abstract painter, the twentieth-century artist is preoccupied with defining the object and its relationship to the human subject."

(Dore Ashton "A Reading of Modern Art")

Blogger Psychology

Donald Judd quote about teaching people how to be artists

Harold Rosenberg (Good stuff)

"It has in the past been wasteful and even damaging that so many Americans knew nothing about art and were indifferent to it. But it may be far worse to have a multitude of sophisticated semi-specialists who know all about what art is but who do not know the conditions, both inner and outer, for being an artist and creating works of art."

"In art, the teacher's personality is the ultimate message."

"But there is a more immediate obstacle to teaching people to be artists: today no one knows what art is. Or, no one knows what art is not-which amounts to the same thing."

"The work of art is contingent on the assumptions and psychic activities of the artist and those in turn determine the aims of skill. "

"It seems to me that for teaching artists today art must increasingly be approached as a mode of thought, one as open to change and as cumulative as physics or psychiatry-a mode of thought in which doing certain things with materials is related to holding certain views about the world and certain attitudes toward art."

Problems in the Teaching of Artists Author(s): Harold Rosenberg Source: Art Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Winter, 1964-1965), pp. 135-138 Published by: College Art Association

Art Blogging In A Nutshell Part 2 (updated)

Great news! My art blog appears on another art blog.

An exhibition of my new paintings will be opening today at this gallery!

I just took a picture of my new exciting work of art with my brand new digital camera!

My art blog has a gazillion hits but I am still broke and no one gives a flying shit about my art!

I am mad at this person and I plan on boycotting them!

I came across this interesting object/place and I took a digital photograph of it that I am going to post on my art blog. Now it is officially art!

I am here to offer you good advice about becoming an artist.

I am going to keep making posts (and providing links of course) about posts that appear on a very popular art blog so that they will eventually post something about my art blog.

Art Blogging In A Nutshell

Hey great news! My dearest bestest buddy (someone who might help my career) has a new show opening this week. Please go check it out!

I just applied for the MacArthur Genius Award! Wish me luck!

Wow! My new book just came out. I don't want to sound like an attention and money and fame seeking whore but please go buy it right now! Although I really appreciate my dear blog audience I think my new life as a published author will help improve my art blog immensely.

And in "art wishes it was part of the entertainment industry" news...There are rumors that Damien Hirst will be a judge on the new art reality show, "Who Wants to be the Shiny New Mediocre Artist?"

Check out my latest pics of the absolutely fabulous, but also completely terrible, Wiener Schnitzel Art Festival in Goomba, New Zealand!

Line Drawing

Important

"PHOTOGRAPHER Mario Sorrenti and graffiti artist KAWS buying paintings at the Mark Gonzales opening at Half Gallery as Terry Richardson, Stella Schnabel, Chloe Sevigny, Cynthia Rowley and Juliette Lewis watched..."

Water Song

Childhood Ends

A sour odor tipped off police to the location of the body.

Blog Blogging Blogger Bloggy Bloggiest Bloggert

Wow my blog has made a very special appearance here and here. I am so great. A true genius. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Naive

Historical Amnesia

Happy 5th of July

Hate Groups Map

Great News!

The art world is doing fine. The bad economy has not effected the art world in any major ways. All of the blue chip artists are still blue chip artists. All of the blue chip galleries are still in business. Making a living and doing well as an artist is still as difficult as it was in the past. Professors in Fine Arts departments will continue to make art and teach and show their art to the public every once in a while. Museums are cutting back but they are still serving the public. There has been no major reconfiguration or dismantling of the power structures in the art world. All of the old hierarchies, meaning the ones that existed prior to the recent stock market decline, are still in place and doing just fine. Sotheby's and Christie's are still raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The same old art critics are appearing in the newspapers and magazines. So please can we all just shut the fuck up about the art world collapsing or about these big changes that are going to start happening in the art world because of the failing economy? Sure galleries have closed and museums have cut staffing and programs, and plenty of working artists have lost their jobs, but there have been no major changes in the ways things are done in the art world. If the art world as we know it ever falls apart or whatever you want to call it, it will happen because the entire world is collapsing. As long as the textbooks stay the same, Academia stays the same, the mass media stays the same, the way galleries do business and curators frame history stay the same, and there are still people around who want to buy 'important' art, no major changes will occur in the art world. Just because there are fewer people buying art right now doesn't mean a transformation will occur. New artists with M.F. A. degrees will continue to pop up and middle aged, elderly, and dead artists will come in and out of fashion, go from flavor of the month to complete oblivion. The cycles will remain the same.

Werk

• Recent stroll through Chelsea: Demoralizing
• Not interested in reality shows about artists
• How much more merch can we squeeze out of the corpse?
• Feel free to continue making stuff but no one cares now and no one will care at any point in the future
• More people go to college in our country than ever before but adjunct work still sucks
• Your doctoral thesis will remain unread on a shelf or in a box in a library or storage facility until it gets thrown out
• Feel free to keep on blogging until you die but be prepared for all of the online content you created to disappear once the people who control the media change the way the Internet will be used by the plebs
• Sorry but I couldn't afford to make any visits to Berlin, Venice, or any of the great cities of the world that were hosting shitty art events in which shitty art was gaudily displayed

Accidental deletion

Apologies to any readers who lost their comments last night. I accidently deleted this blog and not my other one. Everything is fine now. Sorry for the inconvenience. I am also sorry for interrupting the grieving process you are all going through right now.

Death

The passing of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, Billy Mays, David Carradine, et. al., has absolutely no impact on my life. In 2006 the total number of registered resident deaths in the United States was 2,426,264. Even when a celebrity, whose work I followed when they were alive, dies it has no direct impact on my day to day existence. I might be sad or surprised for whatever strange reason, but this will not effect my job or family or friends. It might become the subject of conversation for a brief time but that is about all. When a celebrity in one of the culture industries dies, their work will remain with us beyond their death; their CDs, films, paintings, etc. We will all continue to have access to the things they created and managed to make available to the public. Mourning and dwelling upon the death of a celebrity is a bizarre waste of time.

One small step for art criticism...

Roberta Smith has reviewed an artist's body of work, not a specific exhibition, using images of the artist's work found on the Internet. She did not see any of the paintings live.

I wonder if Smith would have done such a thing if the artist was making Installation Art or Conceptual Art. Does the fact that Smith used images of the artist's work found on the Internet to pass judgement on the work have something to do with the genre and medium and subject matter? If it does it would be revealing of the critic's biases.