20090129
Art in America
Dave Hickey on the mediocrity of criticism in the artworld...both written and curated:
"During this period, "fairness" proliferated. Dealers diversified their offerings to disguise their personal taste, thus eroding their better judgment. Art magazines printed interviews, advance blurbs and diversity centerfolds. They followed works of art to Bali and Cairo as if they were supermodels to be photographed biennially in exotic settings. At the same time, scholarly typing began passing for exhibition reviews. American academics pretended to believe that the traditional financial disinterest of academic inquiry meant that they should not be interested in contemporary finance or inquire about it too closely. This epidemic of fatal lunacy allowed predatory sociologists to submerge the adult practice of visual art in the doggy puddle of "visual culture" wherein students might evade the mysteries of Blinky Palermo by wondering in prose whether Wolverine is the most angst-ridden of the X-Men. By the late '80s, any PhD in art history could identify the iconography of mercantile capitalism in Titian's paintings. One in 50 could tell a Titian from a Tintoretto, and auction houses snapped up those odd ducks to co-opt their expertise...the inability to tell good art from bad is a terminal condition. It's no joke. Some works of art are demonstrably better than others, and, ultimately, it matters, because bad art disappears before our eyes. If you look and can't see anything, there's nothing there."
"During this period, "fairness" proliferated. Dealers diversified their offerings to disguise their personal taste, thus eroding their better judgment. Art magazines printed interviews, advance blurbs and diversity centerfolds. They followed works of art to Bali and Cairo as if they were supermodels to be photographed biennially in exotic settings. At the same time, scholarly typing began passing for exhibition reviews. American academics pretended to believe that the traditional financial disinterest of academic inquiry meant that they should not be interested in contemporary finance or inquire about it too closely. This epidemic of fatal lunacy allowed predatory sociologists to submerge the adult practice of visual art in the doggy puddle of "visual culture" wherein students might evade the mysteries of Blinky Palermo by wondering in prose whether Wolverine is the most angst-ridden of the X-Men. By the late '80s, any PhD in art history could identify the iconography of mercantile capitalism in Titian's paintings. One in 50 could tell a Titian from a Tintoretto, and auction houses snapped up those odd ducks to co-opt their expertise...the inability to tell good art from bad is a terminal condition. It's no joke. Some works of art are demonstrably better than others, and, ultimately, it matters, because bad art disappears before our eyes. If you look and can't see anything, there's nothing there."
20090108
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