Rant 57: Art Writing or Writing About Art?

Somewhere in the spectrum of art writing - ranging from semantic fog to Art Bollocks - there is something interesting to be found. But where? I feel I am as likely to stumble across it on Facebook or Twitter as anywhere. The best (and worst) are often blogs; the latter failing because they fall consciously into the same tortured methodology as the usual suspects, the best because they write free of those limitations. My own blog is more of an online notebook than anything (it took me a while to realise that that was what suited me best). It's full of all sorts of things - deeply personal things, rants and ramblings, but one way or another it reflects my practice because it is a reflection of me. Consequently, happily, I don't give a toss about what people think about it. Strangely (happily, too), people seem to like it. Primitive evidently is good.

Coincidentally, talking of Frieze and press releases, I recently stumbled across this (through a friend's blog). Five years old, but perennially relevant: Please Release Me

Art criticism is PR as much as anything is.

Press releases tend to be infuriatingly naive and self-indulgent and the best ones are simple and give us a bit of intellectual credit!

I've struggled with the daily input of facebook and twitter but also acknowledge that its damned essential to keep 'in touch'.  

The future of art criticism will always be in the written, book form - what we're in now is a passing phase!

As an art writer I struggle with this stuff too. I'm trained as an art historian, and artists (and editors) appreciate my writing for the way it attempts to grapple seriously with the art historical concerns within works of contemportary art - where they are to be found, at least. I'm not sure that this crisis of criticism is entirely new, however. There were just as many sycophantic press releases and oddly worded reviews in the 1960s, as my archival research on Agnes Martin's reception indicates. Perhaps only a very small percentage of any art and any writing is ever really memorable or powerful. On the other hand, I've suffered in the past from editors who are more keen to please advertisers than allow real critical judgement from their reviewers.

Emma Geliot’s blog has referenced this rant in some thoughts on Art Bollocks here.

which, like Phil in his comment above, references Brian Ashbee’s 1999 Art Review article 'A beginners guide to art bollocks and how to be a critic.' I haven’t worried about Art Bollocks here, partly because I was writing in relation to lots of exciting writing which doesn’t suffer from this at all. It isn't the writing that's in crisis. My concern is what kinds of communities/ contexts/ publications can nurture further this writing, supporting and developing self-confident, exploratory writing practices.

I’m being deliberately writer-centric here, wanting to make a certain practice and history of writing more vivid in this debate, as I think this is also a way of unfolding writing that has a vibrant relationship to contemporary art (and what forms of writer-artist relationship might we want to propose?)

Like Phil and Tracey I’m drawn to writing that moves between different formats (wondering what precisely those different formats can do) whilst also - like Becky H- wanting to explore art historical concerns. I brought it up myself but I’m wondering if focussing on PR is the wrong way to go.

One of the best books I’ve read recently is John Kelsey’s Rich Texts, some of whose texts were written as press releases. In the new context of a selected essays what seems more interesting is focussing on how Kelsey’s overall writing project adapts to different forms and contexts. Kelsey’s PR pieces are for his own gallery, so can be seen as making the form function as part of his ongoing dialogue and relationship with individual artists.

 My understanding of the problem for emergent, developing critics is that the emergent art scene has little place for them beyond the press-release or commissioned accompanying text - a PR accompaniment to the artwork. When my writing practice wants to be exploratory, experimental, and confident - fusing concerns of art with concerns of philosophy, language, and science, I find there is little place for it in the contemporary gallery scene. I suppose this arises from a confusion between the term critic and journalist - and due to a highly artist-centric (or gallery-centric) way of working.
I think it is now common to see exhibitions where the curatorial concept is very much the artwork, in a sense, with artworks or artists deftly assembled as aesthetic pawns (this sounds negative but I actually think this is very interesting). I would be keen to see exhibitions (or sites of artwork) where a critic or a writer was key in the overall work, however it is difficult to imagine this in the modernist gallery-artist model. Perhaps it is something for the post-studio scene, where artists are becoming more interested in working with others, dissolving authorship and facilitating debate?

The Press Release is a difficult thing. They irritate me, in how they exploit a writer's talent to glorify an artwork (although perhaps glorify is too strong a term: the press release, I think, makes the work somehow safe, secure, acceptable, indefensible). However whenever I see a badly written one in a gallery I find it massively detracts from the artwork, which is perhaps unfair but is indicative of my writer-centrism.

After having read DB's response and Perri's comment, I just wanted to add that I've recently been commissioned by a new gallery in Middlesbrough (Platform A) to write a series of short texts on their initial group of artists, all living and working in Teeside. What is lovely is that the group have encouraged me to be experimental and to use the project as a way to be creative & develop my own writerly voice, rather than write promotional texts. I'm excited and scared about such a nurturing opportunity, but looking forward to seeing what comes of it.

Reading Perri’s comment, I thought how I have seen exploratory critical work in gallery contexts but it has often been based on writing as live event of some kind, where the writer is acceptable by becoming a performer. Of course this can be an exchange/ addition/ translation worth making, but it can also be an avoidance of critical writing, and a disappearance of writings own histories and methods into those of performance/ live art.

There is a lack of context, I agree, for exploratory written work, or rather the contexts that I have found for myself have been magazines and journals at greater removal from the art scene. Which makes me feel sometimes that the trajectory of unfolding a writing practice, necessarily looking for what sustains and supports it, by necessity moves further away from the writing about art/ artists that was its initial impulse.

That’s why, BeckyH, I like the sound of your project, its suggestion that this discussion is actually about re-thinking relational models, implied and enacted hierarchies, distinct zones of practice, and trying to find a workable community model for relating it all together.

It recognises that this debate is at an early stage, and that basic definitions and assumptions need to be worked out. It tries to move writer and art back into meaningful relation with one another as observers/makers/ responders within some kind of shared and mutually created scene.

I have been thinking, Perri, about your idea of writer led exhibition processes. My first response: first form a A Writer-Centric Autonomous Zone, that doesn’t view writing within frameworks and lexicons of contemporary art; then consider how that might fit (obstinate and cantankerous perhaps) into processes of exhibition making.

As with BeckyH’s project, a conversation would hopefully unfold that negotiates from a starting point of writings autonomous and various strangeness.

I often dispair at the way art writing in many art magazines, press releases, exhibition blurbs or artist statements seem to have turned into stylistic exercises with little real content. They seem to feature an amazing amount of meaningless, over-intellectualised drivel that says little about the work or the artist, as the author is so preoccupied with appearing cleverer than anyone else. I agree that blogs and the internet in general offer a space for discussion beyond snobbery and sel-indulgence and allow us to be less ''precious'' about discussing issues, warts and all. I addressed the topic in my blog too and indeed also find it to be a perfect place to rant and rejoice about life as a visual artist.

you all say there is no Suffering genius out there. yet when you are witnessing it you all run a mile.i am trying to blog on here now but you just keep deleting it. when all of you jump up self important impostors have finished . i'll be painting.