On criticism

Understandably, Art criticism has changed over the years along with the constant shift in paradigms of art creation. If art has become increasingly cerebral and acutely subjective, so has criticism, but for a different reason.

Having said that I dare question it, for if criticism is allowed to transcend its parameters it no longer serves its purpose which is to elucidate and reveal subtleties of expressions in art. It should be, to give an analogy, a harvesting tool, not the harvest. It piques me that most art critics today embark on a flurry of verbiage that takes the already perplexed art lover away from rather than closer to art. What attracts a buyer to art is not art par se but other associative factors like investment.

This is not to say that an art critic is not free to write beautiful, graspable text. But s/he is bonded with the subject, namely the art that s/he is criticizing. Criticism is utilitarian. That makes it an applied form of art. It must remain so, I feel, if it is to justify its role in the field.

Certainly, there are reasons why things are the way they are. Post modern art has gone so deep into the recesses of subjective individual response that it is extremely difficult to establish a common value platform to analyze and evaluate. There are other elements like emergence of new trends which determine the market making art more of a commodity - a mere ware to be bought and sold to make more money. That again must pressurize a critic, more often than not, to focus on art’s economic value rather than its aesthetics. Few really care about art and buy art for what it is worth, but for most part it is a money making industry. No wonder that a cousin in a letter to me had written, “I have heard that you are quite hot in Art Industry?” Hot? Like red money? Hell no! He has obviously heard it wrong.

A write up in a catalog I received recently talks about everything else except the tendency of those 50 or so artists who paint or sculpt the way they do. It reads more like propaganda for the young gallery that hosted the show. The writer comments on the lack of initiative on the part of the government and the importance of the role of galleries such as the one he is paid to write for by to promote art. My question is what art?

 A group show is expected to be diverse. That is a given. Yet there should be some common determinant to show all those diverse expression under one banner, I think. Without that there is little difference between a one dollar shop and a high priced boutique. Both sell the same trash, only, one is exorbitantly priced and the other at ‘affordable rates’.