Criticism after Art

Panero, James, New Criterion

Discussions of art criticism never seem to go very well. Perhaps that's because there is no general agreement on what art criticism really is. For those of us who criticize art for a living, as distinct from those who practice art criticism for the university audience, we rather like it that way.

For the past few years, I have written a column for this magazine called the "gallery chronicle" The word "chronicle" shares its etymology with the word "chonology"; both come to us from the word khronos, meaning time. Art critics are the publicizers of a typically private journey through time. The gallery chronicle has been nay public record of private thoughts that develop in the hours I have to look at art each month, outside of my editorial duties for this magazine, and in the short time before the next copy deadline.

The business of art criticism is a great deal more practical than you might imagine. This is one of its great appeals for me. Art criticism is less Immanual Kant and more should I bring an umbrella. The discovery of far-off corners of the city, and a day on foot in New York, often excites me as much as, upon arrival, the art I see on the gallery walls.

In New York, the good gallery critic is set apart from the bad by how efficiently he steers a course from Chelsea to Fifty-seventh Street to the Upper East Side with a stopover in Williamsburg. How he finds shows to write about. How he calculates (as in my case) a way to feature exhibitions, with a three- or four- or five-week run time, that will still be open once the magazine comes out.

The days on your feet. The camaraderie of the galleries. The athleticism of aestheticism. A fellow art critic recently told me the story of an important figure who, in important tones, once asked him to explain how he goes about criticizing art. Well, the critic replied, I see art ... and I write about it! The response, he reports, was met with bewilderment.

A world of difference separates those who criticize art from those who seek to know about how art criticism is done, because art criticism is done by doing it. To ask after the details beyond the most practical ones is already a step in the wrong direction. Art critics who make the "criticism of art criticism" their business do not stay in the business of art criticism for long.

The 1960s generation of art critics, who did focus on the criticism of criticism, proved this to be the case. For a moment in the late 1960s, they invigorated Artforum magazine with a certain form of criticism--my colleague Hilton Kramer famously remarked at the time, "The more minimal the art, the more maximum the explanation" Yet the 1960s generation departed from their one commercial enterprise after less than a decade. In 1976, Rosalind Krauss, along with the editor Annette Michelson, left Art forum to found a hermetic quarterly …

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Criticism after Art. Contributors: Panero, James - Author. Magazine title: New Criterion. Volume: 24. Issue: 4 Publication date: December 2005. Page number: 16+. © 1999 Foundation for Cultural Review. COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group.

This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.