Translating poetry from any one language to another presents formidable challenges.
Criticizing Criticism
By Glenna Gordon
Translating poetry from any one language to another presents formidable challenges. Translating a visual experience into a verbal one is just as difficult. Perhaps it is just this challenge that motivates artists, writers and critics. While much is lost in translation, a lot can be gained as well. Art, especially much modern and contemporary art, can use writing to elucidate its intricacies, explain its history and examine its nuances. However, such attempts can quickly lose sight of the primary art object as they weave themselves into a verbal web. On March 26th, a panel of premier critics, art historians and writers convened to discuss the state of arts writing. Entitled "A Crisis in Criticism," the topics of discussion ranged from the romanticized notions of crisis itself to the breakdown of the romanticized notion of the critic (mostly aimed art historian Rosalind Krauss and critics Michael Fried and Clemet Greenberg). Hunter College Professor Katy Siegel succinctly argued that perhaps the problem is not with criticism itself, but rather with the critics. Each critic asked himself, "Why aren’t I Clemet Greenberg?" And more importantly, asked Rapheal Rubinstein, Senior Editor of Art in America, should critics make value judgments on a topic as subjective as modern art? Without value judgments, arts writing may become a list of descriptions of exhibits. While writing negative reviews may be unnecessary as history will dispose of unworthy art, without them everyone might think Jeff Koons is a good idea. Or, would everyone think for himself?
While Village Voice critic Jerry Salz argued that art critics do not have as much power as theater critics, who can close a show with a scathing review, he clearly neglects the historical precedent set by Greenberg. The laudatory praise Greenberg bestowed on Jackson Pollock launched the artist’s career and led to the subsequent dominance of Abstract Expressionism in American art. Critics who are uninterested in Barnett Newman’s stripes may feel the need to apologize for the success of what many consider overwrought and lackluster art. While the panel did not broach the question of whether or not Pollock’s art would be successful or memorable without Greenberg as his mouthpiece, they did discuss the legacy of Greenberg’s attempt to create a rigorous methodology for art criticism.
In Greenberg’s 1950s, Art News covered every gallery and museum show in New York, said Nancy Princenthal, critic for Art in America, The New York Times and other publications. In this artistic climate one critic could promote one artist and one magazine could be all Artforum has always wanted to be. The paradigmatic shift that drastically separates Greenberg and Pollock from subsequent art movements and trends necessitates a new critical language (the only point upon which five critics can agree). Saul Ostrow, the panel’s moderator, insightfully compared the current burgeoning in the global art system to growth in scientific knowledge that took place in the eighteenth century: the body of knowledge then exceeded the capacity of any one individual. While this lead to the increasing specialization of fields of inquiry, it was at the cost of the Renaissance Scientist, versed in all fields of knowledge. Now, with the proliferation of artists making more works than any one person could ever see, let alone investigate in-depth, critics must accept their impotence in the face of a global world too big for any one critic, publication or institution. The decreasing cost of technology as a medium of expression, the networking of artists via the Internet, the expansion of an art market that includes international locations formally below the critic’s radar, all of these changes and more make the Greenbergian a luddite. The days when the artistic community had a clear identity, or even several contrasting but still clear identities, have faded into the back pages of history books. They’ve been replaced by more artists’ web pages than any book could hold or any identity could codify.
Siegel added historical background to the breakdown of Greenberg’s power: when collector Ethel Skull recognized Andy Warhol’s talent before critics and experts, art Warhol originally intended to call "Commonism" was embraced by art amateurs. The shift of power in the art world continues with curators now dictating much of the media’s attention to their picks. As much has been written on the three young Whitney Biennial curators Chrissie Iles, Shamin M. Momin and Debra Singer, as about the artists in the exhibition. Artists can create their own genealogies and curators can create their own stars the way critics once could. Perhaps the crisis in not in criticism itself but in the critics lack of confidence in their own ability to dictate the ebbing and flowing of the public’s attention.
The success of artists like John Currin and Damien Hirst made them the panel’s whipping boys. However, none of the panelists brought up the connections between Hirst and British collector Charles Saatchi. The contemporary British art market seems to follow Saatchi’s whims and avidly await his next sensation. (The comparisons between Saatchi and Greenberg, as well as Hirst and Pollock, hold true down to both artists’ outrageous behavior at gallery openings and both promoters’ self-serving motivations.) While both artists are now famous enough to be included in Art History, are they worthy of their place in books and the public’s eye? Is it the job of art critics to point out the banality of Hirst’s dot paintings (as Rubenstein did while neglecting to mention Gerhard Richter’s similar works)? And to what can we attribute the success of Currin and Hirst if not the promotional efforts of critics, PR agents and an art world in search of stars and whipping boys? Especially when those stars happen to be white and male.
The difficulty is finding the intersection between rigorous and systematic method associated with Greenberg et al and a personal subjectivity that does not veer too far into the idiosyncratic. What good are the rigors of a system that cannot accommodate its own peculiar objects? What good are the judgments of an individual that do not consider history? Is the act of making art itself implicitly a judgment? Salz argued that a geometric abstract painting implicitly champions its own method while critiquing organic abstraction. The distinction between judgment and choice is often invisible. But perhaps it is the task of the art itself to make just that the visible.
Translating a visual experience into a verbal one is just as difficult. Perhaps it is just this challenge that motivates artists, writers and critics. While much is lost in translation, a lot can be gained as well. Art, especially much modern and contemporary art, can use writing to elucidate its intricacies, explain its history and examine its nuances. However, such attempts can quickly lose sight of the primary art object as they weave themselves into a verbal web. On March 26th, a panel of premier critics, art historians and writers convened to discuss the state of arts writing. Entitled "A Crisis in Criticism," the topics of discussion ranged from the romanticized notions of crisis itself to the breakdown of the romanticized notion of the critic (mostly aimed art historian Rosalind Krauss and critics Michael Fried and Clemet Greenberg). Hunter College Professor Katy Siegel succinctly argued that perhaps the problem is not with criticism itself, but rather with the critics. Each critic asked himself, "Why aren’t I Clemet Greenberg?" And more importantly, asked Rapheal Rubinstein, Senior Editor of Art in America, should critics make value judgments on a topic as subjective as modern art? Without value judgments, arts writing may become a list of descriptions of exhibits. While writing negative reviews may be unnecessary as history will dispose of unworthy art, without them everyone might think Jeff Koons is a good idea. Or, would everyone think for himself?
While Village Voice critic Jerry Salz argued that art critics do not have as much power as theater critics, who can close a show with a scathing review, he clearly neglects the historical precedent set by Greenberg. The laudatory praise Greenberg bestowed on Jackson Pollock launched the artist’s career and led to the subsequent dominance of Abstract Expressionism in American art. Critics who are uninterested in Barnett Newman’s stripes may feel the need to apologize for the success of what many consider overwrought and lackluster art. While the panel did not broach the question of whether or not Pollock’s art would be successful or memorable without Greenberg as his mouthpiece, they did discuss the legacy of Greenberg’s attempt to create a rigorous methodology for art criticism.
In Greenberg’s 1950s, Art News covered every gallery and museum show in New York, said Nancy Princenthal, critic for Art in America, The New York Times and other publications. In this artistic climate one critic could promote one artist and one magazine could be all Artforum has always wanted to be. The paradigmatic shift that drastically separates Greenberg and Pollock from subsequent art movements and trends necessitates a new critical language (the only point upon which five critics can agree). Saul Ostrow, the panel’s moderator, insightfully compared the current burgeoning in the global art system to growth in scientific knowledge that took place in the eighteenth century: the body of knowledge then exceeded the capacity of any one individual. While this lead to the increasing specialization of fields of inquiry, it was at the cost of the Renaissance Scientist, versed in all fields of knowledge. Now, with the proliferation of artists making more works than any one person could ever see, let alone investigate in-depth, critics must accept their impotence in the face of a global world too big for any one critic, publication or institution. The decreasing cost of technology as a medium of expression, the networking of artists via the Internet, the expansion of an art market that includes international locations formally below the critic’s radar, all of these changes and more make the Greenbergian a luddite. The days when the artistic community had a clear identity, or even several contrasting but still clear identities, have faded into the back pages of history books. They’ve been replaced by more artists’ web pages than any book could hold or any identity could codify.
Siegel added historical background to the breakdown of Greenberg’s power: when collector Ethel Skull recognized Andy Warhol’s talent before critics and experts, art Warhol originally intended to call "Commonism" was embraced by art amateurs. The shift of power in the art world continues with curators now dictating much of the media’s attention to their picks. As much has been written on the three young Whitney Biennial curators Chrissie Iles, Shamin M. Momin and Debra Singer, as about the artists in the exhibition. Artists can create their own genealogies and curators can create their own stars the way critics once could. Perhaps the crisis in not in criticism itself but in the critics lack of confidence in their own ability to dictate the ebbing and flowing of the public’s attention.
The success of artists like John Currin and Damien Hirst made them the panel’s whipping boys. However, none of the panelists brought up the connections between Hirst and British collector Charles Saatchi. The contemporary British art market seems to follow Saatchi’s whims and avidly await his next sensation. (The comparisons between Saatchi and Greenberg, as well as Hirst and Pollock, hold true down to both artists’ outrageous behavior at gallery openings and both promoters’ self-serving motivations.) While both artists are now famous enough to be included in Art History, are they worthy of their place in books and the public’s eye? Is it the job of art critics to point out the banality of Hirst’s dot paintings (as Rubenstein did while neglecting to mention Gerhard Richter’s similar works)? And to what can we attribute the success of Currin and Hirst if not the promotional efforts of critics, PR agents and an art world in search of stars and whipping boys? Especially when those stars happen to be white and male.
The difficulty is finding the intersection between rigorous and systematic method associated with Greenberg et al and a personal subjectivity that does not veer too far into the idiosyncratic. What good are the rigors of a system that cannot accommodate its own peculiar objects? What good are the judgments of an individual that do not consider history? Is the act of making art itself implicitly a judgment? Salz argued that a geometric abstract painting implicitly champions its own method while critiquing organic abstraction. The distinction between judgment and choice is often invisible. But perhaps it is the task of the art itself to make just that the visible.
