7 of 10

Write now Article Tools

Page 5 of 6

dialectical nature of that quality's achievement. It was about pinpointing the enterprise of art in that notion of quality and pinpointing art's experience in the viewing subject ("you feel pinpointed" by good art, he'd say). Since the '60s the dominant paradigm for art has been not aesthetics but discourse. And discourse is different: its primary mode is textual not visual, it's about landscaping rather than pinpointing, about spreading and cross-referencing points in a grid of relevant terms, and those terms are more public (if specialized) than subjective. It's also not about decisive moments in a great drama of artistic achievement (Eliot's and Greenberg's "tradition") but rather about disciplinary cogency, about critiquing or legitimizing truth claims within a field of specialized knowledge, and about keeping abreast of that field.

One of the paradoxes of all this is that critics are rendered obsolete under the new paradigm. Precisely because they are not specialized enough, their perspective is too general; they try too much to bring their whole selves, their whole universe of experience, to bear on what they write about. The academic art historian specializes in a certain niche of expertise within a certain area, and the language she or he speaks is the discipline's, a language born between the lines of the discipline's canonical texts and footnotes. And like the curator, the academic art historian speaks expertly from within, or behind, a sponsoring institution. A similar institutional base of codified training doesn't exist for critics, one that could erect high educational barriers and weed out the unqualified. Compared to the critic, the art historian's opinion comes across as much more legitimate, sponsored, expert. The critic looks relatively crude, with no institution or discipline to hide behind, speaking and acting unendorsed, as if individually, not close enough to academia and therefore too close to the market, tainted by material involvements, grubbing around in studios, manipulating reputations and careers, repeatedly watching what are suppose to be fixed evaluative criteria succumb to the vagaries of time. You can say that art has grown too modernized, too rationalized, for critics. Art has been integrated into modern society's vast bureaucracy of interlocking professions and training, but criticism hasn't. Critics are becoming extinct like dinosaurs.

Question: In your opinion, has the relationship between the collectors, museums, galleries,

• << previous page
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Are children books providing them with enough advice??
We want to hear your view. Write now!