The Brooklyn Rail

Oh my days, what to say about art criticism! It’s like a very old cat that everyone in the house is amazed is still alive—and so have to treat it with respect even though they’re all secretly waiting for it to kick the bucket. Yes, I’m very disillusioned with the state of art criticism—and I bet, if you’re reading this, you are too.

The precarious state of financial security for those practicing art criticism is well-trodden territory, but it’s worth considering why this is the case—beyond considering how the internet has devastated local journalism in general. When I started as an editorial assistant at ARTnews, at the literal turn of the millennium, we had a consistent budget generated by museums and galleries buying advertisements. There were a few PR companies, but if we had a story idea, we liaised with the artist’s gallery or hunted down their phone number. But now, my hunch is that the budget that used to go to magazine advertising currently goes to PR companies, which have proliferated and are used by not only major museums but also small nonprofit spaces and medium-size commercial galleries. And the young art history and English majors who at one time might have filled the ranks of editorial assistants are now PR and communications assistants, liaising between the institution and the public. (Hey, that was our job!)

Faced with this shortfall of cash, magazines have barely raised their rates in the past twenty years. If you get paid 150 dollars for a review, which generally takes two to three days of work (including the visit to the gallery), that’s 75 dollars a day. What young graduate—or parent—can live on that, unless they have other sources of income?

The sad thing is I really believe in art criticism, though I am now the incontinent cat being prodded by the children who want a puppy. I am still writing, focusing on the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region. In 2014 I moved to Abu Dhabi with my family and eventually took a job as the art critic for the main English-language newspaper there, the National. The art community in the United Arab Emirates is small and inclusive, grappling with the unique situation of large amounts of investment and the empowering sense of playing a role in the economic strategy of the nation, while also seeking to establish a local art scene on artists’ terms (the chance to experiment, a desire to collaborate, the opportunity to critique). Proper criticism makes sense of, and feeds back on, the many projects that are being undertaken and provides public documentation of a region that is fast changing. Far more than in New York and London, where I am based now, the criticism I contributed there felt valued—which was a deeply wonderful feeling.

Having been a funnel train of insiderism my entire life, the fact that I now cover the Arab region and its neighbors has also made me realize how insular the cultural field is, even taking into account recent attempts to broaden its purview. For many, the stifling of public support for Palestine has questioned the notion that the art world can support dissenting voices. Biennials and institutional shows might introduce new artists, but writers often do not have the time-resources to meaningfully explore these practices. (Remember the cost-per-day calculation—it falls to farcical levels once you add in the time spent on a press trip. Many writers on press trips are the young and hungry, not old hands who could arguably better handle the tricky brief of biennial reviewing—let alone locals who know the scene.) In the art world’s power centers, most magazine reviews and profiles are about gallery artists, which puts writers in the uncomfortable position of being badly paid promoters. And do we really trust the system of art schools, commercial galleries, and institutions to deliver the best art there is, considering that schools have saddled students with unconscionable levels of debt, and gallerists and curators—though I love many of them—find themselves financially beholden to collectors and patrons? I think most of us critics want to write about art and theory, but the art world has grown so large in terms of hard cash and soft power that we need to report on the broken system itself, and perhaps even start looking beyond it. We need to ask tougher questions, do more research, keep our eye on the wider context, and live up to what the public needs: someone to hold art and its worlds to account.