Those who can’t, teach
And those who can’t make art, write about it instead. Or is that really true?
I’ve been meaning to talk about my own personal journey as an artist who has slowly but surely transitioned into, well, I don’t want to say critic, but someone who writes about art as opposed to making it. It’s been on my list of ideas for a few days, and then this article entered my Bluesky feed yesterday.
It’s an article that is absolutely not surprising to me considering the influencer culture of today, but it did made me sad and contemplative about the roles of art writers and critics.
On the one hand, I’m glad of the gradual decline of institutional critics. They often act more as gatekeepers that tell you what is worth our attention and what is not. While this is good to some degree, the reality is that the art they think is worth our attention is one that they like or one that they understand. In essence, it’s going to be subjective, whether they realize it or not. And that means it’s unlikely that they’ll ever promote works by artists that don’t share the same background as them.
That’s why I love the internet and the ability it gives to someone like me to write about art that they like. For example, I tend to not care about half of the work being presented in international art fairs or auctions. Blue chip art can’t hold my interest for very long. I tend to love the works that come out of grassroots movements in Yogyakarta as opposed to the formally trained artists of Bandung. So those are the works I’m going to talk about. In the same sense, I can read about artworks of other artists written by art critics of different backgrounds than me to give me an understanding of the world outside of my own. And isn’t that the most wondrous thing?
But now, it’s time to talk about the downside. The openness of the internet means everyone can be a critic. Everyone. From the 13-year-old kid whose only exposure to the world is through their phones to the bored retiree with nothing else to do, if you’ve got access to the internet and you can write (not write well, just write) then you can become a “critic”. That means it gets harder and harder to filter who I should be listening to. Sometimes it’s easy, right? When it comes to art, I would trust Ben Davis, who has worked in the art industry for decades, rather than some anonymous person on the internet that can’t back up their claims.
This brings me to my next point, which is it’s becoming increasingly harder to tell if someone wants to criticize us fairly or are they being, as they say, a hater? The fact that everyone can voice their opinions online means that we’re slowly becoming dismissive of any and every criticism that comes our way. I find myself doing it all the time when I write about something. I try not to write anything negative about anything online. And even if I did, I make sure to wrap it up in something good so as to cushion the impact of the negative criticism. I become so scared of offending someone that I make sure to massage and work out every single sharp edge in my writing.
And if I can’t find anything good to write about? I just don’t write about it.
Look, I get it. I also hate criticism. I talked about this exact thing with my therapist the other day. I avoid my laptop on days where the anxiety gets really bad just so that I don’t have to read the feedback from my employer. But I have also worked at a place that gave no criticism at all. All they do is take my work, change it, and say nothing else to me. I only found out that my works were changed once it was used. No words on what worked, what didn’t work, why things were changed, nothing. And guess what, I hated that place and that boss more than any of the other people I’ve worked with.
I wish the ability to take and give good criticism is something that was taught in school. It doesn’t even have to be a class, but something that was incorporated into creative class. When I was in school, we were encouraged to talk about our classmates works. We give them our opinions on what works and what doesn’t and if we can’t properly articulate why we think so, a good teacher will nudge us in the right direction. If we don’t have this ability, then we have artists like Rodriguez who think all negative criticism are attacking the person, not the art. That’s not the way to grow, is it?
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