Art Critic on the Clock

The idea came to me when I was myself emerging as an art critic, and my friends and partner were all emerging artists. Everyone wanted reviews but the process for getting one was quite oblique. Likewise, I wanted to publish them! My day job at the time was in art book publishing, and it included writing thousands of words of text, on short deadlines, about forthcoming art books. I got very good at being intelligent, original, and fast when writing about art. So I just put all of that together and asked, What if I wrote reviews for anyone who wanted them, but with the caveat that they would have to be done quickly, so that everyone could get one. Would they still be worthwhile? It turned out the answer was yes.

The process has not changed radically over time except that it has gotten more streamlined. I now have a very orderly, consistent system in place. What has changed is my understanding of the different needs that artists have and that these reviews might be expected to serve. Some of those needs demand special attention, and so I have done versions of the performance open only to select participants, for instance incarcerated artists, foreign artists needing reviews for their visa applications, and artists whose shows were canceled during the covid pandemic.

It doesn’t do much to change ideas about who gets to critique art — it’s me, always me, and I’m unapologetically an expert — but it does try to spread that critique around to all sorts of artists, from the amateur to the professional, the hobbyist to the child. The idea there is that all art and artists can potentially benefit from open-minded, thoughtful, informed critique, and so I try to make it more widely available than it usually is.

Like I said, I now have a very good system in place. That includes scheduling the performance for a duration and in increments that I can sustain. I definitely get a one-hour break in the middle of each performance day. Normally the performance is three days long, and it’s alright if I am burnt out by the end of it. I usually am. The problem was when I did performance for all three months of Documenta. I burnt out bad after the first two weeks and had to adjust my schedule so that I would make it through to the end of the exhibition, intact and with quality reviews in my wake.

To clarify, artists are not necessarily being asked to perform. They have a lot of leeway in terms of how they present themselves and their art. If they are uncomfortable with the live theatricality of the project, they can drop their work off ahead of time, or send someone to drop it off for them. They are invited but not required to be present during the time their review is being written. I am genuinely not trying to stress them out. As for me, I admit to enjoying the pressure quite a bit. It’s a little bit thrilling, to do something normally hidden out in public.

It is the same goal in any regional arts community, most of which struggle to maintain robust gallery scenes and review columns. I hope to offer a few days of having both, and to suggest the richness that can come from that. I don’t know much about Stavanger, as I purposefully never know much about the art scenes I am to visit. It is up to the host to determine that the project would be locally welcome and worthwhile. Then I just show up and do the job.

I can’t really answer the question, as with a very few exceptions earlier on, the project almost exclusively takes place in regional arts communities. In such places, it has proved more interesting (far more diverse participants, as opposed to all professional) and also useful (because they are less likely to have any local art critics).

There was a family that visited me at Documenta, to present the abstract paintings of their son, who was in his mid-20s. He was severely autistic and practiced art daily at a studio for adults with developmental disabilities. I took his work very seriously and wrote about it as such. When I was done, I looked up and noticed his mother was crying. I was horrified to think I’d upset her, and I went over to speak with her. She told me she was crying because the review was a validation of their parenting, and of the young man’s place in the world. That has stayed with me for a very long time.