Roundtable: The State of Art Criticism

Artlab Editors: As the third year of the Artlab Editorial Fellowship kicks off, Artlab’s Editor, Shannon Lee spoke to Advisors Rahel Aima and Orit Gat to discuss some of the most pressing issues shaping art criticism today—from a dearth of publishers to the growing urgency of subjective experience and global perspectives.

Shannon Lee: I’m so excited to be in discussion with you both about the current state of art criticism. Each of you have such deep wells of experience and distinct perspectives. Given this, I’d love to hear what you would consider to be some of the biggest challenges in art criticism today.

Orit Gat: First and foremost is the paucity of places that commit to and publish art criticism. And even in places that still do, there is a lack of encouragement both for experimentation and for criticism that may not be totally positive.

Because of this, I feel that young critics don't really get to develop their voice and established critics end up performing their taste over and over again.

Rahel Aima: “Performing taste” is a really good way to put it. There’s also a real lack of opportunities, with cuts to arts departments and, in some countries, arts funding too.

I think there's also a death of good editing because it is no longer a separate track from professionalized writing. In most cases, one can’t really get paid decently to write so one ends up working in an adjacent role as an editor. I strongly believe that the way you develop as a critic is not just by writing, regularly, but by being pushed and challenged by a good editor.

There’s also the fact that increasingly, what people want is coverage, not criticism. There’s a perception of criticism being negative. It’s also a tough industry to stay in. You see this with young critics not wanting to take risks because of the potential repercussions—getting blacklisted from opportunities, etc. It’s dangerous, I think, not to acknowledge this.

Orit Gat: I’m so interested in this idea of the difference between criticism and coverage, also because I feel like it defines a certain sense of time and rhythm, or the lack thereof. Working with people over prolonged periods of time is not something a critic's career really allows for these days. I follow artists’ careers. If I’ve written about someone, I will see all their next shows because I feel like I have established a commitment to that person. And if I'm interested in someone but I feel like the work is not there, I'll keep looking at it until I think I have something to say. Coverage doesn't allow for that.

Rahel Aima: We've also moved away from this idea of critic as expert, which is good I think: the only truth possible is of a particular body in space. There's never been objectivity in art criticism. I think there's now more of a recognition of that and a tiny opening of space for different points of view. But I think that pedagogical aspect—which I think is an aspect, not the main driver—has kind of fallen by the wayside with the lessening of this concept of critic as expert, especially with regards to particular gendered or racialized points of view.

Shannon Lee: This is something I’ve considered a lot recently—these schisms between objectivity and subjectivity and how we weigh each of these pedagogical frameworks. Why is one considered more “authoritative?” Why isn't subjective experience also deemed a form of expertise when it comes to cultural criticism?

I wanted to circle back on this idea of durationality and how it doesn’t exist in cultural criticism, particularly now. How have each of you seen the art criticism landscape evolve within your careers?

Orit Gat: I've never had the kind of labor conditions where I could dedicate time and energy in a way that wasn’t on my own dime. I don't think that our generation ever had labor conditions that allowed for long durational practices. Even when I was in editorial positions at major art magazines, we were expected to see shows during our non-working hours.

Rahel Aima: I think you can do it but for me, it really became about volume. I was writing about 20 pieces a month for a few years. That’s what made it sustainable. There was also the fact that I was in the US on a series of different visas and so legally, I mostly wasn’t able to work full time and continued freelancing when, if given the option, I would have stopped.

But I think the elephant in the room here is that you can’t really survive purely as an art critic. You can survive by incorporating all the paths adjacent to it—the catalog essay, teaching, talking, school visits, all of these other things that you do.

But going back to the point about criticism versus coverage, there is this pervasive optic, a fantasy really, of impartiality. Everyone knows that a press strip is very literally and materially paying for coverage. You are expected not to write about your friends or a place you have had a financial transaction with—being paid to do a talk, or write an exhibition text, for example.These conditions are especially tough to avoid if you're living in a smaller city.

Shannon Lee: I want to talk more about the regional specificities around art criticism practices. I’m based in New York currently, where each of you spent a considerable amount of time. But Orit, you are now based in London and Rahel in Dubai. Can you speak to the local conditions and how they inform your practices?

Orit Gat: I have a lot of opinions about this but one of the reasons that I am here is that this is the only country that would have me. I had a lot of immigration problems in the USA and now, after living in New York for a decade, I can only go back on a tourist visa.

When I arrived in London, I found an artistic scene that felt really different and much more open.  And I'm not saying that London is different in its relationship to the market from New York, but I think that New York has this professionalism that really isolates and separates people. In London, because it's a smaller financial game, the scene feels much more socially open and much less protective of its stakes. But those are the only two places that feel on a comparable scale.

Rahel Aima: I had the same experience in New York. Dubai is a much smaller place and the art scene here revolves between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia which has pumped in a lot of money. People protect their stakes very closely.

The biggest issue here is that there aren’t any places to write. We have almost no publications—quite a few shuttered during COVID-19. Functionally, there’s only one publication that covers this region. The government, or government entities, are also involved in just about everything here as well.

When it comes to the global art world, citizenship really matters and limits perspective. I have an Indian passport so I’m not able to directly see huge swathes of the world. A lot of the time, what it enforces is the phenomena of Western citizens of color speaking on behalf of their heritage and background and identity in a way that can be very problematic.

For example, when I go and write about the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, I haven’t lived in India. My experience is extremely different from someone who grew up there and understands that context, but it’s assumed that I can speak to Indian or South Asian art all the same.

Orit Gat: We talked earlier about performing taste but there’s also having to perform a position. I can't tell you how often I felt I was only commissioned to write about certain Middle Eastern artists because I was one of few people writing in English at the time who actually grew up in the region and wrote about the politics of the region directly.

Shannon Lee: This is a really topical point of discussion given that this year's fellowship is about connecting across boundaries. Borders, citizenship, etc are massive factors that dictate who has access to what and whose voices can speak to experience directly.

Given what we were discussing before about the survivability of the art critic, I wonder if either of you have in mind a golden age of art criticism? I’m thinking of this from an economic perspective but I’m also curious what you’d have to say about this from a wider set of value assessments.

Rahel Aima: Depending on who you were and your background, gender, race, etc, it would be a very different decade. I don't have data or a good reason to back this up, but in terms of vibes, my feeling is the ‘80s and ‘90s, particularly the '90s. I think this is influenced largely by Gary Indiana's criticism in the Village Voice. It captures a moment when the critic was in the scene.

Orit Gat: I think that it has something to do with local publishing too. There were brilliant moments in the LA Times around that same decade.

I think about what is classically considered the heyday of criticism, which is the 1950s when you had a bunch of authoritative men who are really interested in defining a discourse. Then I think about criticism in the 1970s with people who I love like Renata Adler—but even then, I don’t think that was a golden age. I still think of a bunch of people struggling for power. What’s amazing about Indiana is that rather than trying to hold on to power, he points to power structures.

Shannon Lee: I love the invocation of Indiana in this context. In light of what we’ve discussed, how do you see the Artlab Editorial Fellowship within the current state of art criticism?

Rahel Aima: There are so few opportunities for people who want to work in this mode. There are even fewer opportunities that aren’t delineated by place or nationality or identity. To have an opportunity on a global scale and which is sustained over the course of a year is very, very rare.

Orit Gat: The recognition that comes with receiving something like the Artlab Editorial Fellowship is so helpful in piercing the self-doubt. Knowing that someone believes in you personally—not because they're a commissioning magazine that needs to cover this region or this position—and believes in your project.

It’s permission to try stuff out. Getting to have a one-on-one relationship with an editor and advisors who aren’t trying to give you the sense that they could have done it better than you is so valuable. I'm so excited to have that.

Rahel Aima: I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have had a mentor at any point in my writing career. The fact that the fellowship is open to writers at any point in their career is also significant. There are lots of opportunities for emerging writers but when you’re midcareer, it’s difficult to know where to go. It feels a bit like you’re just spinning the wheel.

Shannon Lee: Thank you for highlighting the mentorship component. That was something that we developed with a lot of intention. Something that I think all three of us have likely seen in our experiences as editors is how quickly relationships between writers and editors can devolve into a mutual antagonism. With this in mind, we were eager to develop a program that would foster mutual trust and an understanding of each other’s positionalities and goals for each essay.

What’s something you’re looking forward to seeing in this year’s Artlab Editorial Fellowship essays—and the art criticism landscape at large? I’m personally eager to see applicants who are able to unpack their role as an art critic and engage with the specifics of their position actively. How is the critic and culture responsive to one another?

Orit Gat: We spoke earlier about subjectivity and authority. I'm not interested in authority at all but I feel like we are living through a moment when subjectivity in writing is being reassessed as something that has traditionally been very gendered. We now live in a society that appreciates women writing about their lives and I am amazed by that.

I am more interested in a form of criticism that breaks away from authority and comes closer to the experience of being with—something that approaches the point of meeting at the center. Writing that is able to sidestep authority.

Rahel Aima: I think you see this when you use the “I” pronoun in the middle of something… it shifts the tone. It opens up a space. I think because we're not used to seeing it, it can be unexpected and have weight. We rarely see the “I” in the hallowed pages of the art publication.

Sixty percent of the work of the art critic isn’t really about the art. It’s about understanding the atmosphere, the temperature of the room, the context that surrounds the work every time it’s installed in a space. The role of criticism is to take the air around the work seriously.

Shannon Lee: I love that phrasing—taking the air around a show or an artwork seriously. I’ve been revisiting John Dewey’s “Art as Experience” recently to inform my thinking around the power and necessity of the subjective.

Rahel Aima: I’m interested in assertiveness minus the power. I do want big ideas and for people to name movements and create frameworks around culture. I want to see people taking risks.

Orit Gat: I would like to see people who ask themselves what it is they add to the discourse. What is their unique perspective? What is it that you can say about a flower painting that hasn’t been said? How do you not replicate and play with power but rather think about the world and about perspective in a way that is generative and generous? I’d also like to see people who read widely and commit to being the audience to a larger production of culture.

Rahel Aima: Applicants should think about why they want to write about a particular thing. Why them, specifically? What is the perspective they’re bringing to this? And above all, what are the stakes?

I would also like to see people experiment with form again. I would like to see people think about the writing itself, not just the content.