From Sarah Thornton’s “7 Days in the Art World”
“My one rule,” he [Dave Hickey, an art critic] says in his free-wheeling southwestern drawl, “is that I do not do group crits. They are social occasions that reinforce the norm. They impose a standardized discourse. They privilege unfinished, incompetent art.
[…] “I don’t care about an artist’s intentions. I care if the work looks like it might have some consequences.” (p.54)
Moreover, artists often don’t fully understand what they’ve made, so other people’s readings can help them “see at a conscious level” what they have done. Kelly [Mary Kelly, a feminist conceptualist] believes in preparing to view the work properly: “It is a bit like yoga. You must empty your mind and be receptive. It’s about being open to the possibility of what you could know.” (p.55)
When artists are put on the spot, Jones [William E. Jones, filmmaker] feels, it [group crits] helps them “develop thick skins and come to see criticism as rhetoric rather than personal attack.” Finally, art students need to understand their motivations deeply, because in grad school it’s imperative to discover which parts of their practice are expendable. As Jones explains, “You have to find something that is true to yourself as a person – some non-negotiable core that will get you through a forty-year artistic practice.” (p.55)
Matthew Higgs, director of White Columns, the oldest artists-led exhibition space in New York, on what makes a great work of art: “It’s not about innovation for innovation’s sake or the ambition or be novel or unique. All good art gives us an opportunity for a different relationship with time.” To this, Higgs added in a barely audible mumble, “It’s usually about an individual’s radically idiosyncratic interpretation of the world. We’re inherently fascinated by work like that because we’re inherently fascinated by other people.” (p.132)
Grayson Perry, artist: “The monk-artist is an attractive archetype in a world where there are only so many – the belligerent drunk, the batty dame, the flaming tortured soul. It’s a big part of the attraction of art – the work as a relic of the artist/saint/holy fool. People want to touch the cloth or whatever. It’s part of the religion.” (p.138)
In the latter [a dictionary of delusional conditions common to artists and critics, titled Dupe] he [Jeff Gibson] defined schizophrenic appraisal as “wild swings in evaluative criteria brought on by competitive envy” and sideline omniscience as “a heightened sense of enlightenment based on inexperience.” (p.153)
Roberta Smith, art critic: “Doubt is a central part of intelligence, and doubt is hard to control.” (p.172)
“Hobsbawn [Eric Hobsbawn, renowned British historian] said that he would summarize his life as a ‘protest against forgetting’. I think that might be the best definition for what curating could be – ‘a protest against forgetting.’” – Hans Ulrich Obrist
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