More on the Role of the Critic (Theta Fine Art Forum 4/8/00)

Above, the role of the critic was mentioned. I made a little analogy about Marines not understanding the role of military historians.

While it's very trendy for artists to scorn (at least outwardly) critics as those who can't make art, it's a big misunderstanding to dismiss them as irrelevant. Not because of any commercial punishment you might get, or for fear of a bad review (they're human too, and bad reviews can be for loads of reasons) but because they have a very serious role in art.

Until I read a little book by Clement Greenberg, Homemade Esthetics, I didn't understand it either. As a Marine, pretty good at my job, I'd read the famous military historians. Mostly the ones who were retired military men themselves. I gave them credit for knowing something because they'd been there. What I failed to value in that approach was the objectivity of those who had not "been there" but were observing from a much better position because they hadn't.

Critics know about art - as much as anyone can. They study it from a historical and cultural and aesthetic basis. We who make the stuff really only know about our own stuff. About our art we certainly know more than anyone else. About our own medium, we certainly know our tools and materials better than a critic does. But we do not know where our work fits within the bigger picture of art photography and certainly not within the much bigger pictures of American art or Western Art.

It's the job of the critic to make judgments. He judges first the aesthetics, then relevance, then placement within our culture. He will recognize triviality because he sees so much, and will dismiss anything that doesn't add something.

Just as there have been a zillion battles in the last hundred years, the military historian isn't interested in any that don't: a) result in a changed situation, or; b) show something new and different in the art or science of war. If a company action is done by the book, with results being what the book predicted, then it probably shouldn't have even been fought. The two CO's could have gotten together over coffee, plotted it, decided the winner and gone back to their troops having saved lives.

As artists our work first must be shown. If it's not shown, there's absolutely no point in making it. (I'd love to hear an argument to the contrary though.) And if it's shown, it will be judged. It will be judged by other artists, according to their own biases and in the context of their own work. And other artists are in no way qualified to judge art because of those biases. But we always will anyway.

Our work will be judged by other viewers. Family and friends will tell us it's great, and they don't know about art, but they know what they like. And they are telling the truth: they DON'T know about art. But it's nice to hear the nice words and get approval anyway.

But the viewers who really do know about art, and who not only know what they like, but why they like it, are the critics. To dismiss critics' opinions is more or less a presupposition that the critics won't like us, so we just dismiss them first and avoid the pain. But if the critics don't like us, it's probably not for petty reasons. It probably is because we're not contributing to art in their eyes, and they are the right ones to make that judgment.

And as a final little comment - if you think we have a bunch to learn to make our stuff, think of how much more the critic does. Not only the whole history of art, but the philosophers, Hegel, Kant and all the rest that have contributed to the knowledge of aesthetics, the cultural and societal impact of past art and the whole kit. It takes more hard work to be a good critic that it does to be an outstanding photographer.

-Don