Posts Tagged “Art-Criticism”

07w44:5 Dave Hickey

by timothy. 2 Comments

‘Now he teaches English,’ Sheila Heti writes in her intro to the interview with David Hickey, and this instantly reminds me of Richard Rorty, who I’ve been reading lately. (His Contingency book is so fantastic). Rorty, who was sometimes called the greatest American philosopher, ended his days teaching philosophy to literature students, having walked away from the academy’s philosophy departments. It seems that the literature department is the contemporary haven for independent thinkers. – Timothy

Interview with Dave Hickey | Sheila Heti
http://www.believermag.com/issues/200711/?read=interview_hickey
“SH: OK, so what are the supposed art magazines interested in hearing about, if not about art?

DH: They want touting. In twenty years we’ve gone from a totally academicized art world to a totally commercialized art world, and in neither case is criticism a function. We’re all supposed to be positive about art. Nobody plays defense! I mean, my job, to a certain extent, is to be in the net. My job is to mow stuff down.
[…]
SH: I suppose the schools have something to do with the change—the craziness that you have to get an MFA to be an artist.

DH: Thirty-five thousand MFAs a semester, 90 percent of whom never make another work of art.

SH: And do you think that that kind of system produces—

DH: Almost no one. Idiots with low-grade depression. When I opened my gallery in the late ’60s, Peter Plagens—who’s now the critic for Newsweek and still shows his paintings—was the only artist I represented who had been to graduate school. The MFA thing is an invention of the ’70s. Its raison d’être is evaporating.

SH: Which is?

DH: Training sissies for teaching jobs. Well, the official raison d’être was to create an intellectual and pedagogical justification for the most frivolous activity in Western culture, so you go back and read things from the past. It’s the traditional Renaissance desire that artists should be taken seriously, and that art not be a practical but a liberal art. But I tend to think it’s a practice, like law or like medicine.

SH: Right, and nobody wants to be a clown! No artists want to be clowns. That’s a shame.”

07w41:2 More 'art-world is too rich for its own good' bitching

by timothy. 0 Comments

The first half of this decade saw stories in the MSM complaining that art was too theoretical, and in this latter half, we are seeing stories complaining that the art world is too rich.

Has Money Ruined Art? | Jerry Saltz
http://nymag.com/arts/art/season2007/38981/
“Meanwhile, do we think less of an artist whose art sells for less or doesn’t sell at all? After all, more than 99 percent of all artists fit into the Lifestyles of the Not Rich and Not Famous category. Can the general public look at contemporary art without thinking about money? Will young artists having 30-month careers be able to also have 30-year careers, or are we simply eating our young? And if money is mainly what people are thinking about, does that mean art’s audience will turn cynical or hostile toward it?”

Soaring Prices Turn Art Into a Commodity… | Farah Nayeri
Link