moments of uncertainty | fragments
encounters with art writing and journalism ... or, honey, if you've got nothing nice to say then come right on over and sit next to me.

ONE

Writing about, from or through image seems like an oxymoron. Surely, there are only two ways of doing this? Either by illustrating the text or by narrating the image? That may have been a truth once, but it’s a truth that needs some testing in these post-literate times and a truth that, like so many others, may no longer hold. Those words – illustrating and narrating – allude to the literalism that is currently so disturbing. There needs to be other ways of having these conversations about art, to encourage visual thinking, given that fundamentalism and literalism has so crippled our visual faculties.

It is apparent that the field of art writing is plural, that there are many different ways of writing art. Primarily, I see a distinction made between art history, as a scholarly discipline, and criticism, as a journalistic activity. Does a distinction necessarily place these forms of writing in a hierarchy or order? For my part, because I am not an art historian or a scholar, I am interested to understand how these writings posit experience and expertise of art. How does this writing help accept - or not - that what we see is art?

TWO

Not long ago I attended a panel discussion about art writing (or critical writing as the ‘industry’ prefers to call it). There is an over-emphasis of the distinction between critical and creatively or writerly. Who or what does this distinction serve? The room is full. Something is brewing in this world about art writing – something ruminating about the reason for or effect of this writing. I listen intently. Chaired by curator and critic Michelle Helmrich, the panel is comprised of academics Rex Butler and Ted Colless, newspaper arts editor Rosemary Sorensen and freelance critic and curator Tim Morrell. They hail from a breadth of art writing approaches across scholarship, specialist media, curatorship, history and the daily press. As each panellist attested, there are many different kinds of art writing, so uncertainty about the ‘critical’ aspects of this writing lingers. What is its shape? Art writing often seems to evoke unanswerable questions such as those posed by Helmrich when she asked, “What is art writing? What kind of art writing and media do we need? Are we being well served?”. Art writers rarely seem sure of what they do. Colless points to the quandary of a writer who writes art not as an academic nor as a critic nor as a theorist but as something else:

My writing puzzles me. To my own eyes, at least, it has no shape. It has never really been analytical or theoretical, and I doubt it has even been a type of criticism or reviewing ... I wonder what it is worth, if it is always unfinished and – worse than that – has no objective.1

This statement, which I often cite, upholds an impossibility, an idea of ‘not quite’, that is alluring. Why must certitude prevail? The sort of certitude that results from the literal, as if one reading, interpretation, can be upheld as the true one. Why must it be pinned down and dissected?

There is pleasure in the mystery of this puzzle, just as there is pleasure in this mystery of art. I cringe, am physically repulsed, when addressed as an art critic. “No”, I reply, probably a little ingenuously, “I write about art.” But ‘about’ isn’t exactly what I mean; it’s more like “I write art” or, even more abstruse, “I art write”. ‘About’ is just what other people understand, but to ‘write about’ is to be seen to be solving mysteries rather than creating new ones. And there’s that air of mystery clouding us again, telling us that judgement is impossible. Colless is speaking on the panel about art writing, his thick black-rimmed glasses striking against a manic mane of white hair and pallid complexion. He may well be a magician, a conjurer – he is adept at mysteries, or perhaps conundrum, or perhaps impossibility. He appears unruly. For Colless, the challenge for critics is to go beyond into some kind of 'hyper-' existence - beyond their relationship to the earth, beyond the economics of desire, beyond meaning and value.

The relationship between artists and critics and by association between art and criticism was Tim Morrell's focus. “Art criticism is not designed for the benefit of artists but for selling publications,” he said. However, in talking around ideas of criticism, Morrell said that other kinds of art writing, such as catalogue essays, are quite a different proposition to criticism. The difference lies, primarily, in whose interests are being served. Catalogue essays are ordinarily commissioned by artists or galleries, often as part of didactic information, even marketing, of the artwork/artists. Interests in this form of writing are heavily vested. By contrast, criticism has a requirement of detachment and an obligation to readers. “Criticism can’t collude with artists,” said Morrell. “Yet, art criticism makes a difference to artists’ lives ... Artists are an easy target.” While the nature, perhaps responsibility, of criticism is to constantly question and inquire - to be useful - art writing can also aspire to be like art. This idea of an art writing that aspires delights me.

Rex Butler, another academic, talks about the mystery and secret of art that must be matched by a secret in art writing. He reveals trade secrets when he said, echoing James Elkins’ assertion, “critics talk about themselves under the pretext of talking about others”. For Butler, art writing needs to create something that did not exist prior whether a new mystery, a problem or a secret. Because art writing arises from a dialogue with artwork/s, he says, the writing must be compelling and create a mystery equal to the work.

Secrets, lies, mysteries, impossibility are the stuff of uncertainty. In our art writing we might excavate that uncertainty, to reveal nothing more than the uncertainty itself or to say that there are mysteries here that we do not command. 

THREE

As the only journalist and editor on the panel, Rosemary Sorensen talked about the newspaper as the context for art writing and reporting. She also seemed to say that the future of the arts section of the paper is a tenuous arrangement. Partly, that's attributable to the business model of newspapers, based largely on advertising revenue, but also because there was not much tolerance within the newspaper environment for diverse styles of thinking and writing. Newspapers prefer the literal, the ‘aboutness’ of things rather than their uncertainty. Sorensen, of course, has been criticised for her derogatory commentaries about critical writing, such comments, she acknowledged, were “cheap”.

Of all the writers on this panel, Sorensen was perhaps located most remotely from or external to the visual arts - the others are all embedded in the culture of the artworld as curators, critics, historians, academics and the like. She is embedded in a newspaper and its culture, not the artworld. Sorensen said that there needs to be a revitalisation of thinking and some attention paid to the kind of writing new modes and intents might produce. Newspapers are indeed frustrating entities but also caught in the technological fray of rapid reinvention. For Sorensen, it could be a perfect time to adopt new styles of writing to somehow support and encourage those changes.

In talking about a gap between academic writing and journalism, she also pointed to fallout from the uptake of French theory that resulted in intellectuals being absent from the pages of our newspapers. Sorensen isn't the first person to make such statements - apparently, the fallout from French theory (postmodernism, deconstruction, etc) has spread itself thin across the cultural terrain - but, if nothing else, it's really quite heartening to know that the Arts Editor of our metro daily is thinking about these intensities and issues. Another way of thinking about this theory is that, while perplexing and difficult, it is also intended to provide tools for thinking critically about and destabilising our political, media and cultural lives. Quite poetically, Sorensen also said that critical writing can, perhaps should, talk about everything. And the quandary journalists, like herself, find themselves in is how to defend this difficult writing and how to shift media analysis, particularly in an environment where she, quite probably like many others, fight to keep those newspaper spaces open.

FOUR

I’ve just returned a magazine to the place where I found it. In it, I was reading one of those Q&A sessions with a celebrity in a popular women’s magazine. The celebrity, a singer, is asked, “What book has changed your life?”. It’s a stock question and I’ve often seen a film equivalent of it ie “What film has changed your life?”. What intrigues me about these questions is that the change is always assumed to be positive. I’ve never heard someone say “Well such and such a book ruined my life” or “My life shattered into a million pieces after I saw such and such a film”. I’ve also never heard or read of anyone asked, “What artwork changed your life?” or “What architecture changed your life?” for the better or worse. The implication is that story, the word, changes our lives but image or space does not. This is a troubling bigotry. We immerse ourselves in spaces and images, just as we do in stories or narratives.

I recently listened to the UK critic Matthew Colling deliver a lecture. He appeared uncomfortable, maybe even agitated, while speaking – making jokes at the expense of the art world, the full auditorium laughs in the right places – advancing a thesis towards a new formalism. His talk drifts along a series of clever quips that eventually strike like sharply honed arrowheads. One stands out in my memory: droll and weary, he said, “We need to let go of this idea that we can be deeply moved by art”. The audience chortles, how we love reflexivity, but I do so nervously. Not because I am bothered by reflexivity but because I can’t help but wonder what intensity might be lost. Being moved by art or architecture must be inextricably bound with our capacity to feel compassion, pleasure and the rest. However, to be moved is not the same as being changed, but again we see this matter of being deeply moved as being a positively challenging experience, an expression of our higher or nobler emotions. Surely, we can be moved by art and architecture and, in these movements, our lives might be changed for better or worse, that there are base as well as noble responses. James Elkins’ surveyed art historians as a result of his own wondering about the tearlessness of this profession. In talking about seeing and looking, Elkins writes “I don’t think of pictures as dangerous: When I look at an image, it doesn’t occur to me that it might ruin my composure, or alter the way I think, or change my mind about myself. There is no risk, no harm in looking.” In reading about art and in knowing more about these images through this mediation, Elkins proposes that “information smother[s] our capacity to really feel”. The more we write and read, the less we feel? In a review essay of Elkins’ works, Katerina Duskova identifies another issue arising from these uncertain relationships between text and image, writing and looking, reading and seeing. She concludes her essay with a warning, “art history itself is threatened by the notion that art historical writing might be the most important element in the discipline … Writing is interesting, but it is only part of the scholarship, and when Elkins works as a writer he departs from art history.” Another moment of uncertainty.

FIVE

Over several years, we have seen the reduction of arts coverage in the mainstream press, including the ABC, the only free-to-air television channel that has consistently favoured arts programming. Hearing Rosemary Sorensen speak at ARC about the tenuousness of the arts pages, adds some weight to this trend of diminishing column space. But there are other trends here too. In a recent report in Florida’s Herald-Tribune, Jay Handelman, echoing research from the National Arts Journalism Program, “For the past few years, as critics have retired or taken buyouts, they weren't always replaced. If they were, it might have been with a freelance writer, which means a reduced presence in those newsrooms to champion certain kinds of coverage.”

But what sort of reporting remains? Increasingly, we’ve seen rather hostile epistles about arts funding and artworks from journalists who obviously have no interest in art. Franz Ehmann is a Brisbane-based artist who has been repeatedly attacked by the media for having received grants. Most recently, in the Sunday Mail, Ehmann, having committed the crime of receiving public funding to produce new and challenging work, was targeted in a report headed, 'Yes, but is it art?' (Sunday Mail, 6 November 2005 p 23). Journalist David Murray jockeys his obviously vast knowledge and expertise about art to lampoon Ehmann's new work exhibited at the Institute of Modern Art. He obviously knows much about art because he puts quote marks around the word when referring to Ehmann's work, which must indicate that, in Murray's estimation, it's not really art and is a waste of tax payers' money.

The incongruity of Ehmann's installation for Murray appears to be that the artist (a chef by trade and whose work often pivots around metaphors of food and nourishment) has recreated the last meals of death row inmates and left them to rot in the gallery space. Murray suffers the curse of literalism and a failure of visual literacy, seeing only rotting food rather than an event of symbolic import, perverse curiosity or current political poignancy. He also fails to see that Ehmann is an artist of national repute and international standing and that the creation of challenging work is essential to a dynamic civic or public culture. Art like Ehmann's isn't intended to be easily digested and that's where it's value and significance lies. Why does uncertainty in or about art result in such dismissive commentary? In asking the question of whether Ehmann’s work is art, the journalist simply assumes it is not. He does not canvas opinions other than how own, nor does he provide any insight into how he arrives at his opinions other to say that a plate of food is just a plate of food or yesterday’s newspaper spread on the floor is for protecting the floor from droppings and other waste. Art is not a solvable puzzle. We cannot always control what we see. Art creates mysteries and uncertainties. Or, as Butler proposes, art has/is a secret.

SIX

Criticism makes us angry. The “cheap” comments that Sorensen referred to were in her piece in The Courier-Mail on 21 May 2005. She proclaimed “time to clean up artspeak”. It surprises me that she doesn't actually just use the expression 'artwank' and be done with it. Clearly, Sorensen doesn't understand a great deal about the contemporary gallery environment and the sorts of territories and needs that catalogue essays have to address. Simarily, she doesn't seem to understand that visual arts is an environment in which many different kinds of writing form the undercurrents of art criticism. It's a fraught business and catalogues really aren't intended to placate the whims of newspaper arts editors and journalists

It's also a shame that she uses the review of Gordon Bennett and Peter Robinson's exhibition at the Institute of Modern Art to lash out in this manner. These are important artists. A bit like arts journalism in newspapers, catalogue essays aren't going to please all the people but for Sorensen to simply tilt at the writings associated with this exhibition, is a little like fighting a chimera.

Further, she expresses a desire to know “how does the writer respond to the work of art?”. Pity that Sorensen can't see the wood for the trees  and  instead makes a range of allegations about the writings in this catalogue being misleading and dishonest. These texts, like all art writing, are a writer's response to the work by two high profile arts professionals, a curator and an academic. So what's Sorensen's complaint? The crux seems to be that she just doesn't like, or perhaps doesn't quite understand, the writing style or the narrative.

It's always worth noting when mainstream media professionals seek to silence commentary in various, independent arenas, like the arts, by discrediting the value and the quality of these commentaries, often taking a conflicting position against expertise, drawing out opinions from people only to shoort them down. One of the issues that arises here is about the appropriate spaces and media in which to draw expertise in the arts into dialogue with audiences. The media seem to have love-hate relationships with experts, on the one hand demonising or ridiculing them and then on the other exhorting them. Expertise in the arts is often not taken seriously except in the burgeoning independent arts media. It sometimes seems that expert or informed arts opinion is too fluid and uncertain - perhaps irrational - to warrant serious attention. Art, it is repeatedly said, is a matter of personal taste and preference. However, while experts might provide much needed advocacy and commentary, in Australia our arts reporting and coverage seem to be on the decline. Our arts, now, are under all manner of threat and disruption, not least of all due to strange policy twists and turns. We not only need our cultural and arts experts - whether academic or critics or journalists - but we also need them to be heard and taken seriously.

Notes
1 Edward Colless, The Error of My Ways, IMA Publishing: Brisbane.


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