“The Crisis in Criticism”

A lecture by Raphael Rubinstein

Is it true that (as David Hickey has said) a critic without enemies isn’t really a critic?

Does the breakdown of high-low distinctions mean that good-bad distinctions have also broken down?

Is the size of the contemporary art world a factor in the crisis of criticism?

Are curators new critics?

Does criticism need to evolve just as the art that it responds to evolves?

Is Brice Marden as good as Joan Mitchell? Is Sue Williams as good as Willem de Kooning? Is Sue Williams as good as David Reed? Can we still ask such questions?

Has painting become a minor art?

In the March 2003 edition of Art in America magazine, I published “A Quiet Crisis,” a polemical essay about the condition of criticism and the state of painting. The article was in response to several phenomena: a widespread unwillingness on the part of art critics to offer personal judgments; the effect of globalization and the rise of the curator on criticism; a perceived disconnect with the past that seems to contribute to a flood of mediocre but widely acclaimed paintings; the need to explore new genealogies for current art, and how some artists are taking curatorial matters into their won hands.

The essay has generated a great deal of comment, not all of it favorable. I am continuing to explore the issues in “A Quiet Crisis” – and a subsequent article, “Whose 1980’s?” (Art in America, December 2003) – and to engage the responses to it by other critics. At the same time I am trying to incorporate the issues I raised into my own critical writing, which has inspired A Critical Mess: Critics on the State of their Practice.

Hard Press titles and collaborations with Raphael Rubinstein:

Critical Mess: Critics on the State of their Practice (due in 2006)
Polychrome Profusion: Selected Criticism 1990-2002
Dramatic Gestures: Marjorie Strider
From the Basement of the Café Rilke
Postcards from Alphaville

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