SO MUCH FOR THE DISCOURSE
“You could work hard for weeks on an essay, put all your intellectual and imaginative effort into reading an artist’s work, and never hear a word about it upon publication — unless the artist or their representatives disagreed with your opinion. So much for the discourse. One famous artist became angry at me at this private viewing for having had the temerity to write that his videos reminded me of film director Andrei Tarkovsky’s work. Another minor player phoned to insist, threateningly, that I should consider committing suicide after a mildly critical piece had been published about an alternative art school he was involved with. I didn’t even write the damn thing. ”
It’s 2009. I’m a recent art graduate. The financial crisis makes every day feel like Sunday. It’s never Friday. My best mate is being headhunted by two Dublin galleries. If envy is a “scumbag vice” Dave Hickey, I’m a scumbag.
I repeat check my email for something. Graveyard. I want it all. Exhibitions. Reviews. Gallery Representation. Those who want know how I want. I want part of the artworld. That island of exclusivity and sameness and bad. Yeah. Desperately Bad. I’m desperate.
I start writing. Not reviews. Critical essays on the local art scene and international artworld like “The Politics of the Centre” and “Why Rancière? Why Not?” I’m pissed and yet pleasured by words. Especially masturbatory, critical ones. Dissent is never decent.
For some Angry-White-Entitled-Man reason I feel rejected and critical of the world I have chosen to wander. PAY ATTENTION MOTHER FUCKERS (Bruce Nauman, 1973.)
If Rancière, Why not me? I wait. I write something while waiting. I wait and write some more. Editors take an interest. I’m both dumb and clever enough to be critical because no one else is. Niche.
I’m edited. I go along with the edits. I learn about me and the artworld through editors. How to tiptoe and jab. I then don’t go along with the edits. Why do I have to use “perhaps” or “maybe” when I know? I know everything because I know nothing.
I feel accepted through words. Peddling words about other artists’ art. Not my art. I think I’m being generous by being wordy about others. It’s hard to give being an artist. You have to take to make it. Silence.
Things change. I get exhibitions. Loads. I’m caught between critical words and local art acceptance. Everything is too local. I write as if “I am still this guy” (Sean Landers, 2017). It’s part performance. Part real. Being an artist in the world is about being many things not one thing. I’m good at being split. The hyphenated class.
First an artist. Then a critic. Then an artist-critic. Criticism is a prosthetic limb to kick-start art from time to time when its spluttering. Mule criticism. It’s all for free. Lanced of money. It’s the way it is. Having fun. Words are fun. The Word is the wound you enter art through. Like bruised artist statement.
Circa 2010 “art writing” appears on the horizon. Its Kinky silhouette. Its perky calves. Its twilight tenderness. Its inky permanency. Its oxygenated self-sufficiency. “The Word is the wound you enter art through” is me being an art writer. Perhaps. Maybe.
Art criticism is in crisis the seminars say circa 2009-2011. Agency is over-powering discourse. Artist-run are less DIY. Art criticism goes out without a whimper. Quiet.
Circa 2022 art writing is in crisis. According to Sternberg Press and Dan Fox and others. Art writing is synonymous with crisis. Always has. Will be.
Dan Fox has been in crisis for some time. He started at Frieze Mag at twenty-two. Stayed there for twenty years. Recently wrote a book on Limbo. Before that on Pretentiousness. Art does Pretentiousness and Limbo real well.
His essay in Art Writing In Crisis is the best of a bad bunch. It’s truly great. It runs through decades of artworld malcontent with a soupçon of reward.
It’s great because he’s telling our story. He definitely stayed too long. Ground it out. Took the hits. The artist egos. The power brokers. Meta-institutional critiques. Curator “messianism”. Problem is Dan Fox mistook and misplaced desire for need. Like us all.
Reading him you realise the centre is not much different from the local. Uncanny. Bad relationships are only bad with perspective. Inside is a different story. The bad is veiled by what Dan Fox diagnoses as “cognitive dissonance”. In other words, self-serving denial. But bad is more fun than good.
It was probably the hand-written letter that Dan Fox received from a grateful artist that did it. Five years into the job the false promise of a handmade book inscribed to him “with empathy.” Fuck!
Dan Fox is not a victim. Neither am I. Nor you. We kinda knew what the artworld was before we entered. That’s part of the seduction. The want. The challenge. The bad. Something we certainly don’t need. Need comes later when we exit. Premature or belated. Gracefully or not. As Dan Fox is discovering. As we all will. Don’t forget to have fun.—James Merrigan