Con Man
It goes without saying that critics should know their subject. Ben Lewis’ odd and ignorant diatribe, ‘So Who Put the Con in Contemporary Art?’, was published in London’s Evening Standard on 16 November and belies such logic. Confusing and conflating market forces with what is actually being produced on the complex and multi-layered stage that comprises the contemporary art world, he writes, ‘You will search the colour magazines of the art press, such as frieze, Art Review and Art Forum and barely find a critical article, let alone a critical word. They are simply in the business of selling art, epitomised by the transmutation of frieze from magazine to art fair.’ Later on he spits ‘The art world is dirty, corrupt and immoral and if there was a name for such a crime, these people would be charged with perverting the course of art history. Of course, the art world has always been like this.’
Phew! Where to start? Lewis, who has never met me or any of the other editors of frieze, appears also never to have read the magazine. Over the 16 years that frieze has been in print we have always enforced the strictest separation between advertising and editorial, a rule that has remained unchanged since the inception of Frieze Art Fair. Since the magazine’s beginning, we have aimed to publish only the highest standards of art criticism by established and emerging writers, critics, poets and novelists. To recap: every issue of the magazine includes around seven monographs, a questionnaire, regular columns and 25 reviews from around the world, from a variety of commercial and non-profit galleries, artist-run spaces and museums. We have published numerous themed issues, exploring subjects as varied as the relationship between art and ecology, feminism, slowness and slapstick. We pride ourselves on both the impartiality of our writers, and the quality of their writing. Reviews are often critical, but unlike Lewis, we back up our criticisms with facts and well-argued and researched opinions. Lewis’ diatribe is not simply ignorant; it is deeply insulting to a generation of writers who have published their work in frieze and who have only ever approached their work with the highest integrity and rigour.
Lewis seems to think that the art world is a single glitzy, corrupt entity inhabited solely by Damien Hirst, a few lucrative galleries and the auction houses. He doesn’t mention the hundreds of artists who work hard every day, often for many years, and barely manage to scrape a living. He doesn’t mention the myriad non-profit art spaces, run by sincere, informed people, whose only aim is to expand and explore art’s remit in contemporary society. He doesn’t mention the countless talented writers who work tirelessly, and often for little reward, simply because writing and thinking about art are integral to who they are. He doesn’t mention that most people who visited Frieze Art Fair aren’t collectors; they’re the general public, who, for the price of a cinema ticket, get to see works of art from more than 150 of the best art galleries from around the world, view a series of curated projects and sit in on an extensive talks programme that every year has included major international critics, curators and artists debating the state of contemporary art.
Lewis is simply perpetuating the kind of anti-intellectual resentment against art that is usually to be found in the tabloids. It is astonishing that the BBC has allegedly commissioned someone so willfully ignorant to make a documentary on the contemporary art market – almost as astonishing, in fact, that someone who professes to be interested in art should be so reductive and unimaginative in his approach to its contemporary manifestations.
Jennifer Higgie
Jennifer Higgie is co-editor of frieze
Responses
Added by dan_fox,
Jennifer’s hard-hitting and articulate retort to Ben Lewis’ myopic article raises important issues around the topic of contemporary art’s current high-media visibility.
In her response, Jennifer pithily states: “Lewis seems to think that the art world is a single glitzy, corrupt entity inhabited solely by Damien Hirst, a few lucrative galleries and the auction houses.” As far as the UK goes, the broadsheet press can often be just as complicit as the centre-right tabloids (whose allergy to the visual arts is as predictable as rain during Wimbledon or England losing the cricket) in perpetuating cynicism and suspicion towards the cutting-edge of contemporary art. Journalists with no specialist knowledge of contemporary art are often commissioned to write about the subject: would the sports editors of major newspapers ever draft in, say, a books reviewer, to cover the football? Names such as Hirst and Tracey Emin – figures today more interesting for their role in popular culture than what they contribute to serious art discourse – are often used metonymically to represent all contemporary artists at work. Charles Saatchi and Nicholas Serota are frequently mentioned in the same breath, as if they are high priests of a shadowy crypto-Masonic sect who meet to decide who’s in and who’s out, what is validated as art and what is not. Money is the central topic of discussion – record auction prices, is such-and-such a piece of sculpture really worth the six-figure sum paid for it – not enquiry into why an artist made something the way they did, what their ideas are, where they’re coming from. Literary prizes such as the prestigious Man Booker Prize are by and large treated with respect and intelligence: the Turner Prize – an event which has, for better or for worse, done much to significantly raise the profile of contemporary art in this country – is still approached with salivating suspicion by journalists covering the event, eager to pounce at any sniff of intellectual fraud.
It’s easy to make sweeping judgements about the contemporary art world – the complex networks of myriad organizations and individuals Jennifer mentions in her Comment piece - just as it’s easy for a non-specialist to make sweeping judgements about anything from football to the war in Iraq. Lewis’ reductivist approach simply makes for good copy. From an Evening Standard editor’s point of view, it’s a column-filling, low-brow digestible read on the Tube home; ill-researched polemic masquerading as tough investigative journalism. Yet the editors of such publications have a responsibility to present a balanced picture of contemporary art just as they have a responsibility to every other subject they cover.
For this, their correspondents need to be informed; Lewis evidently isn’t. (I’ve watched a lot of TV in my life but that does not qualify me to make a TV programme.) Lewis’ vituperative dismissal of criticism, or lack thereof, in art magazines begs not just the question of whether or not he’s ever properly looked at any, but also the question of what he understands criticism to be. Criticism is not just about being negative or positive – the old-fashioned connoisseur-critic presiding in judgement over the worth of a given artwork – it is about responding with imagination and intelligence to the ways in which an artwork function. Criticism is about opening up the paths of intellectual discourse that can proceed from an artwork. It is also about bearing witness, recording, observing. It is about reserving the right to take any side the critic wishes. If you want to make a fast buck in the boom-time art market, believe me, criticism isn’t the place to do it.
Added by Adrian_Searle,
I would like to put in a word for the poor journalist, but I can’t. There is nothing new about the Evening Standard article; it was a lazy, unoriginal and mediocre page-filler. Supposedly well-informed art critics sometimes write page-fillers too; nowadays they often call them blogs.
The weird thing is that the authors of attacks like this always affect a tone of wide-eyed horror, as though they were the first to have realised that contemporary art is all a confidence trick and a conspiracy to keep real talent down. There will always be a place for the outraged expose of art world smugness, decadence and corruption, but it would be more useful (and fun to read) if such things were at least accurate. it was on this point that Lewis’s attack failed. Personally I don’t care about the corruption and I don’t mind the decadence. its the laziness and the mediocrity that get me down.
Newspapers are keen to keep up the appearance of being in touch. Telling an editor that Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin are not the most interesting or important artists around is like watching a child’s reaction to having a favourite toy or a comforter confiscated: the world, suddenly, is bewildering. They no longer know who to rely on for a bit of cheap copy. Having a few sneering hacks loose in the yard to bark at passers-by is a way of maintaining the illusion of hard-bitten don’t-fuck-with-me resolve. It also diverts attention from all that soft-core celebrity copy generated by artists and the art world social high-life.
Critics themselves are not to be excluded from this game. Some of my colleagues don’t just court controversy, they invent it so as to appear tough and independent minded, adopting extreme and splenetic opinions only in order to make their writing appear more urgent and vital than it really is. Perhaps they crave authority. From an editorial point of view negative criticism can be hot and sexy, even though there is nothing quite so unattractive as the simulated shock of the outraged commentator. Such posturings, and pandering to prejudice, are an insult to the reader.
In the end critics do have to say whether art is any good or not, but there are many more interesting things to do along the way, as Dan Fox rightly states. You have to make time for such critical journeys, and there is only so much ambivalence and shilly-shallying about that newspaper editors can take. Copy editors also delight in chucking out any uncommon words or any complicated bits of hard criticism one might slip in, as being too opaque for the average reader. This is to confuse dumbing down for clarity. There are more words spent on art now than ever before. The audience is more knowledgable, and pieces like Ben Lewis’s just don’t have the clout of informed opinion behind them. It isn’t worth the sweat.
Adrian Searle
Added by hendriks,
Great, isn’t it? Mr. Lewis hasn’t just gone after the scared cows, he went after the whole herd. Or something like that. I don’t feel Ben Lewis brings a very unique and thought provoking perspective in the present environment that is worth sharing. So please, redirect your creative energies towards identifying it.
Added by theuniversalben,
Dear Jennie, Dan and Adrian,
It’s very kind of you all to take the time to vilify me! It would be boring if I was to mount a detailed defence of my polemic, but may I raise three issues:
1. You all seem to think that my article for the ES contained ‘inaccuracies’. Do you think, for the benefit of the other readers here, and me, you actually could point out what they were?
2. I wasn’t surprised to see Jennie accuse me of ‘anti-intellectualism’, because for a long time now this has been the only way that contemporary art’s proselytisers can counter criticism. However, unfortunately for you, I am by any standards, an intellectual. I am going to sound lame if I recite my CV and day jobs, so you’ll just have to google, imdb or amazon me, to see how wrong you are. The challenge of someone like me for you is that I am saying “I am clever and I think that a lot of this art isn’t.” What do you say to that?
3. I think there is merit in the point you make that there is tiny daft bubble of speculatively-traded artists at the top end of the market which should not be taken as representative of the culture of contemporary art – though I am not sure where you would draw the line. But I have an equal problem with the art at the other end of the spectrum – all those messy doodles and boring photos that line the walls of ‘emerging’ galleries for which art critics like yourselves then claim lofty philosophical significance. The problem is the redefinition of criticism, as Dan puts it, as “about opening up the paths of intellectual discourse that can proceed from an artwork.” What this means is that the art critic then starts explaining how a revelation about Baudrillard ‘can’ come from a cheese sandwich.
Ben Lewis
Added by tom_morton,
Ben Lewis writes that ‘It would be boring if I was to mount a detailed defence of my polemic’, and also that ‘I am by any standards, an intellectual’. Is it only me who sees something of a contradiction in these two statements? Detailed defence of one’s arguments is, by any standard, a hallmark of the intellectual, and something that authors of the vast majority of reviews, features and other texts published in frieze aspire to. Such an aspiration is - perhaps unsurprisingly given its status as what Dan correctly identifies as ‘a column-filling, low-brow digestible read on the Tube home’ - conspicuously absent from Lewis’ Standard piece.
Lewis’ claim to intellectualism (reminiscent of the literary anti-talent who loftily speaks of ‘we writers’) in the context of his other remarks is, however, not quite as silly as his belief that the fact that he considers himself to be ‘clever’ and ‘that a lot of this art isn’t’ is a ‘challenge’ to Jennifer, Dan, Adrian, or anybody else who approaches contemporary art with sensitivity and critical rigour. Whether Lewis is indeed ‘clever’ is not for me to say (although it’s useful to remember that being clever is a somewhat different thing from being either well-informed or wise), but if so this does not elevate him to the status of the fly in art’s unctuous, over-priced ointment. Plenty of ‘clever’ people, indeed plenty of intellectuals, have little interest in the art of today, much in the same way that they might have little interest in recent developments in pure mathematics, or experimental dance. This, of course, is fine. What’s not quite so fine is when they claim that art is an elaborate cultural and financial confidence trick that they, through the petty fact of their own ignorant, unimpressed self, have exposed.
To demonstrate that the Emperor is naked, one has to point to the non-existence of his new clothes. This is something that Lewis’ piece and his subsequent comments here utterly fail to do. He writes above of ‘all those messy doodles and boring photos that line the walls of “emerging” galleries’ without ever explaining why messiness is not a virtue, why boredom might not have its own interest, or even why, as his scare-quotes around the word ‘emerging’ seem to indicate, a young business receiving its first flush of success is a such a terrible, terrible thing. Similarly, his contention that the kind of criticism practiced by many frieze contributors involves ‘explaining how a revelation about Baudrillard ‘can’ come from a cheese sandwich’ (those scare-quotes again!) reveals nothing but a) his rather sixth-formish sense of humour, and b) that he is woefully out of touch with the complex set of social, cultural and economic relationships that he so inadequately critiques. As any frieze staffer could tell him, we all exchanged Baudrillard for Ranciere years ago (there was an internal memo and everything) and, as the lap dogs of our overlords in the international commercial art world conspiracy, the only food source we’re familiar with is those delicious wee canapes served up at all the very best gallery openings.
Added by dan_fox,
Ben
In answer to the issues you raise:
1. It’s not so much ‘inaccuracy’ (to be accurate, a word neither myself nor Jennifer use...) that we object to, although this is implicit in your argument, but rather the unsubstantiated accusation that art magazines and art critics are ‘simply in the business of selling art’. That and the charge that anyone involved in the art world with being ‘dirty, corrupt and immoral’.
2. I don’t see your position as a challenge, for I really don’t mind whether you think contemporary art is or is not ‘clever’. (Vladimir Nabokov – by anyone’s standards a ‘clever’ man – thought that music was ‘merely an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds’ but that never stopped music being made or people enjoying his books.) If we were to meet, you would probably be surprised to find that we do not consider every single work of contemporary art we encounter ‘clever’, ‘good’ or ‘intellectual’ either; and that ‘art critics like ourselves’ do not mainline on French critical theory (as you suggested in an interview made with the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/oct/20/mondaymediasection1) in order to ‘claim lofty philosophical significance’ for every work we encounter. That we just don’t simply approach contemporary art with hackles raised and knives at the ready does not make us the equivalent of the Vatican Swiss Guard, ready to die should anyone dare attack art’s sacred citadel.
What I do object to is the perpetuation of stereotype for the sake of rhetorical pazzazz. Judging by your myriad activities, you are indeed interested in contemporary art, yet in order to give your Evening Standard polemic a swashbuckling edge, you allow yourself to privilege cheap shot reductivism over engagement with the complicated and complex reality of what constitutes art made today (good and bad). You then refuse to mount a detailed defense of your position. Such glib obfuscation and refusal of the terms of debate, to my mind, is ‘anti-intellectual’.
3. “The problem is the redefinition of criticism, as Dan puts it, as “about opening up the paths of intellectual discourse that can proceed from an artwork.” What this means is that the art critic then starts explaining how a revelation about Baudrillard ‘can’ come from a cheese sandwich.”
The idea that ‘opening up the paths of intellectual discourse that can proceed from an artwork’ is not my redefinition; it is a function of criticism. Criticism fundamentally involves an attempt to engage with and assess the ideas (formal, conceptual, emotional, or whatever) put forth by or expressed in a work of art. This engagement with the ‘paths of intellectual discourse’ holds true whether you are reading John Ruskin on JMW Turner, Leo Steinberg on the Isenheim altarpiece or your own beloved Robert Hughes (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/shock-new.shtml) on Cubism. Your comment about how ‘the art critic then starts explaining how a revelation about Baudrillard ‘can’ come from a cheese sandwich’ is, yet again, just a cheap shot using tired parody and the rhetoric of tabloid sensationalism rather than a sense of genuine enquiry or imagination.
Added by drsimonbaker,
Although, like all historians, I seem to have turned up too late, I would like to offer a defence, of sorts, of both Ben Lewis’s original article and approach. I also feel that the position he finds himself in, in relation to Frieze and contemporary art criticism in general is more complex and interesting that it might appear. First off, I would point out that his Art Safari series (originally on BBC4 I think) has achieved a sort of cult status with my students (art history undergraduates and graduates). He has produced, particularly in documentaries on Santiago Sierra and Sophie Calle, important, and useful critical resources for the study of contemporary art that are of at least equivalent merit to much that has been published on these artists in Frieze and elsewhere. A key problem for contemporary art (at least for teaching it) is obtaining any degree of perspective and whether or not one agrees with his ‘dumb’ questions or posture, Lewis absolutely succeeds in this aspect of his work. There is no reason to suggest, therefore, in response to an earlier comment, that we ought to worry about a new documentary on the contemporary art world from this film-maker. It is surprising too, to hear Jennifer Higgie defend the separation of advertising and critical copy in Frieze as though anyone seriously believes there is a principle at stake here. Surely the criticality of the magazine is as inseparable from its wider commercial and discursive context as Lewis’s language and ‘wide-eyed’ attitude is from that of the Evening Standard. At issue here are the values underlying the kinds of questions raised by each publication and it would be as perverse for Frieze to fail to engage in the discussion of the production of the market values in which it is implicated as it is for Lewis or The Evening Standard to adopt a lazy caricature of the art market based on Damien Hirst. Hirst, however, and Jeff Koons (the subjects of the alarming ‘insider dealing’ that Lewis described) are ideal exemplars of a kind of practice which by addressing the commodification of art head-on was always likely to produce unpalatable effects. Indeed, there is a sense in which the bursting bubble that Lewis predicts in his article could, or should be the logical and desired conclusion of the obliging attitude and industrial scale of some studio outputs. This is not to suggest that all, or even most contemporary art is implicated in this phenomenon, just that none of it can escape it effects. It would therefore seem vital that we concentrate on the substance of the big (dumb) questions about the production of value rather than quibble about the language and rhetorical strategies through which they are posed.
Added by dan_fox,
drsimonbaker:
I think it is to the historian’s great advantage that they arrive late to the discussion! Your defense of Ben Lewis’s article is an interesting one. I wouldn’t disagree with you about concentrating on the substance of big (dumb) questions regarding art and the market; the dumb questions are often the best. I also agree that Frieze should engage with these questions too – for the record, the magazine does tackle issues of the relationship between criticality and the market: just read Robert Storr or Nancy Spector’s columns for the magazine, or some of the ‘State of the Art’ editorials; we’re not shy of that.
However, I disagree with you when you state that it is unimportant to ‘quibble about the language and rhetorical strategies through which they [the big (dumb) questions] are posed. On the contrary, I think the rhetorical strategies used by Ben in his ES article do more damage than good, because such rhetoric is crucial in forming the terms of discussion around those big questions. That someone from outside the art world reading his article would leave with the idea that art magazines never publish a critical word and ‘are simply {note this heavily loaded word] in the the business of selling art, epitomized by the transmutation of frieze from magazine to art fair’ is for them to be misled, for the situation is most certainly not simple.
Firstly, we have the question of what is meant by ‘critical’; Ben’s position suggests that ‘negative’ opinions are what consitutes ‘criticality’. Along with Adrian, Jennifer and Tom, I think ‘critical’ writing means something broader than this and is part of a much bigger conversation. Secondly, Frieze has not transmuted from a magazine to an art fair. An art fair was started by the founders of Frieze magazine, but the magazine still exists as an entity in its own right, editorially independent of the fair. It is not a ‘transmutation’, thus Ben’s statement is inaccurate. His words therefore most certainly warrant an assertion of principle in terms of the relationship between critical copy and advertising in the magazine. Unlike the practice common in fashion, lifestyle or music magazines, if a commercial gallery or publicly funded museum chooses to pay for an advertisement in Frieze it does not mean that we will cover their shows or artists. We, as editors, cover what we think is interesting at a given point, regardless of who is advertising in a given issue. Where our editorial coverage has a knock-on effect in the marketplace, it is symptomatic of the way any cultural endeavour accrues symbolic value which can then be translated into economic value (an essay by a heavyweight art historian in an academic journal such as October, which does not carry advertising, can have as much of an impact as something in Frieze or Artforum; Ben’s documentaries on art can have this knock-on effect too) but it is not – as Ben’s words imply – because we are either paid or partaking in a gentleman’s agreement to hype certain shows or artists. Of course, this is our word against his. Taking the side of the art world conspiracy theorists is far easier than trying to wrestle with the complex tangle of vastly different constituencies that make up the art world. Yes, an artist such as Jeff Koons is an exemplar of a certain type of artist, but it’s important to remembe that for every Koons playing the market there is, for instance, a Gustav Metzger acting in defiance and rejection of such systems – something Ben’s article does not convey – and that issues of artist’s relationship to the marketplace are, both historically and currently, not quite so black and white or straightforward as his scathing attack would have us think. For people to discuss the big questions, the rhetoric needs to acknowledge the bigger picture (terrible pun there unintended...).
Added by jasperjoffe,
Joining the party late, but better late than never.
I was reading some old art magazines I got in a charity shop (one of the first friezes, an Artforum from around 1980 and a Flash Art from the same period) and was startled by the clarity of prose and reasoned value judgements in their reviews. I do not read many art reviews in current art magazines or even newspapers, and this is because I usually find them boring and written in a kind of art speak that it is hard to get through and often just discussing the issues in the art rather than the experience of looking at it. Either that or they are regurgitations of press releases sometimes called previews. Now there are exceptions (some/many of the reviews of Searle, Dorment, Collings, Schjeldahl), but generally I am not compelled to pick up an art magazine and read it. Like many artists I will flick through them in a bookshop to check the ads to see who’s doing well, but I can’t imagine laying out my own actual money for one.
I am an artist and passionately care about art and you would think I would make a good customer for frieze et al, and yet my feelings about current art magazines are decidedly tepid. Although you seem to dismiss Ben Lewis’s criticisms as tabloid junk, perhaps it should concern you that his views are not dissimilar to what I think is a widespread feeling amongst many young and old artists: that the art world is a cosy collection of people who help each other, hand out prizes and reviews to their drinking buddies, don’t seriously debate whether any of the art is really excellent, and which puff up a few stars while excluding those outside their network. I don’t think there is a vast conspiracy and am aware these views are often the bitter talk of the mediocre or unsuccessful artist. Yet I have some sympathy for them.
The feelings I have at the Frieze Art Fair are mixed to say the least. There is pleasure in the abundance of art, a happiness perhaps that all this economic activity might one day trickle down to me, and excitement about all the interest in ART. But then again seeing all the networking, and botoxed rich folk and the same galleries and the minor celebs at the opening, and the VIP areas, I veer towards sadness that the thing I care about has become a plaything for people with megamoney and little discernment - another area which is just like everything else, full of hype and capitalism. And the people who hold power in the artworld often seem to be exactly like people who are powerful elsewhere: those with money, those from fancy places like Oxford (like me), old Etonians, and those good at making those with power feel good, sycophants and hangers on. So I suppose those on the outside of the glamorous party with their noses pressed against the glass would rather think it a conspiracy, when really like much else it is not, just those on the inside are quite happy to be there and there is only room for the most tenacious to get in.
And yet how many, loosely speaking, negative art reviews do you read in art mags? Is that perhaps because it is hard to face someone you have spoken negatively about at the next night’s PV? You dismiss (well, not Searle) cheap decisions on good and bad, yet actually trying to decide on a set of criteria to judge, value, or even just to explain likes and dislikes is hard and vital to the whole creation and reception of works of art. It is what artists (and collectors, curators, and gallerists) are doing all the time. So I wish academics and art magazine editors would stop being aghast that people might ask them to say whether they like something or think it is any good, for it is a perfectly valid place to start or finish.
I hope the frieze gang will not just dismiss my views as grinding axes or jealousy or whatever else might make them not have to worry about them, for genuinely I am happy that they and I are part of this glorious jamboree that is art now, and which they have done much to build. All in all it is a great time to be an artist, I just wish that things could be even better, and some of our shared passion for art was expressed in ways that made sense to me and which I wanted to read. I wish that more dumb, angry, negative, or silly criticism appeared on their pages, and that diversity wasn’t so narrowly defined. Otherwise I might just begin to think the whole thing is a conspiracy to keep prices high and avoid crunchy credit.
Added by Jennifer,
How does Jasper Joffe know whether or not there is any ‘dumb, angry, negative, or silly criticism’ in frieze when, as he states in his first paragraph, ‘generally I am not compelled to pick up an art magazine and read it. Like many artists I will flick through them in a bookshop to check the ads to see who’s doing well, but I can’t imagine laying out my own actual money for one.’
Constructive criticism of frieze is always welcome, but we usually prefer our critics to have read at least a few issues of the magazine from cover to cover first.
Added by drsimonbaker,
I agree with Jasper Joffe’s description of the situation and think he represents many interested voices in the artworld who have developed a healthy scepticism in regard to magazines like frieze and Artforum.
This isn’t a relentless, negative scepticism but a realistic degree of engagement that acknowledges the limits of their formats. It is interesting, in this regard, that a previous correspondent in this discussion mentioned October. The different between October and more pluralistic, broad-minded publications like frieze is that they are not willing to accommodate positions that are absolutely contradictory to, or at odds with, their own. October is a varied and accommodating publication but it will not publish (or so it would seem) articles on any artist at all (I might test this with a piece on George Condo). The editors have (or at least project) a strong, strident and therefore, I think, honest sense of their priorities. Publishing several pieces on Sophie Calle (and none on Damien Hirst, for example) lets their readers know who the editors find interesting at this point in time. The problem for frieze is precisely its necessary variety and scope - the range of positions that the editors defend as a form of engaged criticality. The impression that’s given (rightly or wrongly) is that frieze is a cheerleader for contemporary art in all (or most) of its forms: grinning through gritted teeth perhaps, but still showing its knickers.
Added by jasperjoffe,
Just a quick response to Jennifer Higgie’s rejection of my points because I say that generally I don’t buy art magazines such as frieze. Obviously that does not mean I NEVER have bought one or read it cover to cover, or in fact that I don’t read other people’s copies!
And only listening to critics who read your magazine cover to cover may lead to a rather static circulation. Magazines are not novels, and I would think few people read every word in them, or even most of them.
To be more positive I would like to put forward that criticism is a force for good. Amongst other things, strong, thoughtful, or even just plain passionate criticism helps us artists make better work. I feel that a greater range of styles and approaches to art criticism in the main art magazines would make things better for us all.
Added by tom_morton,
I don’t know Jasper Joffe’s work very well at all, I’m afraid. In fact, I’d wager my knowledge of it is about equal to his of frieze. Given this, I feel it’d be foolish of me to write a critique of his current exhibition ‘Jasper Joffe’s Beauty Show’ at V22, London, without further research. I hope he would agree.
Joffe states that he doesn’t believe that contributors to frieze are engaged in a ‘vast conspiracy’, and acknowledges that those who do hold that view are often ‘mediocre and unsuccessful’ artists. (Hey, why leave out ‘mediocre and unsuccessful’ gallerists and curators? They grumble about frieze too!). I’ll agree to take him at his word, just so long as he agrees to take me at mine when I say that I believe that there is no connection whatsoever between his decision to post his comments to this thread on January 16th, and the fact that his V22 show opened two days later on January 18th. As he’ll doubtless be aware, the best way to draw the attention of ‘the frieze gang’ to one’s practice is not to give us a dressing down on the magazine’s web forum at a professionally convenient moment, but rather to become one of our ‘drinking buddies’ to whom we ‘hand out reviews’.
I’m glad to hear that Joffe ‘passionately care[s] about art’. He might be equally glad to discover that frieze’s contributors do too, if only he were to do more than ‘flick through’ the magazine ‘to check the ads to see who is doing well’ - a practice that speaks less of caring passionately about art than it does of caring passionately about which of one’s peers have achieved a certain, very conventional type of artworld success (a show in a commercial gallery or institution that’s willing and wealthy enough to stump up the cash for a promo spot), perhaps the better to measure one’s own achievements. While I agree that the ad pages of art magazines make interesting reading for a number of reasons, it’s the editorial pages in which one is most likely to find the ‘diversity’ that Joffe claims to seek.
Added by jasperjoffe,
It would seem more constructive and more interesting to attack a person’s views rather than the person.
Still I’ll deal with one of the points: Yes I was looking at the frieze website a few days before my show opening, I was looking for email addresses of people I wanted to send press releases to, and I came across this debate and contributed to it without the tiniest mention of my own upcoming show. I also did not mention the website I run (without profit) for people to write art and culture reviews. I didn’t want to be accused of self-promotion although of course the reason I set up the site in 2000 was to provide an alternative space to the established art magazines.
And please stop getting stuck on the fact that I said I didn’t read frieze cover to cover, I have read plenty of friezes in depth. And the flicking through the ads is standard practice among artists I have spoken to, it refects an artworld where the market has superceded art criticism, partly because critics have given up talking about visceral responses to art in a way that is readable and thought-provoking.
Are you really claiming that frieze provides hard hitting critical reviews which artists might actually respond to, and care about?
Added by JohnMoseley,
Good to hear Tom Morton is duly cautious about reviewing work he hasn’t seen. If only he could apply the same care to web posts he hasn’t read properly. Go back to J Joffe’s last one, Tom, and you’ll find that, yes, he is familiar with your magazine. In fact, that post is a rebuttal of J Higgie’s suggestion that he’s not. It’s actually really easy to understand! Meanwhile, your selective quoting of him to suggest he’s only reading the ads is either disingenuous or...well I’ll do you the credit of assuming it’s that.
And you know, just as you profess not to, Tom, I also don’t believe Joffe posted here to draw attention to his exhibition. I mean, he didn’t mention it did he? You did. And, as you say, wading into a row with you lot hardly seems the best way to win your favour. Sort of makes me wonder why you brought it up. You seem to be trying to cast nasty aspersions, just really really maladroitly.
I’ve read your magazine too. I’m not going to sit a test about how well I know it to prove I’m qualified to pass judgement. The fact is, I wanted to like it and was in denial about how disappointing I found it until I couldn’t take it anymore. Hope springs eternal and I still pick up an issue now and then and read it pretty thoroughly (oh, alright, ‘cover to cover’) to see if things have improved and I always find they haven’t. It’s anodyne. It’s not just not critical enough. It’s not even analytical enough. I know a lot of other people who share my view and plenty of them don’t have any reason to feel bitter. (I won’t make that claim for myself. I’m endemically, polymorphously bitter, as anyone I know will probably attest – though I don’t actually have any vested interest here, not being in any way professionally involved with the art world.)
In fact, this thread is about the most interesting thing I’ve ever read here, you know, probably because it’s quite critical in the old-fashioned, layperson’s sense meaning ‘negative’. It’s not just that it’s critical of frieze and I’m not saying any of this to be hurtful, though I suppose it might hurt a bit. All I’m really saying, with specific reference to J Joffe’s posts, is, take your licks. ‘To commence author is to claim praise and no one can do so, but at the hazard of disgrace’ - Samuel Johnson. Not that you shouldn’t mount a defence, but why make it so sneeringly personal? It’s mean and it makes it look as if you haven’t got anything substantial or credible on your side of the argument.
Added by tom_morton,
I think the thing here, as my Maths teacher used to say, is to ‘show your workings’.
If Jasper Joffe wants to claim that frieze does not feature ‘visceral responses’ to art (although quite why this type of response should be privileged above another isn’t clear to me), or that it does not provide ‘hard hitting critical reviews’, it might be a good idea for him to demonstrate that this is so. I’m happy to point him to numerous examples of both these things in the magazine’s recent past, starting with Jennifer Higgie’s feature on George Condo in the May 2007 issue (plenty of good visceral stuff there), and Christy Lange’s review of Dash Snow’s exhibition at Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin in the September 2007 issue (a thorough critique of a body of work that the market is very much behind). Both of these articles are available to read on frieze’s website.
What I’ve found… disappointing, I suppose… about Joffe’s and John Moseley’s criticisms of frieze is that they make no effort to back them up, beyond referring to unnamed friends and acquaintances who apparently feel the same way as they do. I could mention that I know plenty of people (no, not just my ‘drinking buddies’) who feel that frieze offers informed, passionate, and poly-vocal responses to a wide range of contemporary art from across the globe, but this wouldn’t prove that that’s the case. Jennifer wrote above that ‘Constructive criticism of frieze is always welcome’, and as a contributor to the magazine I agree with her. However, I do rather baulk at being told that we need to ‘take [our] licks’ when those licks have little more substance than the ‘I HATE THE NME’ t-shirt I used to own as a teenage indie kid. Again, and this time to Moseley, if you think frieze is ‘anodyne’, or ‘not critical enough’, or ‘not even analytical enough’, is it too much to ask that you point to examples of this, and perhaps offer up examples of art writing that you find more satisfactory?
I’m sorry that Joffe and Moseley feel that my response to Joffe’s post was ad hominem. I do think, though, that if they look closer, they’ll see that I was playing the ball, not the man, and even then in the spirit of fun. No sneers intended, then, just a gentle chuckle at Joffe’s decision to post along the lines of ‘Of course I don’t think frieze is a shadowy cabal’, and then describe how some people, but definitely not him believe we’re all secret handshakes, rolled-up trouser legs and Grand Wizards around these parts. Perhaps disappointingly, there is no frieze lodge. Or maybe it’s just that they don’t want to let me in…
Added by jasperjoffe,
A few questions for frieze rather than an endless discussion of your pedantic rejection of my criticisms:
What percentage of your reviews are broadly speaking negative? Is the lack of negative reviews due to a desire not to offend actual or potential advertisers? Is there a policy to only write positive reviews?
How many reviews of exhibitions are not of advertisers in frieze magazine or participants in the Frieze Art Fair? Perhaps you will claim those two groups represent all that is excellent in the art world, but can you see that your objectivity might be compromised and that these galleries/artists are in less need of criticism/publicity than others?
How do you safeguard your magazine from potential conflicts of interest with the Frieze Art Fair?
What policies are in place to avoid your editors and writers having vested interests in the art they write about? By vested interests I would include writers being employed in any capacity by the galleries they write about it, or having business or personal ties to those artists or galleries.
If you are open to debate and criticism then why not publish this debate in your magazine and organize a discussion of it at your art fair?
Jasper Joffe
Added by Jennifer,
frieze has always enforced total separation between advertising and editorial – we make this clear to the galleries who advertise with us, and to the writers who work for us. It is made absolutely clear to every new reviewer that they must have no vested professional connection to the gallery or artist who they are reviewing. As we have published more than 2000 reviews in the history of frieze magazine, frankly, I don’t have time to go back and count which percentage are negative and which are not – we have always included a rich and often volatile cross-section of opinion. To imply that we only publish positive reviews is simply ignorant. We run, on average, 25 reviews per issue, which are loosely divided into territories around the world. Each issue of frieze includes reviews of a cross-section of shows from non-profit spaces to commercial galleries and museums; whether or not they advertise with us is irrelevant to our editorial decisions as to give them coverage or not. Writers have carte blanche to respond to the show as they see fit; reviews are edited for clarity and concision, not opinion. We do not commission on the basis of having fixed quotas of positive or negative reviews. We have a strict policy of no vested interests in the art we cover; none of the editors of frieze collect art, as we feel this would be a form of insider trading. One important point: advertising (which comes from both public and commercial sectors) keeps us independent – we are not owned by a large publishing house that could enforce compromises upon us, and the publishing directors of the magazine – Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp – give us complete editorial independence.
We pride ourselves also on the fact that all the galleries who advertise with us, without fail, respect the non-negotiable separation we enforce between the pages they buy and the editorial content in the magazine. Of course we run pieces on artists whose galleries also happen to advertise with us – obviously because a) artists need galleries and choose to work with them and b) good galleries like to advertise in frieze. But we also run many features and reviews on artists who show in galleries who have never advertised with us, and artists who don’t even work with a gallery. As for potential conflicts with the art fair: there are none. It has in no way compromised the magazine’s integrity; if anything it has helped us reach a wider general public.
Jennifer Higgie
Added by jasperjoffe,
So tying your name and some of your staff to an art fair: purpose to sell art, in no way compromises (even potentially) your magazine: purpose to discuss art without fear of offending galleries or artists who are trying to sell art at your art fair.
Your argument that relying on revenue from advertising somehow preserves your independence is also absurd (see the entire history of commercial television for example). As though more honest and negative reviews and opinions might not somehow put off some of your advertisers.
And finally you do not respond to my suggestion that you publish this debate in your magazine and air it at your art fair. Perhaps it is all too banal, thought the anger and sheer number of your staff involved might indicate otherwise.
Added by dan_fox,
With all due respect Jasper, this debate does seem to have reached a point of ‘our word against yours’, and I get the feeling you’re treating us as guilty until proven innocent - a den of iniquity that wouldn’t know critical integrity even if it slapped us in the face with a heavy Art & Language monograph. Jennifer gave you a thoroughly honest and clear reply and if you don’t believe that the advertising in the magazine has no bearing on editorial content, and that the selection of galleries for Frieze Art Fair has no bearing on who we cover in the magazine, then fine, but there seems to be little point in arguing further if you won’t accept the answers we give you. As for including this debate in the magazine or at the fair: we’re always open to suggestions, but sorry, we’re not in the business of making snap decisions.
(Incidentally, do you think Jan Verwoert was under pressure from David Zwirner Gallery - who both advertise in frieze magazine and take part in Frieze Art Fair - when he wrote this about their Neo Rauch show? http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/neo_rauch1/ Or that Steven Stern was firmly told to write a positive review about Banks Violette because Barbara Gladstone Gallery and Team Gallery advertise in frieze, and were to take part in the Art Fair only a few weeks after this was on the newsstands? http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/banks_violette/ And do you think I was trying to avoid upsetting any of the galleries who advertise in frieze and who represent certain artists who took part in ‘USA Today’? http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/usa_today/ Or that I didn’t want to upset Hauser and Wirth who – you guessed it – advertise in frieze and take part in Frieze Art Fair, when I reviewed their Christoph Buchel show (cf. the last two paragraphs)? http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/christoph_buchel/ (I could also point you in the direction of a certain - and with the benefit of hindsight, possibly overboard - review I wrote about a show at MOT Gallery a few years ago. However I suspect that, although they do advertise in frieze occasionally, they are not quite the kind of gallery you had in mind, and nor do I think it pleasant to open old wounds.) Do you think that Tom Morton didn’t want to tread on anyone’s toes when he reviewed Conrad Shawcross’s exhibition at Victoria Miro last year? http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/conrad_shawcross/ Was Jennifer Higgie hoping to keep all of Piotr Uklanski’s commercial galleries sweet when she responded like this to his Photographer’s Gallery show a few years back? http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/piotr_uklanski/ Do you think Nancy Spector was protecting the market value of Dash Snow and Ryan McGinley et al when she wrote this? http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/plus_ca_change/ Or that Christy Lange was concerned that Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin might pull their advertising from frieze or withdraw from the Frieze Art Fair when she penned this review which came out just before last year’s fair? http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/dash_snow/ I could go on, but maybe these examples aren’t negative enough?)
Art magazines cannot survive on newsstand revenue or subscriptions alone - the costs of paper, printing, wages, distribution, office overheads etc are too high to be funded by an audience the size of that interested in contemporary art. We accept advertisements in order that we can survive, not in order that we can make friends with art dealers and play boosterish games with people’s careers. Artists too have to survive. They work with commercial galleries, just as they do with public funding bodies, museums or independent spaces run by their peers - not just because someone can sell their work, but because - if the gallery is halfway decent - it will act as an agent who will protect and represent their interests. It is too easy to be simplistic about the relationship between commerce and creativity; treated with integrity, it is a relationship that can obviously reap benefits for both artist and gallery.
Perhaps this debate should be pulled back from the brink of tawdriness. I do think that some of your original points were valid ones. In particular I think your description of how various people approach an art magazine - frieze or otherwise - is a very good one. As you rightly point out, ‘magazines are not novels’. Nobody reads any magazine cover-to-cover. (I find it amusing when, on occasion, someone confronts me and states that they don’t read Frieze from start to finish, as if that would serve as a really nasty poke in the eye.) Magazines are practical objects; some people might just look at them for the adverts; others might dip into a couple of features then discard the issue; some might read a review whilst browsing in a bookshop but then 3 years later borrow it from their college library to read a particular feature as part of something they’re researching; others still might avidly devour each issue as it comes out. When you state, quite rightly, that ‘strong, thoughtful, or even just plain passionate criticism helps us artists make better work’ I couldn’t agree more, but judging by this debate, I guess our tastes are different. I am though interested by your remark that you ‘feel that a greater range of styles and approaches to art criticism in the main art magazines would make things better for us all’. My feeling about that is, well, horses for courses: frieze isn’t the same as Art Monthly which isn’t the same as Untitled which isn’t the same as Afterall which isn’t the same as Art Review which isn’t the same as Modern Painters, Artforum, Piktogram, A Prior, Metropolis M, The Art Newspaper, Tate Etc, The Rebel, Miser & Now, Art World, Beaux Arts, and god knows who else. The increasing number of journals or books which address different approaches to art criticism is notable too: John Russell’s ‘Frozen Tears’ for instance, or Maria Fusco’s forthcoming journal ‘The Happy Hypocrite’. People get so disproportionately hot under the collar about specific art publications not doing this or doing too much of that. The breadth of publications is what makes discourse interesting. There’s plenty of room for everyone.
The only thing that makes magazine editors angry is not whether someone reads their publication cover-to-cover, but when - to go right back to the start of this thread - people make the wrong assumptions about them.
Added by JohnMoseley,
Hey Mr. Morton,
OK, so the secret lodge stuff is pretty funny. However, whether or not it’s what you meant to say when we took you for being ad hominem, it’s not, by a long chalk, what you actually said, is it?
Show our workings? Didact teach thyself. In the initial response to the Ben Lewis allegation of a want of negativity in the reviews section, Higgie felt it was enough to state baldly, without evidence ‘Reviews are often critical’ and, from there until your two examples in your last post (only given at the point where you were asking us for evidence), the frieze contingent continued the non-empirical mode unbroken.
Perhaps, on both sides of the argument, everyone felt that the evidence was there for all to see: http://www.frieze.com
Whatever the reasoning or lack of it, I think the burden of proof is on you, if anyone. Joffe and I aren’t starting from an a priori position of hostility to frieze and we’re not critics writing in another publication to recommend or damn. Myself, I just wanted to back up Lewis’ general impression that the criticism in your magazine wasn’t very critical. If lots of us have that opinion, you might like to pause for breath and ask why. The champ always fights himself.
In a sense, with reference to the criticality or lack of it, you’re asking us to prove an absence. For that purpose, as Higgie’s ‘cover to cover’ imprecation implies, I can only really direct you back to the entire magazine. Perhaps the URL will do again: http://www.frieze.com
With regard to being more specific, I’m not sure what good the public humiliation of a lot of probably young and inexperienced frieze writers will do when they might be better embarrassed privately by the editors, but I guess even they are subject to the principle expressed by my Samuel Johnson quote.
I’ve read all the current reviews on the website, as well as the two pieces you suggested. Of the current 14, two were negative, though not exactly blistering. Sarah Neel-Smith on Kader Attia ventures that the questions raised by the work haven’t been pondered ‘quite enough’. Good effort B+ please try harder?
As for Christy Lange’s Dash Snow review, are you sure you want to cite this as prime frieze negativity? This is a bit like saying you’ve run a bad Banksy review. It’s also a long-winded, dully written piece on a subject who seems to cry out for pithy, scathing, satirical treatment (particularly on the artist’s formal politesse, the closest the review comes to an analytical point). OK, so this a subjective view, but still, I’d like to know how the editors justify running a banal truism on the order of ‘Ultimately he is selling his rebellious lifestyle, and this is what people are buying into’, a point so good, she padded it out with eight superfluous words.
This is actually the most striking thing about wading back into the frieze reviews section: the bad writing. Frequently: it has little to say as a whole, it references other art works and ideas in a scattergun fashion that adds nothing to an overall argument (where there is one) and is often just plain nonsensical/redundant/pleonastic. It’s not that frieze never runs anything good (I liked Jason Farago’s Desperate Man, for what it’s worth), but when one has to choke down so much manifest dross to get to it, I’m at a loss as to how you expect intelligent people to take you seriously.
Yes, yes, OK this really does require examples. Paul Teasdale, writing on Catherine Yass, describes a mechanized, claustrophobic experience as ‘a modern twist on Kant’s terrifying sublime’. It’s sort of impressive that someone could pack that much wrong, vague and questionable into such a wee clause. It’s also pretentious since nothing else in the piece has anything to do with Kant.
Joanna Fiduccia on Inaki Bonillas: ‘Wretched ranch hand and glorified cowboy are made to co-exist in the exhibition space, as they do in any attempt to achieve an identity already occupied by an icon. [a long, odd, painfully convoluted way of saying virtually nothing] In negative, the images become generic prototypes of the Cowboy, branded onto the surface of the most contradictory, soberly framed reality. [the most? really? contradictory? why? soberly framed? do you mean physically or conceptually or…something else? reality? which reality? the photographic negative? the show in general? reality in general?]’ and later: ‘If Plaza has a moral to tell, it’s that established images can exert a regressive, even annihilating appeal…[like, a wha–?]’
Jeffrey Ryan on What Do You Care?: ‘These works deal deftly with language and humour, but, more importantly, they involve an element of play. [which is distinct from humour how?]’ and later: ‘Inside are several miniature galleries showing small abstract sculptures… while the audience is a group of colourful model birds. Looking at them gazing at tiny abstractions reminds us of ourselves.’ It’s insights like this that start to make paying customers feel burned. And tearful.
Katie Kitamura tells us that a Pipilotti Rist show is all old works, then adds, ‘The integration of provocative ideas and sensual feeling is, as ever, strongly present.’ As ever? Well what did you expect in a show of old works? And, by the way: ‘sensual feeling’? She goes on, ‘A dreamy video is projected into the lap of the viewer, situated amongst the explicitly domestic props of a chair and reading lap [sic. silly, confusing typo]’, oxymoronically describes ‘a blissfully jaunty woman’, and writes the phrase ‘the uneasy bifurcation that is at the core of subjective experience’, which makes me laugh out loud every time I read it. At the core? Is you sure? Which you are sure?
I’m sort of sorry to single out Kitamura because her other current review, of Manon de Boer, is pretty lucid and readable, but I guess we all have our off days and, one would hope, this is what editors were for. I remember a Matthew Collings diary piece in Modern Painters years ago in which he quipped that he was writing something for frieze and it was ‘really hard. I can’t get away with the rubbish I palm off on you guys. They keep sending it back, wanting rewrites.’ (I’m quoting extempore). I wonder what’s changed since then. Can it be changed back? That would be my prescription.
This feels bloody and I don’t find it fun to hurt people’s feelings – which I suppose gives me some insight into why, if it is, frieze might be leery of being too critical. I also realize that Rosalind Krausses don’t exactly come stumbling up to you on Vyner St. touting reviews. But like Joffe, I want things to be better and you did ask for constructive criticism. I’ve given up most of the day to provide you with some.
To be ‘constructive’, what would I like to see? Actually, a lot more of the wit and fun with words the editors and you, Tom, have allowed yourselves in this thread. Other than that, realistically, in the short term: tight, meaningful sentences to which Ockham’s Razor has been judiciously applied. And in an ideal world: writing that makes me think and think ‘Wow. I never thought of it like that’; references and language that seem to have been properly understood by the writers using them – or an honest willingness to leave out the abstruse stuff until more purchase has been gained on it; most of all, some sense of real judgement and discernment, not to tell me what to think, but to give me something worth contending with.
Dan Fox seems wary of this last in his dismissal of ‘the old-fashioned connoisseur-critic presiding in judgement over the worth of a given artwork’ (well, hey, when you put it like that), a position that gives some weight to the idea that there’s an editorial restraint with regard to critical criticism, even if it’s not a market-driven restraint. This remark of Fox’s alone implies a debate that requires a lot more space, but, to be brief, I’ll just point out that it has major potential to result in an endemic PoMo absurdity: writing that is manifestly lacking in authority occupying a position that, nevertheless, retains authority. The effect of this on the reader is not liberating but insulting. Why author if you have no authority? Why waste our time?
Added by theuniversalben,
Dear all,
I recant!
All these long exchanges caused by an article I wrote for a local newspaper.... and now I realise I got it all the wrong way round.
We all agree, do we not, that Frieze the art fair is multi-million pound business?
And we all all agree that brand identity is vital to multi-millions pound businesses?
And would not also all agree that the Frieze magazine, and the writing it contains, has contributed and contributes more than anything else to building that brand?
Do these journalists then get a cut? Do they own a %? Are they millionaires? They should be, shouldn’t they? Could this fair ever have taken place without them?
Forget my stupid criticism that the Frieze magazine has ‘transmuted’ into art fair. The problem IS the separation. This is a case of art critics, yet again, being exploited by Capitalist collectors and dealers. Frieze art critics - and less talented ones like myself - should be profiting from the power of our words- but it is others who make money out of what we say. I think the Frieze critics should go on strike, until they are guaranteed shares in and a back-dated percentage of the fair.
Forward Together!
I will join you on the barricades!
Ben Lewis
Added by dan_fox,
John,
Thanks for your lengthy response, and for taking the time to excavate some examples of writing in frieze that you find particularly woolly. Not that I necessarily agree with them, but it is indeed more engaging to wade through than the biliousness of some earlier posts.
I’d just like to address the remarks in your final paragraph, which concern a comment I made earlier in the thread. You mention Ockham’s Razor, but perhaps you are wielding it more like a machete, for you have sliced my comment out of context in order to make your point. My original sentence read:
“ Criticism is not just about being negative or positive – the old-fashioned connoisseur-critic presiding in judgement over the worth of a given artwork – it is about responding with imagination and intelligence to the ways in which an artwork function. “
As you can see, I don’t dismiss the ‘old-fashioned conniosseur-critic’, I merely suggest that there is more to writing about art than a gladiatorial thumbs-up or thumbs-down approach. I also see your point about the slippery slide towards a trough of absurd PoMo equivocality, but I don’t believe my point necessarily gives credence to the idea that frieze censors its criticality. (Which we don’t, although judging by the tone of your writing, anyone would think frieze is the Burmese military junta not an art magazine).
It might interest you to learn that most of the frieze editors (myself included) went to art school, rather than take a straight academic arts or humanities course. In this, I would argue that we have a pretty good idea what it’s like to make art, and I think this does make us sympathetic to artists - and the difficulties of making art - in our writing and editing. You might not find the negative remarks made in some reviews tough enough but, judging from the fury with which many artists have responded to us about negative criticism of them in frieze (some written by yours truly), their subjects often do. Which brings me to the point that - as this lively thread demonstrates - criticism is not a one-way street. Jasper remarked that ‘strong, thoughtful, or even just plain passionate criticism helps us artists make better work’. If this is the case - and I sincerely hope it is - then artists too need to engage in the critical debate around their work, rather than just complain when they get a bad review or stay silent, blithely assuming that it is their right to have a writer spend many hours thinking about and responding to their work without any engagement on their part - positive, woolly, Ockham-sharp or otherwise. You might argue that I’m passing the buck, or that artists are apathetic about engaging with art magazines because of a failure in the writing. I would be wary of making such assumptions: you have to look at what pressures are being exerted on the apparatus of artistic production not just that of critical reception.
‘Why waste our time?’ you ask. Well, nobody’s forcing you to read frieze, and there are plenty of people who tell us they enjoy what we publish. Why not read something you do find engaging rather than charging at windmills? You’ll only give yourself a nasty stomach ulcer. Life’s short.
And Ben - vive la revolution!
Added by JohnMoseley,
Hi Dan.
Nobody’s forcing me, no, and I’ve noted that. I did mention earlier I wasn’t really reading frieze much these days. I’d like to be though. All I’m really saying is, if your writers aren’t performing, make it better, editors.
I’ve just re-read my post and can’t quite work out where you’re getting the Burmese junta thing, unless it’s from my background correspondences with the mag on my missing posts. One of them still hasn’t surfaced, but never mind. And my stomach’s fine, thanks, for now.
I would like to say thanks for patching us straight through to Steven Stern’s lovely, funny piece on Banks Violette. Here it is again, to save readers hunting: http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/banks_violette/
all the best.
Added by jasperjoffe,
I’d like to review this debate. So here it goes. It’s been good, I hope you guys have enjoyed it too.
There are a number of reasons why it is better than most of the writing in frieze magazine. And here I am giving credit to all sides involved. I think these reasons include:
Directness: writers have dealt directly with questions, Is frieze critical? Does the art market put pressures on frieze’s independence? etc.
This is in contrast to the often rambling, descriptive (often only showing off the writers’ obscure or erudite interests), and pointless pieces in the magazine which don’t answer, or even raise, any questions.
Passion: the people here have unafraid to get angry, show they care, respond emotionally and let their writing speak of what they feel. Although I am sure the art school educated crowd of friezers do really care about art, perhaps they by their long days and nights spent wading through it, have forgotten how to say , “I love you art” or “Really, I think it’s time you made more of an effort”.
Negativity: The people here have said bad things about the magazine, and we have heard impassioned rebuttals of these points. Still in the first place we weren’t too worried about offending you, or your friends, or our friends, or some other people. It may be bad for our reputations, or as you insinuate an attempt to gain more publicity for ourselves, but I think by being negative we have taken a risk in a way that rarely happens in frieze. And I am afraid if you were to be more negative you would get more angry letters from artists, and nasty looks at openings, and I apologize in advance on our behalf. But please feel free to give my novel, exhibitions, websites, or art fair (the free one) a bad review. Negativity isn’t good for its own sake, but there is a lot of crap out there that needs to be discussed so that art in general and in particular can improve.
New voices: Yes, online forums allow people who aren’t heard in frieze to get involved. Perhaps you need to increase the gene pool at the magazine and reconsider what may seem from the inside like a diverse range of voices, because from the outside most of the writing in your magazine seems like sameold frieze. Even if your reviews cover most of the globe, it doesn’t mean they’re very different from each other (hegemony?).
And I do understand most of you went to art school and learnt that the biggest sin in the world was to say something was just plain old bad. And I don’t want to go to back to bald men smoking pipes telling everyone else what to think. There were good reasons why art schools attacked Greenbergian rigidness and white male connoiseurship, but what has replaced it is an orthodoxy of non-confrontation, pseudo-philosophy and openness masking a refusal to think hard and judge. Art has been the victim of art school thinking.
And please don’t tell me to go set up my own magazine if I don’t like yours, I already have. You edit frieze, not a fanzine, and with the power and importance of your brand comes a responsibility to listen to readers, even lapsed ones, not just tell them to fuck off because they expect more from you.
Jasper Joffe
Added by danc,
During my time working as a teacher at Wimbledon School of Art last year, I was regaled with the thought provoking remark by a student who was disappointed with her final (low) grade, that “oh well, its all subjective”. Walking back through the suburbs it occured to me that I should have perhaps pointed out that the subjective is only half the story and does not explain the part of art that traditionally, in Western Culture,is deemed “Classical.” Yet,the desire for art to embody an objective collective truth,which lies at the heart not only of Classicism, but perhaps of culture itself,was refuted by the student as only that, a desire. And it is perhaps this confusion, between truth and desire, that animates the above debate between Jasper,John,Tom, Jennifer and Ben, all of whom try to take the high ground in relation to truth, and seem completely in denial about their relation to desire.
Isn’t this one of the functions of art: to teach us how to desire? And since my desires are not your desires, and Matthew Barney’s desires are not Neo Rauch’s, and Jasper Joffe’s desires are not Adrian Searle’s desires, perhaps it’s time we acknowledged that art perhaps does not have any claim to the truth? The constant puritanical carping by white anglo saxon protestants about art and the contingency and mutable range of desires it represents (as though it could ever give way to an “objectivity” demanding hard hitting judgements and distinctions, perhaps in relation to notions such as “truth” ,"quality", “political action” ,"morality" or even “skill") is a hiding to nothing.I am surprised that the editors of frieze are so keen to prove the level of negative or “critical” reviews in their magazine,as its plainly obvious that ,in this context, criticism is not functioning as truth claim, but as the promotion of desire.
A large amount of contemporary art is bad, and we feel it to be bad, not because it fails to give us the truth, but because it fails to arouse our desire.I desire Neo Rauch’s paintings,and Jan Verwoert evidently doesn’t, and his reasons for not desiring them is because he is perhaps closer to the oppressive aspects of the culture they represent; to me, they are exotic.Does this make my response superficial? Perhaps, but it is at least a response. And that, folks, is all I’ve got to go on, something at least I can analyse later, perhaps even to find out that I have a fetishistic and highly reactionary desire for allegory, symbolism, figuration and fading Communist culture , to realise, usefully,that, oh boy, I’m fucked. Because the only thing worse than losing an argument is winning it, and in all senses with art , there is no argument to win.
There’s no point denying the power of money and the mediated expression of its power in advertising; money is another form that desire takes. It’s a way of controlling desire, of focusing it.This does not make it right or just; hasn’t anyone here read Freud? The articles in frieze represent to me ways in which different individuals, different from myself, try to articulate their desires towards art. That in itself is interesting, but just because somebody desires Michael Asher’s work does not necessarily convert me. frieze magazine, like anything else, is not free of conspiracy because people with the same desires naturally converge and hang out together; this is not “true”, “objective” or “politically correct”, it’s the way things are; there’s a word for it, it’s called “economy”. Why try and deny it?
So, although frieze is not free of power structures, both within and without, I imagine, at least it convincingly opens a space within that that is subjective. What other means is there, other than through the subjective, to understand our desires? And what means other than art to embody them? Pornography? No thanks.Personally, I’d rather read Dan Fox’s review of Enrico David’s ICA show any day.
Dan Coombs
