NOTES FROM ART HISTORY: ( • open document*
James Elkins. What Happened to Art Criticism? 2003.
Prepared by Katy Crocker for Parenthesis on 07 JULY 2026
*This document is considered an “open document,” because its construction is a research notetaking format, which allows for follow-up and changes. Below, I’m working from the 2006 version of the book, though there are references to earlier publications. Footnotes appear at the end of the page with external links and are highlighted throughout in purple.
*
* *
Resonant words and phrases:
“weak” (2)
“glossy art magazines” (3)
“healthy” (4)
“massively ignored” (4)
“…deserts punctuated by flurries…” (5)
“clotted” (6)
“diaphanous” (6)
“veil” (6)
“ghosts” (10)
“disease” (11)
“positionless position” (34)
“sad, sadness” (various pages, 38)
*
* *
A note about the publisher:
The publisher’s use of the word “outrageous” to describe the material that they publish sets up a certain tone for the reading, even if idealistically. (The issues facing art criticism and its publication and the issues related to publishing radical pamphlets may share a genealogy, but that’s a topic for another pamphlet.)
Prickly Paradigm Press, from Chicago, distributed by University of Chicago Press, operates “independently,” according to their website, (presumably from the University of Chicago) and with the goal of reviving the pamphlet, which historically referred to anti-establishment sorts of texts, documents that were shorter and more rebellious by nature.[1] In the front matter of this book, they write it this way, regarding their goal, which is to publish: “challenging sometimes outrageous pamphlets, not only on anthropology, but on other academic disciplines, the arts, and the contemporary world.”
I’m not sure how “independently” this press operates realistically when the titles are often affiliated with academics based in the Chicago area or directly affiliated with their supporting distributer: the University of Chicago. This political structure worth pointing out. Without digressing too far, it’s possible that the radical essence of the pamphlet is as endangered as this book claims art criticism is. In other words, perhaps the title What Happened to the Radical Pamphlet? may be as apt as James Elkins’s What Happened to Art Criticism? Elkins worked at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago at the time of this book’s publishing (2003), and received multiple degrees from the University of Chicago, the Press’s affiliate organization. (The Press has since come under new management.)
*
* *
Quotations, annotated:
1.
“Art criticism is in worldwide crisis. Its voice has become very weak…” (2).
In later work (from 2018), he says, “[art criticism] imagines itself to be in perpetual crisis or decline” and that he finds the writing “interesting.”[2] Writing a book like this, in which this is the opening line, encourages the idea that criticism is in crisis. So, is it in a worldwide crisis or does it “imagine itself to be?” Those are different ideas. I suppose one can find something interesting and weak at the same time. Weak connotes a degradation in quality.
2.
“No one knows how many glossy art magazines there are because most are considered ephemeral by libraries and art databases, and therefore not collected or indexed…As a rule, academic art historians do not read any of them” (3).
A case for numbering them, perhaps, just simply listing them somewhere like a shifting market reel for art magazines.[3]
“Borders,” without any mention of what it is, was referenced on the same page. This reference conjures the 1990s, early 2000s—a healthy economy, a certain mood surrounding publishing and the big-box stores for books, but still prior to Amazon taking over.
Seems to indicate that value is assigned to publications by “academic art historians.” Reads as if to indicate that they aren’t important, unless academic art historians are reading them, and that reads like art history is placed above art criticism, which refers back to himself, because this is his field of expertise, having a PhD in Art History from the University of Chicago.
Perhaps, academics and the broader terrain of art workers should read them (and, not only to compile information for a pamphlet that aims to criticize them), but instead, to create a third space, or interstitial material that might amend some of the discrepancies his book spotlights.
3.
(Referring to art criticism) “So healthy that it is outstripping its readers—there is more of it around than anyone can read” (4).
“Sholars in my own filed of art history tend to notice only the kinds of criticism that are heavily historically informed and come out of academic settings: principally writing on contemporary art that is published in art historical journals and by university presses” (4).
I don’t agree with a definition of “healthy” that analogizes to a glut of. Is this leaning on an American ideal? The conflation of “quantity” with “health?” This could have broader implications relating to the status of the economy at this time, experiencing massive expansion but also changes. I’m especially thinking of globalization and an overall increase of wealth in the US prior to crashes in the early and mid 2000s (dot-com crash and the recession in 2008/09). In any case, the overabundance of something can certainly also indicate an infestation, diseases like cancer and other significations of an ecosystem out of balance.
The second quotation on that page, added here to reenforce the point above about art history and its practices, his field*, seemingly placed above other fields, at least in terms of repute. That anything other than “art historical journals published by university presses” are insignificant enough as to be totally ignored. “Ignored” is a word he uses to describe much of the field of criticism, along with references of the readership being as nonexistent as ghosts; furthermore, he cites the chapter heading as “Writing Without Readers.”
*It becomes interesting and important that Elkins is alienated by his own field. Art historians, working in a traditional manner, cast down what he’s doing, saying it’s “irrelevant,” and not art history.[4] I find it extremely important that art historians disavow what he’s doing, and had done (this piece, claiming his irrelevance, came out in 2002, so prior to this book being published)—because read from that angle; the book reads very differently. As in, more so taking aim at other art historians for not reading more art criticism outside of “art historical journals published by university presses.”
4.
(Referring to art criticism in newspapers) “There just isn’t enough meat in them to make a meal” (6).
His having to endeavor into reading non-academic (for the purposes of doing research for this book), historically *un*informed art criticism in “glossy art magazines” has left him hungry, unfulfilled. His point is taken, somewhat like consuming empty calories, lightweight—snack food. In this section, he recalls bringing art criticism like this to read on a flight, not reading it and forgetting it on the plane—saying this kind of writing is meaningless for him, forgettable. This continues the statements of disappointment about the direction of art criticism.
5.
“The combination of vigorous health and terminal illness, of ubiquity and invisibility, is growing increasingly strident with each generation” (6).
Captured this quote, simply to remind that I don’t agree with his definition of health—so this statement doesn’t work. For me, it would read more like: “The combination of vigorous disease and terminal illness…is growing increasingly strident.” Then, these aren’t conflicting claims. There would be no conundrum. The field of art criticism would have cancer that is rapidly spreading. That is all. (Well, that and presumably leading toward eminent death.) I also don’t think terminal illness and invisibility analogize to each other. Cancer, in my example, may analogize to invisibility, (what he calls “vigorous health)” and that makes more sense.* In any case, someone who is terminally ill is not invisible. Someone who is dead is; but, if art criticism were dead, it and this discussion wouldn’t exist at all. Being terminally ill is all-consuming both to the individual and those caring for them. I suppose if I reverse the adjectives related to his analogies, the configuration somewhat works: vigorously diseased and invisible (cancer); terminally ill and ubiquitous. But, again, these are two ways of saying the same thing, except maybe one is visible disease and the other is not. Like this, invisibly terminally ill (like cancer) and visibly terminally ill (like leprosy).
*Let me flesh this out a bit more, he misses an opportunity to do exactly what he criticizes criticism for not doing, which is to see the larger historical context (which calls, when it does occur, “ambitious judgement”), make larger claims—he doesn’t broaden his scope to see a socio-cultural context that informs the condition he describes—how art criticism’s ubiquity directly coincides with its invisibility. Cancer is invisible, which allows it to spread without the host organism knowing. The overabundance of something, not only renders it diseased and sick in this reformulation of his metaphor, but this idea also registers perfectly with the notion of criticism’s invisibility. By way of offering one example: This would map onto a cultural moment in which the overproduction of most things had led to a widespread inability to arrive at quality along with a widespread inability to map a known territory, see everything. There was a cheapening effect occurring across commodities at this time that directly related to their ubiquity. In other words, the ubiquity itself would lead to certain aspects of what he calls “invisibility.” These can be the larger implications of the internet, other sorts of socio-cultural theories like the Baudrillard’s Simulacra (1981), and/or the sweeping effects of global capitalism, even borrowing from Fukuyama’s End of History (1992), among many other possibilities that zero in on the art market more pointedly, or changes to the publishing market. Something like Pamela Lee mentions the same year in Artforum.[5] (Also, it is important to mention that he makes reference to the market as related to the issues he names in current criticism but doesn’t go as far as to accompany with larger socio-economic theories.)
The last thing that I want to note here is that there’s not only a globalization issue related to markets that creates outcomes this book outlines, but there are also likely related anthropological issues that the “art world” suffered during the rise of the Internet Age and globalization. These kinds of ideas bring to mind philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s work, writing around the same time, but with his book Transparency Society, coming out in 2012—nine years after this publication. Maybe, I’m even thinking of Kevin Kelly’s “Technium Unbound.”[6] Publications after this book are listed to build out sense-making of these arguments after the fact, of course. I’m pointing these things out, because these larger social and economic issues continue today as do whatever kind of “disease,” if that’s the desired metaphor, art criticism may have.
The use of disease and illness metaphors reminds me of Tolstoy’s book What is Art?, 1897.
6.
Mentions: Denis Diderot, Clement Greenberg, Kant and Charles Baudelaire, along with current writers: Roberta Smith, Michael Kimmelman and Peter Schjeldahl (7).
(Referring to sweeping comparisons in historical terms between Diderot, Greenberg, Kant and Baudelaire) “These comparisons are perhaps not as unjust as they may seem, because they are symptomatic of the slow slipping of art criticism off the face of the cultural world” (7).
He seems to really like Diderot and Baudelaire, who can be considered forefathers of art criticism. These are the parts that feel like a recap of Venturi’s book History of Art Criticism, 1936, with lists of similar names running throughout the book.[7]
Regarding “slipping off the face of the cultural world,” if he placed the issues of art criticism more squarely within the larger issues of its time, it may not seem to be at odds with the cultural world at all. By way of briefly offering an alternative to his argument, if my assertion above were fully fleshed out as an argument and were also accurate, then art criticism would be congruent, aligned exactly with the changing face of the cultural world. Then, the more accurate statement would simply be that he doesn’t like the current face of the cultural world that had led to this crisis in art criticism among other things.
I will say, however, when reading this statement in a backward-looking view, I understand it and can agree more. In other words, historically, the way that the production of criticism functioned (and, I think this is more to the point he intended) allied more with the public intellectual. In some sense, Elkins’s statement then reads as someone who takes issue with art criticism becoming more popularized (avoiding using the word “popular,” because we can’t say that, according to him, because it has no readers), but certainly the writing of criticism has increased, thereby becoming popularized in quantity, form and style—meaning more people are doing it and in a less intellectual way.
It’s occurring to me now (perhaps based on my quick look into Prickly Paradigm Press) that part of the issue revolves around the politics of the publishing industry itself. Emphasis on the word industry. I’m not going to expand on this here, but, he did mention economic confluences that would make criticism’s (apparent) digression make sense; but, he didn’t expressly mention publishing companies’ involvement here as also contributing to a changing expectation of published works overall, instead focusing the argument on the art organizations (galleries, museums, etc.).
7.
He names his “most-interesting” art critics. “My own list of most-interesting authors includes Joseph Masheck, Thomas McEvilley, Richard Shiff, Kermit Champa, Rosalind Krauss, and Douglas Crimp, but I doubt they are a canon in anyone else’s eyes, and the cloud of names behind them threatens to become infinite: Dave Hickey, Eric Troncy, Peter Plagens, Susan Suleiman, Francesco Bonami, Kim Levin, Helen Molesworth, Donald Kuspit, Buzz Spector, Mira Schor, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Miwon Kwon, Germano Celant, Giorgio Verzotti—there are hundreds more” (8).
Important to note, as he conducted such a thorough canvasing of the terrain of art criticism; it’s a noteworthy list of names.
8.
He relays that art criticism is “unmoored,” but that’s also why it has “vertiginous freedom,” but also lacks “a center of some kind against which to push” (9).
“…it is produced by thousands of people worldwide, but it has no common ground” (9).
Right. Formerly, art criticism’s “unmoored”-ness functioned to allow it to say heretical things, radical things, unpopular, extremely critical and counter-cultural things. Whereas now, it’s “vertiginous freedom” may, he seems to be saying without exactly saying it this way, also leads to its degradation in quality. (Quickly, he doesn’t explicitly say that art criticism has suffered a degradation of quality, yet the insinuations amount to that, “weaker,” less meaty (substantive), less intellectually and historically informed; he opts instead to appear to be mostly objectively tracking its changes as an observer, documenting its evolution. Similarly, to the way in which he doesn’t state outright that art criticism is insignificant, yet it doesn’t have any readers and isn’t as substantiative as other pieces of writing that he reads.)
This second statement presents itself as a contradiction, when, in fact, one logically follows the other. Again, a glut of something would logically engender a lack of common ground; it’s a diasporic logic; overwhelming diversity. Or, maybe, just to pose as a question: Why should art criticism have a common ground?
It’s difficult—because anyone criticizing art criticism is just saying what they want art criticism to be. He’s certainly asserting what he wants it to be (although, strangely, without saying so more overtly, as I pointed out above). He’s trying to use tools of objective analysis to claim to be describing what it is (that’s it’s degraded in quality), but becomes obvious that these are simply representations of his preferences, which he then plainly shares at the end of the book. There’s a strange way that the book seems to do exactly what he disavows most critics for doing (in this example, for example, favoring descriptions to avoid stating personal judgements, preferences; this becomes doubly confusing when he later calls description itself also a form of judgement, but I’ll get into that later).
9.
“By comparison an academic art historian or philosopher may easily spend a long and productive career without ever being paid for any publication” (10).
(Referring to the way former critics were in the “first half of the twentieth century”) “Art critics were more likely to be concerned with the history of art, including the history of their own practice” (10).
Again, I’m reading a presumption that art history and history supersede criticism; it’s hard to render these quotations and not begin to sense his lack of respect, a scoffing at—in a somewhat combative way—the critics of today. I think this point is made clear through the rest of the book regarding a tone of disappointment.
10.
More naming: Bloomsbury, Roger Fry, Clive Bell (11).
Again, a recap of names in Venturi’s History of Art Criticism (footnoted below), many names he mentions are also mentioned in Venturi’s book.
11.
“It is not…the case that critics have become less opinionated…But I do mean that critics have become less ambitious—if by ambition is meant the desire to try to see the landscape of some art practice and not just the one thing in apparent isolation” (12).
12.
“I do not at all mean that criticism’s intellectual purview has shrunk to fit the pluralism, jargon, and epistemological evasiveness that are so often associated with the academic left” (13).
“…art criticism has turned so abruptly from the engaged, passionate, historically informed practice it was before the later twentieth century, into the huge, massively funded but invisible and voiceless practice it has effectively become” (13).
Then he notes that the academic left, “…has called for more rigor, clearer argument, and greater historical awareness” (13).
He may be avoiding stepping outside his own partisanship here; preferring instead to say the same thing as the “academic left” but in different words, without knowing that one leads to the other in more specific terms. They fit hand in glove. Pluralism may explain overall interest in describing rather than judging and theorizing; jargon covers his issues with the philosopher’s essay category; and epistemological evasiveness may explain issues with both the conversative harangue and the academic treatise and essays that favor more rigor when he calls out judgement of judgement and intuitional critique as side-stepping the point of criticism altogether. I’ll add to this that each point he outlines in Unworkable Cures seems to indicate that this is exactly what he means, when he details the issues. In many ways, he may’ve just reiterated the October Roundtable’s reforms that he mentions, but using slightly different terms. The point being that is in keeping with his side, the academic left.
Like others he criticized (I’m thinking particularly Kramer) he also clearly has nostalgia for past criticism, which I think he attempts to sidestep.
13.
He breaks down the types of art criticism into seven “hydra heads,” which are: “catalog essay,” “academic treatise,” cultural criticism,” “conservative harangue,” “philosopher’s essays,” “descriptive art criticism,” “poetic art criticism” (16-17).
“…and for many writers the only important division is between academia and everything outside of it” (17).
14.
“The painter did not even bother to ask me whether I would consider cutting the word ‘sad’: she simply took it out of the essay because, as she explained later, she isn’t sad” (19).
“…they were blanket dismissals. In one case the artist said only that I had gotten him wrong” (19).
Perhaps, it’s challenging for him to occupy the position of the new critic. Of course, this doesn’t preclude him from being the best person to bring forward all the parts of the investigation, which he does well and thoroughly.
A place in which intellectual rigor can’t close a chasm that lacks feelings. There’s something intriguing about a point in history in which artists don’t need to accept criticism.
15.
(Referring to catalog essays in general, pertaining to their market function) “…a suspension of full argument in favor of open-ended evocation” (20). Similarly, he continues, that the writer will complete the essay “…without coming to a definite conclusion” (22).
“…almost nothing is said about the hundreds or thousands of other post-minimalist painters who work in a similar style, or about the current possibilities of geometric abstraction, or about the scholarship on the subject, or even about earlier responses to [the artist]’s work” (22).
He then makes a quick reference to “large museum catalogs” which are “bought as coffee-table ornaments,” and the essays there being “indistinguishable from art historical monographs,” which he calls “conservative.” (22-23).
Here he’s making a specific example of a “weak” essay, or a stereotypical catalog essay, written by Rob Weiner.
A brief mention to differentiate between essays for galleries and museums.
16.
“It seems to me that is one of the best arguments in favor of apparently inaccurate philosophic and critical references. Why not try to build a new kind of writing for a new subject matter? The worst argument, on the other hand, is that a skein of evanescent allusions is a sufficient response to the work: often academic allusions just stand in the way, clotting the prose with unjustifiable opacities” (26).
Disparaging the *appropriate* use of philosophical, or more intellectual concepts in art criticism.
17.
“In most cultural criticism, fine art is like those stubborn floury lumps in a powdered soup mix: they just won’t dissolve, but it’s OK anyway because they taste good” (29).
This is his craft (meant to mention this earlier); he has a deft way of dismissing something, someone, a work while also faintly paying it complimentary judgement. This tone carries on throughout the book.
18.
“…in Kramer’s eyes, the lack of discrimination and the failure of contemporary art go together” (30).
He doesn’t do much thinking work on Kramer, seems like an open-and-shut case. In other words, he doesn’t spend much time unpacking this type of art criticism, which he calls the “conservative harangue,” and he can therefore dismiss this category quickly.
19.
“My own difficulty with some of Crow’s more philosophic-minded essays is that the problems ostensibly embodied by the works are really not that interesting or ‘demanding’ as philosophy” (32).
“At the same time as he pursues his theory about the end of art history, Danto continues to write art criticism…” (32).
One reason for an aversion to philosophy, philosophical content and the philosopher’s essay when it comes to art criticism is seen in this quote.
20.
“Danto has not theorized the different force of the new, allegedly non-art-historical art criticism…” (33).
“…I could write an essay about abstraction using terms borrowed from electrical engineering or physics—but it would not count as art criticism for many readers” (33).
This statement is in reference to what is necessary for Danto to do, given his particular stance within the critical discourse. I would agree. Seems like his strongest dismissal.
21.
“Art writing that attempts not to judge, and yet presents itself as criticism, is one of the fascinating paradoxes of the second half of the twentieth century” (35).
He then goes on to name the goals of criticism instead of being critical, which he says are: “‘providing an accurate, descriptive account,’” “‘forming a bridge or opening a dialogue between artists and readers,’” “‘motivating readers to see and buy art,’” and “to introduce readers ‘to different cultures and alternative viewpoints’” (35). He recaps again “dialogues, evocations, motivations, introductions, bridges: they are all synonyms for good description” (35).
Repeats himself about his argument.
Not so sure about that, regarding synonyms for description. Need to mention, above comes for the Columbia University National Arts Journalism Program survey of 2002. This is the main source of the data he uses for the book.
22.
“…‘providing historical and other background information…’” is identified as the “second most-emphasized goal of art criticism,” according to the same survey (36).
(Continues with Columbia’s survey reference) “‘A piece of art criticism should place a work in a larger context,’ as one respondent puts it. That purpose is entirely unobjectionable, because historical context is unavoidably part of assessment” (36).
23.
“…there is plenty of contemporary art history that begins with issues of quality and relevance, and takes its partisanship seriously as history” (37).
Repeats an idea throughout the book that art criticism should become more art historical.
24.
“I don’t dispute the notion…” (41).
Here he’s referring to the idea that all descriptions are judgements. The issue with this statement is that if that were true, then it destabilizes his entire argument—that being that there’s a lack of judgements in art criticism, because he’s made it plainly clear that there’s an overabundance of descriptions.
25.
“…description is judgement…” (42).
“I do not doubt that description is judgement, but I think it is important not to confuse the intention to judge subtly with the intention not to judge” (42).
Here, he clearly contradicts himself. In one place, he says that criticism blanketly lacks judgement, instead opting to describe the art. Now, he’s saying that description is judgement. I suppose that he wants to say (changing his mind halfway through the book) that, OK, description is judgement, sort of—subtly so.
I’ll return to this, but since it breaks down his argument; the argument he winds up making is something like—since description is (subtle) judgement and there’s so much description, then criticism isn’t lacking judgement. Perhaps, then, he’s saying that it’s just lacking a stronger, meatier, tastier (but, not the bad-lumps-of-flour kind of judgement that’s tastes good even if empty) judgement.
Does it make sense to say these are all the things wrong with criticism today, especially that it lacks judgement instead it chooses to describe, and then say ‘descriptions are judgement,’ and end with there’s nothing wrong, or ultimately to reform?
26.
“Conceptual art, minimalism, and institutional critique all functioned to make art criticism inessential” (44).
Here, he’s stating the overall project of Artforum according to Hal Foster.
27.
“Several of the seven explanations have to do with the market” (48).
The history of economics, or the historical moment that the larger global capital system was (and is) in plays an important role in the evolution of art criticism, its changes, whether seen as a progression or digression. I agree.
28.
“Another way to look at descriptive criticism is to say it has just two hydra heads, or to mix mythological metaphors, to think of it as a Janus-faced hydra head. One side is benign, aiming only to enhance a reader’s sense of the art…The other side of descriptive criticism is passively destructive, because such writing must always dilute the drive to judgment, isolating art criticism from both judgement and art history, and rendering it diplomatic and innocuous” (49).
But description is judgement?
“Destructive,” but, as he ultimately says, doesn’t need reform? Worth this much of Elkins’s time and energy, but doesn’t need reform? There’s nothing to reform—even though decidedly there is a crisis. This is confusing.
29.
“Describing artworks, providing historical context, and writing well were the top three answers on the survey. The bottom two were ‘theorizing about the meaning, associations, and implications of the works being reviewed,’ and ‘rendering a personal judgement or opinion about the works being reviewed” (49).
He refers here to that Columbia survey takeaways again.
30.
“He wants things the way he imagines they once were, and that is not a plausible model for contemporary criticism” (58).
He’s referencing Kramer here, and his desire to “return to formalist rigor.”
31.
“It doesn’t reflect poorly on us that we have no prophet at the moment” (59).
“Art criticism has long been a mongrel among academic pursuits…” (59). He continues to end the paragraph saying, “It has never been a matter of the consistent application of philosophic concepts, and there is little sense in hoping that it ever will be” (59).
“Criticism must become more theoretical” (59).
OK. Maybe prophets aren’t made in the moment (just adding a place for historical hindsight).
One of the main headings in “Seven Unworkable Cures” that he does agree with: that it become more theoretical. Then, does it become a workable cure?
32.
“The criticism published in Artforum was indebted, she says, to Anglo-American New Criticism, which:
‘involved a textual analysis in which the project was to make
statements about the text in front of you that had to be
verifiable. You couldn’t introduce things about the artist’s
biography or about history. It was really limited to what was
on the page so that any reader who was at all competent could
check what you were saying about the work’ (61).
She is Rosalind Krauss.
33.
“…beginning with Greenberg: when it is good the work is dry, hard, obdurate and irrefragable…it is not easy to imagine how those values can be transposed to the present, and even if they were, it is not easy to picture how useful they would be” (63).
Continuing with Rosalind Krauss, and projects like “reception histories and institutional critiques” (63), he ventures onto his sixth unworkable cure, “Criticism should become a reflection on judgements, not the parading of judgements.”
“If you are interested in reception history, then the hard-fought battles in the art world become objects of historical interest” (63).
This in reference to the above prescription to art criticism’s “disease,” and number five of his unworkable cures, which states “Criticism needs to be serious, complex, and rigorous.” Kind of the left-leaning version of number four, the Kramer example.
Does he parade his judgements about criticism?
I have registered the sixth non-cure as able to function as both the entire answer to his question and inadvertently functioning as an argument against the argument of this book.
34.
“The problem that faces both institutional critique and reception history is the present. We live in it, we make judgements in it. When we judge contemporary art, we engage concepts that we believe in—there is no other way to judge. For a person who practices reception history, that poses a truly difficult problem. Such a writer will be acutely aware that no concepts are born in the present. Concepts that are used to judge art must have their own histories, and once those histories become apparent, it will not be possible to believe in the concepts with the whole-hearted commitment that they once commanded. If a figure like Greenberg has already receded far enough into the past such that his discourse is an object of historical analysis, that means concepts at play in contemporary art are entirely unrelated to his. If they aren’t—if Greenberg’s senses of words like ‘flatness,’ ‘abstraction,’ ‘kitsch,’ and ‘avant-garde’ are still echoing in the present—then the evaluation of contemporary art becomes extremely problematic. How, after all, is it possible to judge a work using criteria that are no longer believable, that belong to another time? When concepts all belong to past writers, criticism becomes chronicle, and judgement becomes meditation on past judgement. The present is immersed in history, and finally drowns in it” (64).
It’s a long and muddled point. But, my point is that just because an academic art historian doesn’t like the direction history takes, doesn’t mean that it’s theoretically inaccurate, or that this is the direction that writing about art took, or the way in which art criticism as history unfolded. If one is able to theorize about the procession of the concepts that built the last critical movement in art, this very well may follow the last: A type of criticism that, in his estimation, is lacking, not very good.
Something he says throughout the book: there are an overabundance of criticisms out there and none of them matter (in the sense that they are overwhelmingly ignored, not read, or not meaty enough in content, and maybe also because they don’t even know what they are), right? So, he’s inadvertently proving that this, in fact, *is* the cure when criticism itself, as its former identity existed, doesn’t matter. (Also, this pamphlet is performing judgement about judgement. Does it matter?) I’ll put it this way, when the market outstrips history and its ability to speak to an audience, then this probably is—perhaps not a cure—but the only course on which to proceed, even if that means one step closer to death or death itself.
35.
(Referring to Michael Fried) “…the project of modernism as he had delineated it; the indispensability of a fully informed sense of art history; the central critical and historical importance of art that compels, for a given time and audience, conviction” (65).
Regarding taking a stand in art criticism, having a position.
36.
“…the lynchpin of the paradox of positionless, or theoryless, art criticism” (67).
On the other side (of this same impulse to take a stand) is Jerry Salz. Unpacking Saltz’s way of working, Elkins finds an inconsistency, something in the inability to take a stand without necessary giving rise to judgements. A fine point.
37.
“…but I also know this is what the sentence says” (68).
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…” (68).
He demonstrates no hermeneutical doubts in his ability to judge, and interpret texts, interesting to note.
And, yet, he sticks with sevens throughout the book, a self-deprecating joke, perhaps?
38.
“Positionlessness finds its limit, however, when the writing itself implies there should be a position. A critic who recoils from theories may fall prey to an autoimmune reaction when his own criticism implies that he does in fact have a position” (77).
It’s at this point that I begin to think the book is more about functioning as an electrical jolt to incite critics to write in a way that’s more pleasing (to him, and maybe others in his field). But this can’t be a categorical justification, if it’s simply his preference. He wants opinions, judgements and theories. Anything but ambiguity. Getting a group to move, doesn’t mean you’re pushing them in the right direction.
39.
“…no reform comes without the very severe penalties of anachronism and historical naivete” (77).
Perhaps in the rearview of history. Is this why he ultimately chooses not to propose reforms (while secretly proposing reforms)? I disagree with this statement. Provocations (the educational meaning) are reforms pinned to the future, maybe the way that literature is—imagined futures. I think the issue here is in asking something existent to change rather than foreseeing the future of its potential.
40.
“So I do not think it is necessarily a good idea to reform criticism” (80).
Wait. What? Seems to contradict everything he’s said throughout the book. Unless he’s trying to show how criticism now un-critiques things by performing the same offenses in this book; he’s simply letting himself off the hook otherwise. And, it’s simply not true given everything else he wrote. This attempts to disguise all the reforms he mentioned: he wants more theorizing, stronger, more self-reflexive judgements and more history. He even wants better writing. Clearly stated desires about reform. He goes onto tell us what he likes within the current landscape of criticism, which gestures toward reform.
With all that’s wrong with art criticism today, outlined in detail in this book, and all the reforms suggested throughout—overtly and those left up to inference, art criticism should not change. Oh? Hm.
41.
“Ambitious judgement…meaning that the critic is interested in comparing the work at hand with past work, and weighing her judgements against those made by previous writers” (83).
Including to mention how he defines “ambitious judgement.”
42.
He also wants “reflection about judgement itself,” which in an earlier section he claimed was an “unworkable cure.” “I find myself engaged by critics who are serious about judgment, by which I mean that they offer judgments…and they then pause to assess those judgements” (84). He continues, “Art criticism is a forum for the concept and operation of judgment, not merely a place where judgements are asserted…” And, finally, “At the same time, criticism cannot become exclusively a forum for meditation on judgment, as Krauss once said, because then it would lose itself in another way—it would dissolve into aesthetics, or into trackless mediation” (84).
Why can’t it “become exclusively a forum for meditation on judgement?” Its ultimate direction follows history not one individual’s particular preferences.
43.
Finally, he says it that “Criticism important enough to count as history, and vice versa” is good. (85).
Another stated reform. (Yet he’s not advocating for reform.)
44.
“…all that is required is that everyone read everything. Each writer, no matter what their place and purpose, should have an endless bibliography, and know every pertinent issue and claim” (85).
Unfortunately, this also contradicts an earlier statement in the very beginning of the book, in which he expressly states that no one can read everything, regarding criticism that there is “more of it around than anyone can read” (4). (Although I’m guessing he means we should read everything from art history, not art criticism—or, at least not the sort of art criticism that this book aims to critique (but these distinctions are not clearly delineated).
*
* *
FOOTNOTES
[1] Prickly Paradigm Press website: https://www.pricklyparadigm.com/about
[2] Elkins, James. “What Ever Happened to Real Art Criticism?,” New Art Examiner, Part One, Chicago, Vol. 33 (2018): 10. (I can’t locate the original publication on New Art Examiner and therefore can’t include link; I found the PDF directly from his Academia.edu profile.)
[3] Gwen Allen, professor at San Francisco State University, comes to mind, who focused a substantial research project on art magazines, leading to the book: Artists' Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art (MIT Press, 2011). Placing here to note as another form of criticism, potentially, not mentioned in this book.
[4] Lewis, Adrian. “Elkins’ Writing and Art History.” The Art Bulletin 84, no. 4 (2002): 699. https://doi.org/10.2307/3177301.
[5] “You could call it a pathology of self-definition. Either that or a severe case of ‘boundary issues.’ For close to ten years now, that ambient phenomenon known as the art world has been hit by what amounts to an identity crisis, more often than not figured under the sign of globalization. Flip through the catalogues and magazines, survey the principal actors and bit players, track the ever-proliferating biennials—from São Paulo to Shanghai to Istanbul—and witness the art world’s struggle to rethink its audiences and range of influence, its norms and procedures. But just how precisely has the art world addressed the conditions of ‘multiplicity, diversity, and contradiction’—the defining characteristics of the contemporary experience, according to Francesco Bonami—coextensive with the processes of globalization? There is the lurking suspicion shared by many longstanding art-world participants that ‘the Global’ has simply assumed the throne formerly held by likes of the Postmodern, the Multicultural, the Simulacra, and the informe (and not unlike the operations of formlessness, globalization’s neoliberal consequences may prove thoroughly abject).” Pamela M. Lee, “Boundary Issues: The Art World Under the Sign of Globalism,” Artforum, November 2003, Vol. 42, No. 3, https://www.artforum.com/features/boundary-issues-the-art-world-under-the-sign-of-globalism-167783/.
[6] Kevin Kelly, “Technium Unbound.” The Long Now Foundation. November 12, 2014. Video.
https://longnow.org/talks/02014-kelly/.
[7] Venturi, Lionello. Translated by Charles Marriott. History of Art Criticism. E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. New York, 1936.