SEEING OUT LOUD

by Jerry Saltz

This month is my seven-year anniversary at the Village Voice, so I 

thought I'd use Frieze magazine's recent queries to me about the 

"de-skilling of art criticism" and "our post-critical era" as a way to 

write about what I think I'm trying to do here. First, I fretted I was 

the kind of "de-skilled" critic Frieze was referring to. I have no 

degrees. I started out as an artist, stopped painting, and became a 

long-distance truck driver. My CB handle was "the Jewish Cowboy": 

Shalom, partner. I didn't begin writing criticism until I was almost 

40. All I knew was I loved art and had to be in the art world. The 

truth is, I wasn't sure what Frieze meant by "de-skilled." It sounded 

vaguely bad. But to me de-skilled means unlearning other people's ideas 

of skill. All great contemporary artists, schooled or not, are 

essentially self-taught and are de-skilling like crazy. I don't look 

for skill in art; I look for originality, surprise, obsession, energy, 

experimentation, something visionary, and a willingness to embarrass 

oneself in public. Skill has nothing to do with technical proficiency; 

it has to do with being flexible and creative. I'm interested in people 

who rethink skill, who redefine or reimagine it: an engineer, say, who 

builds rockets from rocks.

The best critics look for the same things in contemporary criticism 

that they look for in contemporary art. But they also have an eye. 

Having an eye in criticism is as important as having an ear in music. 

It means discerning the original from the derivative, the inspired from 

the smart, the remarkable from the common, and not looking at art in 

narrow, academic, or "objective" ways. It means engaging uncertainty 

and contingency, suspending disbelief and trying to create a place for 

doubt, unpredictability, curiosity and openness.

Dishearteningly, many critics have ideas but no eye. They rarely work 

outside their comfort zone, are always trying to reign art in, turn it 

into a seminar or a clique, or write cerebral, unreadable texts on 

mediocre work. There's nothing wrong with writing about weak art as 

long as you acknowledge the work's shortcomings. Seeing as much art as 

you can is how you learn to see. Listening very carefully to how you 

see, gauging the levels of perception, perplexity, conjecture, 

emotional and intellectual response, and psychic effect, is how you 

learn to see better.

Art is a way of thinking, a way of knowing yourself. Opinions are tools 

for listening in on your thinking and expanding consciousness. Many 

writers treat the juiciest part of criticism, judgment, as if it were 

tainted or beneath them. The most interesting critics make their 

opinions known. Yet in most reviews there's no way to know what the 

writer thinks, or you have to scour the second-to-last paragraph for 

one negative adjective to detect a hint of disinclination. This is 

no-risk non-criticism. Being "post-critical" isn't possible. Everyone 

is judging all the time. Critics who tell you they're not judging or 

that they're being objective are either lying or delusional. Being 

critical of art is a way of showing it respect. Being subjective is 

being human.

Yet people regularly say, "You shouldn't write on things you don't 

like." This breaks my heart. No one says this to theater critics, film 

reviewers, restaurant critics, or sports writers. No one says, "Just 

say all the food was good." Nowadays, many see criticism mainly as a 

sales tool or a rah-rah device. Too many critics enthuse over 

everything they see or merely write descriptively. This sells everyone 

short and is creating a real disconnect. People report not liking 80 

percent of the shows they see, yet 80 percent of reviews are positive 

or just descriptive.

Obviously, critics can't just hysterically love or hate things, or 

assert that certain types of art or media are inherently bad (e.g., no 

one has actually believed that painting is dead since the Nixon 

administration, yet writers regularly beat this dead horse). Critics 

must connect their opinions to a larger set of circumstances; present 

cogent arguments; show how work does or doesn't seem relevant, is or 

isn't derivative; explain why an artist is or isn't growing. As with 

Melville's ideas about art, criticism should have: "Humility -- yet 

pride and scorn/Instinct and study; love and hate/Audacity and 

reverence." Good criticism should be vulnerable, chancy, candid, and 

nervy. It should give permission, have attitude, maybe a touch of 

rebellion, never be sanctimonious or dull, and be written in a 

distinctive, readable way. Good critics should be willing to go on 

intuition and be unafraid to write from parts of themselves they don't 

really know they have.

If criticism is in trouble, as many say, it's because too many critics 

write in a dreary hip metaphysical jargon that no one understands 

except other dreary hip metaphysicians who speak this dead language. 

They praise everything they see, or only describe. These critics are 

like the pet owner who sews up the cat to stop it from fouling the 

sofa: They keep the couch clean but kill the cat.

  ©2005 Jerry Salt/ Village Voice