If Heathcote’s was an isolated view, then it might be disregarded as nothing more than spleen. Disturbingly, however, he is not alone. Almost without exception, the critics who were canvassed for this essay answered ‘No’ when asked whether they thought there was a healthy critical climate in Australia today, albeit for different reasons. Some lamented the ‘impenetrability’ of much critical writing on the visual arts, its perverse imperviousness to comprehension. Several drew attention to the increasingly intimate relationship between art criticism and art promotion or marketing, whose feeble offspring is the primped and powdered puff piece. Others pointed to the steady shrinkage of column inches dedicated to art criticism in the major newspapers. For one respondent, newspaper criticism itself is an entirely ‘degraded genre’ with little influence, purpose or point. Still others think that there is too much art and too much art writing, a large proportion of both of which is banal and forgettable. In sum, criticism appears to be in crisis, again.

The natural state of criticism may actually be one of perpetual crisis, as Kenneth Burke has recently argued in the Chicago-based journal Critical Inquiry. Certainly, the current (or continuing) crisis of Australian art criticism, if that is what it is, is by no means a unique or provincial phenomenon; the result perhaps of some kind of nationwide laissez-faire anti-intellectualism or excessive materialism. The views of local critics parallel, often quite closely, those expressed by their North American counterparts in recent years.

A report entitled The Visual Art Critic: A Survey of Art Critics at General-Interest News Publications in America (2002), by the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, is particularly interesting in this respect. Among the responses solicited from art world figures were the following: ‘The reviews in specialized art magazines should be the highest form, since the writers have looser deadlines and frequently more space. But often, they are the most droning, poorly written, hermetic of all.’ (Sidney Lawrence, Head of Public Affairs, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution); ‘Criticism at both newspapers and specialized art magazines can, in some sense, be seen as a form of marketing. In the end, one wants a critical review, even if it is negative, if only to receive the attention. Even a bad review brings people in the door.’ (Matthew Drutt, Chief Curator, The Menil Collection, Houston); and ‘Newspaper art criticism in America today is entirely disconnected from serious discourse on art’ (James Elkins, Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago). These are more or less identical sentiments to those of the Australian art critics mentioned above.

Some of the issues at stake here may be familiar, even tired, or at least always present in one form or another. What seems different is the palpable tone of resignation. In the past, polemical pieces about the crisis of criticism have often served as prolegomena to some new critical programme, often driven by a defined theoretical position or dissatisfaction with the ex cathedra pronouncements of the established critics. In Australia today, however, few critics seem interested in reforming criticism (not, of course, that they necessarily should be): some duly note the problems as if they were necessary evils to be kept at arm’s length as much as possible, while others flatly deny any interest in criticism or, to be more precise, what they describe rather disdainfully as ‘reviewing’, preferring to think of themselves as practising other forms of art writing altogether.

On the face of it, then, art criticism seems to be in poor shape, its condition critical, as it were. Perhaps it has simply become yet another victim of the cultural logic of late capitalism, complicit and willing in its own execution. The aim of this essay is to find out whether this really is the case through comparing the opinions of the critics themselves.

How do art critics approach their task? What are the purposes of art criticism in this country? The views of two of the most visible newspaper critics in Australia – Robert Nelson (The Age) and Sebastian Smee (The Australian) – have a certain amount in common. Both are interested in contributing to a ‘conversation’ about art. Smee also seeks ‘to persuade others around to my way of seeing things’, whereas Nelson approaches his writing as an opportunity to ‘learn, test my views, find out what I really think and, if I’m lucky, how others react to it’. On the one hand, then, for these critics, art writing is a form of advocacy, especially for Nelson, who straightforwardly hopes that his work will ‘increase the interest in art, the volume of spectators and the curiosity of those who are already interested in art’. On the other hand, they both see themselves as participants or, perhaps better in the case of Smee, interlocutors in a broad dialogue about art.

‘Interlocutor’ is better because it implies the additional (legal) meaning of ‘interlocutory’, by which is meant a preliminary decree or judgment. Smee, for example, comments on what he calls the ‘queasy business’ of judgment, but stops short of suggesting that it can or should be avoided. At any rate, the idea of judgment or evaluation is inherent in his professed desire to ‘persuade’. Sasha Grishin, Professor of Art History at ANU and principal art critic for The Canberra Times, makes no bones about it: ‘The broad approach of my art criticism is both explanatory and judicial. You explain the object, the oeuvre or the exhibition within a broader context of art history, aesthetics and art theory and then evaluate the contribution.’ Similarly, Daniel Thomas, who, although he points out that his approach has always been ‘chiefly from the position of an art-museum collection curator [Art Gallery of New South Wales and National Gallery of Australia] or director [Art Gallery of South Australia]’, did write about art for the Sunday Telegraph in Sydney and the Sydney Morning Herald during the 1960s and 1970s, and continues to do so for this magazine (including this issue), is no shrinking violet when it comes to that ‘queasy business’. In his view, the chief purpose of art criticism is: ‘to assess the aesthetic excellence of works of art and then present them to their various publics, with interpretation of their meanings. Sometimes also to address the cultural significance of works of lesser quality.’

Grishin’s point about the ‘explanatory and judicial’ objectives of his art criticism would not necessarily meet with the agreement of other Australian art critics. Rex Butler, Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Queensland and critic for The Courier-Mail, believes that one of the problems with most newspaper reviewers is that they ‘try to “explain” works of art to those who presumably don’t know’. He goes on to claim that the ‘great artist–critics never do that: they take the opportunity (even within the mass media) to bring about something new, to write something that will live on after the exhibition, the audience and sometimes even the artist’. Charles Green, Associate Professor and Reader in Art History at the University of Melbourne, makes a similar point about ‘artist–critics’ when he says that the strongest pieces in issues of Artforum (for which he is the Australian correspondent) from the late 1960s – the journal’s most influential period – were not the reviews but essays by artists.

Butler’s dim view of newspaper ‘reviewing’ raises an important issue, one that he has himself discussed on a previous occasion. In his book An Uncertain Smile: Australian Art in the ’90s (1996), he argues that ‘all ambitious art criticism in Australia is formed by its opposition to the dominant newspaper critics’, the irony of which position, given that he is himself now a newspaper critic, he is fully aware of. The point, however, remains and it is one that a number of respondents touched on.

Several draw a distinction between ‘art criticism’ and ‘art reviewing’, despite their otherwise very different conceptions of both of these activities. Peter Timms, who is currently a Tasmanian art critic for The Australian and the author of the polemical book What’s Wrong with Contemporary Art? (2004), expresses the difference in the following terms:

I make a distinction between art criticism – which I take to be the discussion of art as a whole, and its social, psychological and political role, and the formulation of methodologies – and art reviewing – which uses the theories and methodologies of criticism and theory to comment directly upon specific works or exhibitions. There’s an implied hierarchy here, of course, which would have criticism as the more complex and specialised activity and reviewing the more day-to-day. I write criticism when I’m writing an essay for an art magazine or a book, whereas I write reviews in the newspapers. It’s not a clear distinction, but it is, I think, useful as a rule of thumb. In fact, I prefer reviewing because I feel happiest when I’m writing for a non-specialist audience.

Green makes a similar distinction, though Timms would be unlikely to agree with much else that he says:

All discussions on art criticism go off the rails since they tend to only think about art reviewing and that, in turn, is hijacked by newspaper art reviewing. But these are the least interesting, least important and historically least relevant forms of art criticism. The more interesting and longer-lasting forms of art criticism are essays for public art spaces or art museum catalogues, and essays in art magazines, and essays in books.

In fact, Green’s view of newspaper reviewing is significantly dimmer than Butler’s. According to him, the news-papers are ‘the province of populist policemen’. As judges and arbiters of taste, the chief role of the newspaper critics is thus to (patronisingly) ‘police the field’. He adds that the state of newspaper reviewing ‘is so dire that commendation would be a serious long-term problem for an artist’.

This issue, perhaps more than any other, is highly divisive. If, for Green, the newspaper critic, or rather ‘reviewer’, is nothing more than a populist policeman, the kind of art criticism that he thinks is historically more valuable – essentially a more specialised and, it needs to be said, academic form of art writing – is, in Timms’s caustic phrase, ‘the literary equivalent of pissing against the wall’.

These are diametrically opposed, if equally trenchantly expressed, viewpoints. On the one hand, we have an image of the newspaper art critic as a buttoned-up, perhaps elaborately moustachioed and truncheon-wielding policeman-pundit, laying down the law wherever he goes. On the other, there is the academic critic, whom we encounter behind a wall somewhere, probably a sandstone one, emitting a steady stream of baffling dissertations.

There would appear to be little common ground between these two positions, though it is worth pointing out that in Australia many of the newspaper critics wear several hats at once. Nelson, Grishin, Butler and Green, for instance, all hold down academic positions in addition to their newspaper roles. On this point, Grishin quite reasonably suggests that art critics will write in different ways for different audiences. As he says: ‘A TV or radio interview will be very different from a scholarly journal or a regular column in a daily newspaper.’ This makes a lot of sense and implies that there is no reason why someone might not write for a newspaper, a specialised journal, a book or an exhibition catalogue in quite different registers. Peter Hill, Senior Lecturer at the School of Creative Arts at the University of Melbourne, and a widely published art critic (as well as, perhaps uniquely, a sometime lighthouse keeper), calls this adoption of different ‘voices’ for different publications ‘splitting the eleven’:

Back in the early seventies, in the Tavern bar in Dundee, there was a throw when playing 301, a popular game of darts, called Splitting the Eleven – and I have only ever seen it played in Dundee. If your total score reduced to one hundred and eleven you were allowed one throw of a dart to try and land it between the legs of the actual number eleven on the dart board to win the game outright. I rather liked this quirky off-beat move compared to the professional dart player’s constant attacks – and very professional attacks – on the triple twenty. So I am not a professional art critic … I am a ‘Heroic Amateur’. ²

Here is yet another image of the art critic to add to the gallery: the amateur and possibly slightly tipsy, but nonetheless heroic dart player, swaying a little perhaps on the sticky carpet of a pub but capable, all the same, of pulling off an upset with one unexpected throw. It is hard to resist adding the author, publisher and art critic for The Australian (1994–2004) Susan McCulloch’s comment here, though it evokes quite a different type of drinking establishment: ‘My father [Allan McCulloch, the long-serving art critic for the Argus and the Melbourne Herald from the 1940s to the 1980s] always used to say that art is like wine … you don’t have to drink a whole bottle (or spend hours looking at something) to judge its quality: it is something you pick up instantly.’

Obviously, the audience for newspaper art criticism has a different complexion from the audience for the criticism that appears in the specialised literature (less apoplectic some might say). Even this, however, may be too much of a generalisation. Joanna Mendelssohn, who has been an art critic for The Bulletin, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian and is, like so many of the other critics, also an academic (at the University of New South Wales), thinks that: ‘Although The Australian is a daily broadsheet, the reviews section of the arts pages tends to attract only those readers with a specific interest in the arts. In that sense, there is little difference between these reviews and those written for a specialist magazine like Artlink or Tema Celeste.’

How do the critics themselves envisage their audience(s)? To whom or what do they feel their primary responsibility? Unsurprisingly, answers to these questions vary considerably, but they can be boiled down to the following. Some feel that the critic is, in the first instance, responsible to the readers (Timms, Smee, McCulloch, Mendelssohn). Mendelssohn argues that one should simultaneously write for several kinds of reader – the general reader, the informed reader and the artist. She is the only respondent to consider the critic to be obliged to the artist, but adds a couple of interesting qualifications. Sometimes, she thinks, it is better not to even bother to review a poor exhibition by a young artist; that the critic ought to pass over it in silence. At the other end of the spectrum, if the work of an established artist is ‘tired, overpriced and lazy’, then the critic should say as much. Not everyone may have the stomach for this. According to Mendelssohn: ‘I wrote that about the last exhibition of the late Brett Whiteley. Years later Graeme Blundell told me Whiteley had wanted to take a contract out on my life as a result.’

Grishin states that the critic’s main responsibility is to the art and him or herself: ‘Otherwise you might as well tell us what the Lord Mayor’s wife wore at the opening.’ In a similar vein, some claim that the critic should be mainly responsible to his or her critical ‘conscience’ and to history. The most extended response of this kind was from Nelson, and is worth quoting at length:

I would like to say [the art critic is primarily responsible to] both the moment and posterity; but I realise that this is vain. We are not responsible to the market, though it would be good if more art were bought. We are not responsible to the galleries, though it would be good if more foot-traffic resulted from the exposure. We are not responsible to the publisher, though it would be good if they had the confidence that we have a buoyant scene from which to launch critical debate. We are not responsible to the artists, though it would be good if they enjoyed more confidence and sense of support. We are not responsible to the ‘mums and dads of the suburbs’, though it would be good if they felt emboldened to exercise their curiosity more. We are not responsible to art historians, though it would be good if the material – good and bad – were archived and used by historians as a sign of the times. To whom are we responsible? Only to ourselves! Our subject matter is art; and authority is fundamentally laundered through the tumble of autonomous individual perceptions.

Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, given his general antipathy towards the ‘populist policemen’ of the newspapers, Green makes a broadly similar point (though this may just go to show that critics write in different ways for different publications): ‘The critic should not be the slave of her/his clients, i.e. artists, though this is often the case. The critic, like the artist, is responsible to her or his own conscience and sense of history and nothing else.’

Green does not mention any obligation to readers, which would be certain to raise the ire of Timms and thus returns us to the fault lines of the dispute about newspaper reviewing and art criticism ‘proper’, as some would have it. The point of Timms’s vivid, if waspish, image of the micturating critic is that he or she couldn’t care less about readers. He thinks that ‘the whole critical culture in the visual arts, both here and overseas, is permeated by contempt for the public’; and, staying on roughly the same metaphorical ground: ‘Criticism is hermetic and frequently disappears up its own fundament.’

A more troubling issue than this probably irresolvable difference of opinion about the relative merits of   newspaper criticism and other forms of art writing is the possibility that no real criticism worth the name actually appears anywhere, including the specialised art literature; that, as I suggested at the outset, art criticism in general has become so moribund and listless that it no longer has any bite and has been reduced to pandering and promotion.

Almost all the critics whose views were sought for this essay alluded to the relationship between art writing and the market. This is, of course, a long-standing concern, not just for critics, but also for art historians. There have always been gossipy rumours about such and such a figure, who is usually eminent and often also suspected of being a KGB spy, Taliban sympathiser or your choice of villain, and whose scholarly efforts to rehabilitate the work of a neglected ‘school’ or period happen to coincide with his or her interests as a collector. This cuts both ways: Bernard Berenson, the connoisseur of early Italian painting, was, he felt, well and truly exploited by the dealer Joseph Duveen, and never properly reimbursed for his expertise and authentications (compared, that is, with what Duveen himself was making out of them).

Works of visual art, to state the obvious, can have extraordinary, even obscene commercial value. It is no wonder, therefore, that the art critic may be periodically faced with ethical dilemmas of varying complexity and obduracy associated with the nexus between criticism and promotion. Mendelssohn’s view is widely held:

… there is a reduction in the amount of newspaper space allocated to the arts, and the growth of a generation of newspaper editors who are themselves not sufficiently well educated in the arts. They are therefore susceptible to seduction by the PR industry. As I’m sure you are aware, the growth of professional lobbyists is one of the worst aspects of modern media, and arts publicists make many of the rest look like rank amateurs. There is a special need for knowledgeable writers and commentators on the arts who know enough to cut through the bribes (international trip to promote this exhibition? meet for lunch at Lucio’s?) and general schmoozing.

That said, both Green and Daniel Palmer, Lecturer in Art and Design Theory at Monash University and a freelance critic, present a noteworthy alternative point of view. Green, as we know, thinks that the situation of newspaper reviewing is so impoverished that a critical notice could actually harm an artist’s long-term prospects. He also argues that critics have little influence on the market; that, in other words, their ‘promotional’ activities make no difference. Some people, especially in the commercial gallery sector, might disagree with this, but Green goes on to claim that the ‘proper functions of criticism have … been appropriated by curatorship. Completely.’ Palmer makes a similar point: ‘Needless to say, art criticism in Australia currently functions primarily as a form of promotion. Curators and gallerists are far more powerful filtering agents than the cacophony of critics … Since critics are largely powerless; ethical questions are rarely faced.’

In an era of proliferating biennales and a genuinely globalised art world, this is a persuasive argument. The curator has become one of the primary gatekeepers of the contemporary ‘canon’. To receive the imprimatur of selection for an exhibition at a prestigious venue with an international reputation may be more desirable for today’s artist than a critical review in a newspaper or the art press, though of course every little bit helps. It might be added as a corollary, that the rise of the curator is paralleled by the rise of the collector, both of whom may appear to have little need for the critic. As the American critic Jeff Perrone has suggested: ‘You have automatic power if you walk into a gallery and have five million dollars to spend. When there are people like that around, who needs critics?’³

This is probably an unnecessarily pessimistic, not to mention simplistic, view – a sort of reformulation of Roland Barthes’s once-controversial thesis about the ‘death of the author’, rewritten as: ‘The birth of the collector must be at the cost of the death of the critic.’ Nowadays, few people really believe that the author has somehow been, or should be, killed off and replaced by the figure of the reader. Barthes was, at any rate, writing a polemic, and his statement should be taken in that spirit (despite his own fatal encounter with a laundry truck in Paris). Likewise, if contemporary art amounts to something more than yet another commodity, then there will always be a place for criticism, though perhaps its most effective format(s) and modes of address will be different (on which, see below).

Grishin and McCulloch mention a further, peculiarly, though not uniquely Australian ethical dilemma associated with indigenous art. For Grishin: ‘A key problem is also dealing with indigenous art as a non-indigenous art critic. While the question does get canvassed from time to time, it is rarely confronted in everyday criticism.’ McCulloch, who is well known for her work in this area, says that: ‘The most uncomfortable I’ve found regarding this is, of course, reviewing or – as I do/have done – reviewing and critiquing industry practices … in the Aboriginal art world. It’s perhaps surprising the incredible vitriol (and worse, direct threats) which this can attract … possibly why so few are prepared to tackle reviewing in this area; it gets mixed up with racial issues which are uncomfortable to say the least.’

Obviously, the field of indigenous art is no less immune to colonisation by the market than any other. All essentialism aside, the lack of indigenous commentators on indigenous art in this country’s mass media is a significant problem (though there are a handful of high-profile indigenous curators). In this respect, the discourse of Australian art criticism compares unfavourably with that of other countries such as New Zealand, where there are a number of influential commentators on Maori art issues who define themselves as Maori and, like their critical counterparts in Australia, also hold prominent positions in universities.

In the end, then, we are left with a field that might be described as follows. Over there is a group of strait-laced conformists, assiduously bowing and scraping before the big art institutions – the ‘museo-academic ziggurat’ – until they are finally admitted into the coveted inner sanctums. Elsewhere is another group, easily identifiable and eagerly initiating and maintaining conversations with anyone who will listen. Then there are the artist–critics, whom some of the others show signs of admiring, but who  usually live in the US. In the foreground, a group of policemen can be spotted, waving their truncheons and barking out their verdicts. Further back, a few figures can just be made out behind a wall, too absorbed in their private affairs to pay attention to the policemen or anyone else for that matter, except perhaps the artist–critics. If you look hard enough, you can sometimes see a handful of stragglers, who periodically venture out, drink in hand, to fool around with darts, some of which hit their mark. Comparatively thick on the ground are the shady proxies of the market in their silvery suits, all of whom keep portraits of themselves in locked rooms that they are careful never to enter. Far less in evidence are the indigenous critics. Finally, best dressed and most glamorous of all, presiding over the terrain as a whole, even during their regular absences overseas, are the curators of contemporary art.

This is, of course, a caricature, but a forgivable one, I hope. It at least serves as, if not a gallery of rogues, then a message in a bottle – however cartoon-like – constructed out of the comments of the critics who so generously responded to my queries. Above all, it suggests that art criticism in Australia, as elsewhere, is a polymorphous phenomenon that occurs in a range of venues and voices. (In his 2004 book What Happened to Art Criticism?, James Elkins describes art criticism as a ‘hydra’ for this reason.)

So what kind of shape is art criticism in this country in? There is little agreement on the relative merits of the forms that art criticism takes. As I have suggested, this is one of the most contested issues, the poles of which are well represented by the irreconcilable positions of Green and Timms. There is equally little agreement on audiences and responsibilities, which is almost certainly a consequence of the very different objectives of the various genres of art writing. Most think that the market, lobbyists, public relations people and so on – the whole commercial enterprise of art – has too much influence over art criticism in general, however subtly or unobtrusively. Green and Palmer also make the convincing point that the art critic today has nothing like the influence of the curator, that in a sense he or she has been relegated to the sidelines – running up and down the line, perhaps, rather than playing referee, but even in this demoted position being frequently overruled. There is, as well, a distinct lack of indigenous voices in our predominantly white, middle-class critical firmament.

Given this rather discouraging prognosis, it seems worth asking, finally, whether there are any signs at all, however faint or obscure, of health in Australian art criticism today. Some think that there are. A few respondents drew attention to two relatively new ventures – one in Sydney, the other in Melbourne – that may suggest more effective models for criticism as a less compromised pursuit. The first is the online blog The Artlife (www.artlife.blogspot.com), and the second is the Melbourne-based un Magazine (www.unmagazine.org). Both have emerged out of, and continue to represent, local constituencies that are deeply engaged with the contemporary art of their respective cities, though un Magazine increasingly attracts submissions from other parts of the country besides Melbourne.

The Artlife blog consists of an informal mixture of criticism, reviews, news, gossip and commentary on what it might describe as the ‘antics’ of art world figures, including some of the critics canvassed for this essay, all in a self-deprecating, witty and ironic style. It has become essential reading for anyone interested in the Sydney art scene. However, it is written anonymously, which is not exactly an approach that could be described as ‘without fear or favour’, to borrow McCulloch’s phrase for what art criticism should aim to be. Perhaps if The Artlife bloggers were to reveal their identities, their ability to dish the dirt from the inside, so to speak, would be compromised – nobody would talk to them anymore. All the same, it seems indicative that this kind of independent criticism requires anonymity. How long their anonymity will last – they occasionally claim that they will tell their readers who they are in the near future – is uncertain. Maybe The Artlife will turn out to be the Nikki Gemmell rather than the R. Mutt of Australian art criticism.

un Magazine is a free online and paper journal of local record, founded and edited by the artist Lily Hibberd. It seeks to document the exhibitions of young and overlooked artists, to date primarily in Melbourne, often at spaces that are ignored by the mainstream art journals. The magazine also actively publishes new writers, many of whom are artists themselves or students who have not previously appeared in print. It has no house style and often comes across as a chaotic but compelling collection of critical voices.

Hibberd spoke recently at a symposium on the relationship between art practice and art education organised by the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (Hatched 05). In her paper, she offered what amounts to a manifesto for art criticism as it, hopefully, evolves. For the sake of a final, alternative view, she is worth quoting:

We need the kind of publications that allow for a diverse array of opinions and responses to be generated by the artistic community, allowing both established and emergent voices to co-mingle … The very least we should expect is that art magazines in Australia start to engender a dynamic environment for art writing that allows emerging artists and writers the chance to develop critical dialogue with their community and within their own practice.⁴

It is difficult, but of course not impossible, to imagine anyone disagreeing with her.

Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from correspondence with the author.

² Peter Hill, ‘Artist Camouflaged as Critic’, unpublished conference paper presented at the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand annual conference, Sydney, 2005. I am grateful to Peter Hill for allowing me to see his paper and for his permission to quote from it.

³ Cited in Eleanor Heartney, Critical Condition: American Culture at the Crossroads (1996), p.68.

⁴ Lily Hibberd, ‘Why Write about Art?’ Hatched 05, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. www.pica.org.au/art05/Symp-hibberd.html.