In awarding New York Times art critic Holland Cotter the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, the Pulitzer Committee citation noted his “acute observation, luminous writing [and] dramatic story telling.” In his AICA/USA Distinguished Critic talk the critic known for the range and deep humanity of his concerns will address his roundabout route to art criticism, his response to the predominant modes of art criticism he found in place, the increasing limitations of that model, and how he imagines it could be changed and expanded. This is the fourth AICA/USA Distinguished Critic Lecture at The New School, an annual event addressing current issues in the world of art criticism.  It is presented by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA: Associations Internationale des Critiques d’Art) in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

AICA was founded in the wake of World War II to protect the openness of global discourse in the arts.  There are now chapters in 64 countries currently promoting art criticism and its insights into contemporary culture.  AICA/USA, with a nationwide membership, contributes significantly to the current dialogue.

Posted on June 8, 2010

Thirty years on from Rosalind Krauss’ seminal text Sculpture in the Expanded Field, a panel of artists and critics reconsiders the concept of the “expanded field” in light of contemporary art production. Co-sponsored by SculptureCenter and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the discussion reflects upon how performative, discursive, and design models developed since the essay’s publication may have shifted the formal, political, and semiological parameters of sculpture today.

Posted on March 11, 2010

CALL: Roberta Smith, Criticism: A Life Sentence

On November 5, 2009, Roberta Smith delivered the 2009 AICA/USA Distinguished Critic Lecture at The New School. From her vantage as senior art critic of the New York Times, she shared her thoughts on art criticism in general and, in particular, as it relates to her twenty years at the Times. She both embraced and challenged the concept of art journalism for a daily newspaper that caters to a broad general public, and elaborated on the primary importance of the art object, distinct from the cultural, political or economic context in which it might be situated.

RESPONSE: Laura Auricchio, Responsibility

Laura Auricchio is the Assistant Professor of Art History at Parsons The New School for Design. Auricchio has written extensively for both scholarly and general audiences on topics in the disparate fields of eighteenth-century French visual culture and contemporary art. She is the author of several dozen exhibition and book reviews that have appeared in publications ranging from The Art Bulletin to Art Papers to Time Out New York. Her first book, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Artist in the Age of Revolution, was published by the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2009. She is currently working on a visually-informed biography of Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolution.

During the heated 2008 campaign season, Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin sought to downplay Barack Obama’s experience as a grass-roots organizer by contrasting it with her own past as the chief elected official of Wasilla, Alaska. The mayor of a small town, Palin famously pronounced, “is sort of like a community organizer, except with real responsibilities.”

Listening to Roberta Smith discuss her thirty-seven years as an art critic, more than twenty of which have been spent writing for the New York Times, I found myself returning to an underlying, if unintended, question implied by Palin’s invidious comparison: does every profession come with its own set of responsibilities? If so, what are the responsibilities of an art critic? And does the act of speaking from a platform as powerful the Times add to her load?

By responsibilities, I do not mean tasks, though Smith surely wrestles daily with a to-do list of epic proportions. (As she explains to a questioner, it is only through obsessive list-making that she manages to maintain her bearings on New York’s high-speed carousel of gallery, museum, and alternative exhibitions.) Rather, I mean responsibility in the sense of “moral accountability,” in the words of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. To whom, and for what, is an art critic responsible?

Smith apparently believes that art critics do indeed carry a certain burden of responsibility. Mid-way through her presentation, she proposes that all of us who are “lucky enough to have a feeling for art” have an obligation “to give back.” “You can’t be proud about where art will take you,” she insists, suggesting an equivalence among the art world’s varied career choices. Whether your professional relationship to art involves making it, curating it, writing about it, or selling it, the fundamental responsibility, Smith believes, remains the same: to “put [the love of art] back into society.”

As a critic, Smith understands herself to be primarily responsible to her “readership.” But who, precisely, is the reader?

At one point, Smith suggests that her readership may be composed of frequent exhibition-goers. Noting that her reviews are “written in the moment,” she observes that they are also “used by people that way, very quickly.” To a certain extent this is true. For a cultured New Yorker or an out-of-town visitor with a bit of spare time, a Times review may offer little more than casual guidance on which shows to catch and which to skip. In this view, criticism is fleeting, with few enduring consequences.

Elsewhere in her talk, however, Smith implies that responsibilities may run deeper. Lamenting that “our visual lives in this country are more or less unexamined,” Smith seems to propose that a critic might serve as a model whose approach to works of art, designed spaces, and other visual features of our environment could be emulated by others. Everyone has a response to the visual, she avers, and everyone has a “critical ability” – the capacity to “analyze and judge.” Yet when faced with Art, which seems always to begin with a capital A, many otherwise confident viewers feel unprepared, intimated, and so fail to engage with their reactions. The world might be a very different place, Smith muses, if this vast but underutilized resource of critical potential could somehow be tapped. She is quite clear on the point that museums have a role to play in fostering visual literacy among the public. Perhaps critics also share some of this burden.

I wonder, though, whether a critic’s constituency might be much smaller than this vision would suggest. As a very part-time writer of exhibition reviews for Time Out New York, I have been known to share Smith’s hopeful attitude towards the power of criticism to open eyes. I’ve aspired to reach out to a broad public, to persuade just one person to give art a chance. But in moments of more sober reflection I have to concede that a reader who finds art uninteresting is not likely to spend any length of time with an exhibition review. Those who turn to the art section are already hooked. In that case, maybe the best I can do is to provide a bit of historical insight or comparative context that will enable readers to see the art in new ways. In other words, maybe the critic’s responsibility is to educate the educated.

Of course, exhibition-goers are not a critic’s only readers. Artists, curators, dealers and collectors also read reviews. In fact, they can be affected quite profoundly, and in lasting ways, by their contents. Is the critic to be held accountable for these effects? Should potential consequences influence a critic’s writing?

Smith responds with a resounding “no.” She is the viewer’s advocate, pure and simple. “I’m not doing it for the artist,” she states. “They can take my response as evidence of how their broadcast is being received,” or they can ignore it. On the subject of commerce, she demurs. “I don’t really know what effect I have on the market because I don’t really pay any attention to it.”

Does anyone? Should anyone? If so, who?

An audience member hints at this line of inquiry by asking how exhibitions are selected and assigned for review at the Times. Evidently, as the critics with greatest longevity, Smith and Holland Cotter wield considerable power in this regard. But Smith hastens to add that they are not omnipotent. Ultimately, the critic reports to her editor, who reports to someone else, and so on up the ladder. At some point, the paper’s bottom line – a matter of particular urgency in these difficult economic times – must come into play. After all, the Times is a commercial enterprise, albeit one that adheres to a code of journalistic ethics. The critic is an employee. She is, in the cold parlance of an increasingly web- and numbers-driven world of journalism, a “content provider.” Neither more nor less.

Still, I think the question is worth pondering. To whom, and for what, is an art critic responsible?

Posted on February 22, 2010

“We still do not know what a body can do.” (Spinoza/Deleuze)

The early Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously claimed, “You can never step in the same river twice.” Comically, one of the rebuttals to this observation was, “You can never step in the same river once.” The logics of activism invariably relate to ideas of how change happens – how we step in this seemingly paradoxical river. This discussion is an attempt to test and experiment with the linkages between activist practices, ideas of change, and theories of time.

Arguing that theories of activism need to frame activism as essentially a theory of time, the presenters propose that the time of change not be defined chronologically but qualitatively. Rather than sequential time, they propose measureless time. But how can we think and experimentally work with qualitative time today? How do we take into account the ruptures, swerves, emergences, and folds of becoming that sweep us far beyond identity, being, and the logics of critique? What are the new possibilities and techniques of activism and activist art that develop out of these logics of the event? This is an evening to debate and develop new models of time, and in so doing to rethink and propose new ideas of artistic practice.

A presentation by Iain Kerr, artist, theorist and founding member of the research collective spurse, is followed by discussion with respondents Brian McGrath, architect, writer and Associate Professor of Urban Design at Parsons The New School for Design; Petia Morozov, architect, writer, educator and urban explorer; and Nato Thompson, writer and Chief Curator of Creative Time.

Presented as part of “Streaming Culture / Art & Politics,” a new interdivisional initiative organized by Victoria Vesna, Visiting Professor (UCLA) and Director of Research, School of Art, Media & Technology, Parsons The New School of Design, in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, on occasion of its 2009/2010 program cycle on “Speculating on Change.”

If you are not able to join us in person, log on to Parsons The New School for Design Ustream channel.

Posted on November 11, 2009

The Vera List atrium and courtyard adjacent to the landmark Alvin Johnson Building harbor evidence of the history, memory, patronage and institutional identity of The New School–through an eclectic collection of significant art works. They range from Chaim Gross’ Acrobats Family of Five from 1951 and Gonzalo Fonseca’s ceramic tile mural from 1959-1961 to Martin Puryear’s seating arrangements (1997) and the 2008 addition to Dave Muller’s Interpolations and Extrapolations, a meditation on New School graphic identity.

In this conversation, Silvia Rocciolo, Curator of The New School Art Collection, and John Wanzel, Curatorial Assistant and MFA in Fine Arts candidate consider the role of The New School Art Collection as a living archive and how it reinforces institutional narrative and identity through its physical presence.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on October 7, 2009

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2009/2010 Art Collection Writing Award. In a first, this year’s competition garnered entries from four New School divisions – Parsons, Lang, NSGS, and NSSR – by students from such diverse programs as Design & Management, International Affairs, Fashion, Fiction & Non-fiction, Writing & Literature, Media Studies, Poetry, Anthropology, and Fine Arts.

On April 20, the entrants celebrate their accomplishments in an informal gathering with acclaimed American artist Elaine Reichek, whose work Gauguin at the Harmonium was the inspiration behind one of the prize-winning submissions.

This year, the prizes were awarded to the following students:

$400 First Prize Creative Response
Carmella Laughlin, MA in Media Studies, NSGS
for her poem KIT KAT, written in response to Kara Walker’s Event Horizon in Arhold Hall

$400 First Prize Critical Response
Carly Dintaman, Design & Management, Parsons The New School for Design
for her text Tseng Kwong Chi: Alienated Tourist, written in response to the artist’s work of that title

$200 Second Prize Creative Response
Dorothy Krajewski, M.A. in Liberal Studies, The New School for Social Research
for her text Foreclosure, written in response to Elaine Reichek’s Gauguin at the Harmonium

The winners were appointed by a jury composed of:

Neil Gordon, Dean, Eugene Lang The New School for Liberal Arts
Carin Kuoni, Director, Vera List Center for Art and Politics
Joshua Mack, Vera List Center Advisory Committee
Rosemary O’Neill, Associate Professor of Art History, School of Art and Design History and Theory, Parsons The New School for Design
Robert Polito, Director, MFA Creative Writing Program, The New School
Silvia Rocciolo, Co-curator, The New School Art Collection
and, for the first time, a student representative
Tess Drahman, MA in Media Studies, The New School for General Studies

Posted on September 20, 2009

The AICA/USA Distinguished Critic Lecture at The New School

In an insightful, probing and personal analysis, Roberta Smith delivers this year’s AICA/USA Distinguished Critic Lecture at The New School. Under the title “Criticism: A Life Sentence,” Smith presents her view of the craft, process and usage of art criticism, and the rising challenges of crisis-management and relevance-maintenance.

Roberta Smith is the acclaimed senior art critic for the New York Times. She was born in New York City, raised in Lawrence, Kansas, and earned a B.A. from Grinnell College in 1969. An alumna of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, she worked at the Museum of Modern Art and the Paula Cooper Gallery before becoming a professional art critic in the 1970s, contributing to Artforum and serving as a senior editor for Art in America. In 1981 she became art critic for the Village Voice, before moving to the New York Times in 1986. In 2003, the College Art Association honored Smith with the prestigious Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism.

This is the third AICA/USA Distinguished Critic Lecture at The New School, an annual event addressing current issues in the world of art criticism. It is presented by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA: Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art) in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

Posted on September 20, 2009

Since the 1930s, artist-instructors such as Berenice Abbott, Thomas Hart Benton, Stuart Davis, Lewis Mumford, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Ralph Pearson have brought a resolve of professionalism to The New School. Legendary art historian Meyer Schapiro’s lectures of 1936-1952 thrilled a generation with their sense of philosophical dialogue. Painter Robert Motherwell said, “It was in order to study with Meyer Schapiro that I came to New York.” Since then, The New School has hosted international art luminaries from Joseph Beuys to John Currin to Trisha Donnelly. Yet, the institution now finds itself at a crossroads of purpose and identity. How should it go forward in art education? What is “academic” and what is “professional”? What has the university been doing right? What has the university been doing wrong? Artist-instructor John Zinsser hosts an open discussion with current and former New School students, asking questions essential to the ongoing mission of the arts at The New School.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on September 20, 2009

Presented in conjunction with an exhibition of recent video art from the Middle East on view at the Art in General gallery, this discussion considers the contributions of video art to political developments in the region. Speakers include Galit Eilat, writer, curator and founding director of the Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon and Reem Fadda, a Ramallah-based curator, art historian and former director of the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art (PACA).

Eilat and Fadda consider the role of art as a tool for civil disobedience and passive resistance that affects its surroundings, wielded by individuals during times of social or political distress. Within this context they discuss Liminal Spaces, a long-term project examining the possibility of joint action in light of the ever-growing existential hardship of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Video works that were produced during this project will be on view at Art in General as part of the Mobile Archive, a cross-national library of video art.

The Israeli Center for Digital Art was founded to promote, distribute, and exhibit video, media-, and Internet-based art in Israel. An exhibition space with a library open to the public, the video archive contains hundreds of works, including pieces by Israeli artists who have exhibited at the center and others who have contributed to the archive over time.

For the last two years, the Mobile Archive has traveled to art institutions in Europe and the Middle East, acquiring new works in each location. The exhibition at Art in General will be the Mobile Archive’s first stop in the United States.

Presented in collaboration with Art in General and the Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon.

Posted on September 20, 2009