{"id":23283,"date":"2012-07-05T16:11:10","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T16:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/who-do-you-write-for-our-survey-of-art-critics-in\/"},"modified":"2012-07-05T16:11:10","modified_gmt":"2012-07-05T16:11:10","slug":"who-do-you-write-for-our-survey-of-art-critics-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/who-do-you-write-for-our-survey-of-art-critics-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Do You Write For? Our Survey of Art Critics in the Media Continues\u2026 | Blog | Frieze Publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who Do You Write For? Our Survey of Art Critics in the Media Continues\u2026 | Blog | Frieze Publishing<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

towerofsleep<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

In conjunction with frieze\u2019s summer issue, which looks at art\u2019s currency within the wider culture, we asked art critics and editors of cultural publications and media to tell us how they see the role of art criticism in mainstream media today, and how they view the impact of their writing on their audience.<\/p>\n

\n

What purpose do you think your criticism serves? Do you write with a particular audience in mind?<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Karen Archey <\/strong>
Editor-at-Large, Rhizome <\/strong>
New York, USA<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a recent conversation with an editor of a well-known art news website, I asked why they don\u2019t run reviews. \u2018No one wants to read reviews,\u2019 he replied, \u2018they generally never get any hits.\u2019 The website features headlines such as \u2018Is Laurel Nakadate Sleeping With James Franco?\u2019 and \u2018Our Favourite Mean Things Said Against Dale Chihuly\u2019. In a moment of sheer masochism, I asked friends and colleagues on Twitter whether they read art reviews for leisure. Though the audience I pooled was a fairly broad one, they\u2019re primarily involved with Internet-related art practices, and read publications ranging from Rhizome to Artforum. Do they ever, I wondered, read reviews for the sake of personal betterment, even if they have no personal or professional motivation to do so?<\/p>\n

Not only was the answer resoundingly \u2018no\u2019, but it seems as if the answer was quite opposite of what a critic might hope: those who responded to my call only tend to read reviews to either \u2018see how bad the writing is\u2019, witness the public castigation of a fellow artist, or in simpler terms, to \u2018hate-read\u2019. If my own community \u2013 which is also by and large the audience for my writing \u2013 openly admits to not reading criticism to learn anything about the art at hand (education being a primary impetus for my writing), what is my purpose as an art critic? The answer for myself \u2013 and I believe for many others \u2013 remains to be seen.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Karen Archey gives by far the longest and most considered response in this series so far (this is only half of it), but her grim prognosis is still more encouraging than the glib platitudes you get from everybody else.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who Do You Write For? Our Survey of Art Critics in the Media Continues\u2026 | Blog | Frieze Publishing towerofsleep: In conjunction with frieze\u2019s summer issue, which looks at art\u2019s currency within the wider culture, we asked art critics and editors of cultural publications and media to tell us how they see the role of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-63x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}