Arts Professional Story: Michael Workman: On Being a Critic

My role is obviously a composite of several different professions: journalism, business, all centered in one way or another on art. My perspective on the responsibilities of criticism is a comparatively active one. At a baseline level, no matter what your geographic location, critics are expected to help establish standards for evaluating the success or failure of a piece of art, for understanding its haecceity.

One way in which they do so is by helping to define terms for that evaluation whether, for instance, rooted in psychology, art critical traditions, aesthetics or some kind of art critical ethno-methodology. These are the intellectual requisites of criticism, equally as applicable to writing on visual art as to visual culture, art history, etc. In other words, the essential goal of art criticism is to offer a rational way of evaluating art, though very few critics manage this without somehow interjecting their own subjective views. There are so few critics in Chicago anyway, and each of us works as hard as we can to cover as much of the scene as possible simply in order to provide some form of record of art making in the city. Beyond that a number of us also write books, tracing significant figures in the region, contributing to theoretical movements, etc.

All of these activities are in short supply and desperately needed. In each of my editorial capacities, I’d also say that I serve the same purposes as any other member of the Third Estate, which has a very clear-cut purpose in the balance of powers. Art critics and members of the arts press are similarly covered by provisions in our country’s Constitution and accorded all the same protections as news journalists, which is necessary when you consider how art serves as significant a role in world affairs as economics, the military and politics. Critics and members of the arts press should be ready, when necessary, to defend artistic freedom and the rights of individuals through solid reporting and editorial work.

I don’t mean literary journalism, that’s something else. But these kinds of conflicts do frequently require our attention. Those who attempt to subsume art to nefarious socio-cultural or political purposes, perhaps at times inadvertently, chip away at the freedom of art. It’s important that appropriate distinctions get made. We must not act as cheerleaders, but there are times when critics are required to defend artists against the opposition machinery in the predictable culture wars and provide audiences an independent perspective on their work. Beliefs often conflict with our “self-evident” freedoms, and it’s into this zone of philosophical anarchy that art critics are often compelled to wade. It goes way beyond Comstock-type behavior. In the post-McCarthy era, ideology and the manipulation of ideas plays an enormous and direct role in our society. We actually go to war for ideas, and brave young men and women die violent, ugly deaths in service to them.

Our generation’s version of the wars of ideology is, of course, the war on terrorism, and it’s one in which censorship has not surprisingly come to play a vital role, with very real consequences. One recent case is that of University at Buffalo professor and bio-artist Steve Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble, arrested as a suspected bio-terrorist after his wife died in her sleep of heart failure for happening to possess harmless biological specimens for use in his art. Other examples are legion.

Critics should ideally also be bred-in-the-bone raconteurs, expert dramaturges, muckrakers and troublemakers. They should serve a local community-support role. Critics should call out institutions that don’t serve their stated missions, and be willing to take the heat for statements that reveal embarrassing, sometimes painful truths about those responsible for preserving a historical record of the art culture.


What aspect of being a critic is most misunderstood?

There’s a common misperception that I do it all. Research, write, edit, paste-up and design, that I’m inking the presses and feeding the sheets and that afterward I hop into my cargo van and drop the finished copies off at the distro drop-points. I have to go into long-winded explanations with people every time I discuss this in order to accurately paint a picture for them of the real number of people involved in the production of the alt-weekly I write for, but it never seems to sink in. Of course, they somehow manage to get it when they attend an art fair and it’s wall-to-wall packed with people, but sitting alone with Newcity or Flash Art, somehow the degree of coordinated effort among a huge staff of editors, designers, art directors, interns, ad sales reps, etc. just remains invisible.

As a writer, I’m a part of a process that I often compare to making a movie: actors, directors, cinematographers, production, studio people, all down the line. It’s more communal than the end-consumers actually realize. We get our fair share of complaints, accusations, drunken rants and desperate pleas from ignorant people. There’s no need to get into specific examples, but Chicago is a city that operates more on the cultural side of the line and as a result has the unfortunate role of promoting a culture of hobbyists. Bloggers and zine writers with no supervisory editorial authority with which to contend pretend themselves on par with a reporter who’s answerable to whole departments of oversight.

In a certain way I can understand how a certain segment of the professional news media could take offense at bloggers who play the role of media watchdog and hurl invective at whoever’s byline happens to be attached to a story in the morning edition. It’s insulting, actually, that people are willing to play so fast and easy with the truth. But I also see the flip side of the coin. There’s a minor celebrity from having a finished piece of writing all wrapped up in a neat little package, and there’s your byline. Nobody else, just your name at the start of the story. You become the focus of attention, the front man in the 50-person band. And yet it’s so much more complex than all that. I don’t even write the headlines of my own columns.

It’s not my choice what images appear, and I have nothing to do with photo captions. Edits to my column every week often appear without my having seen, little less having approved what’s been cut, tweaks to the language, etc. I’m mostly okay with that, because I trust the judgment of my editors. Their track record is great, but complaints come anyway. You deal with it, with the misinformation, bad facts, the accusations, and conniptions that sometimes happen in response to what you write, that’s what it means to be a professional.

Yet another misperception that’s out there is that there’s only one style or approach that’s acceptable for working critics. Usually this means academic writing. I’m mainly perceived as a critic, though I view my job as much more complex than something as simple as a single designation or title, there’s a perception out there that I must always and without fail write with only the utmost seriousness. Yet another—and I have to say, it’s the absolute worst—is when people who haven’t read something I’ve written take offense at it—or even worse than that, who’ve misread it and take offense. There’s just no excuse. We are, unfortunately, a nation of terrible readers. It’s something else that has always irked me about getting pigeonholed as a critic, there are times when I intend for things to be read humorously, and people just don’t get it.

More than once I’ve had somebody who was the subject of a column come up to me afterward ready to draw knives because I wrote something about them that I intended as humorous but which they took seriously. Now, multiply those misperceptions by ten if you’re a critic or art journalist who also happens to wear more than one hat. If, for instance, you also happen to work for a paper that has listings, or work for a small, not-for-profit magazine selling advertising or run an art fair. It’s why I generally keep my writing restricted to coverage of the local art scene, or write “day in the art world life” pieces, and contribute only select pieces to national or international outlets, mainly interview-style features or reviews of artists who aren’t from Chicago.

I have, on a number of occasions, had people repeat the fallacy that their gallery wasn’t included in the listings because they hadn’t bought an ad or offered any kind of financial support. First off, writing for an alt-weekly paper, I work exclusively on the editorial side, I’m the Art Editor for that paper. I have nothing to do with advertising. Nothing, nada, zilch. When I was Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Bridge Magazine, I hardly ever wrote for the paper and mainly sold advertising, oversaw production, and edited the copy of our contributing writers. In each capacity there was a firewall between the editorial and business sides.

After awhile, I realized that a lot of these claims were made out of simple mean-spiritedness or to use a specious argument as a way of counteracting the validity of a criticism I’d written. In Chicago, those kind of arguments are often ideological, an attack on your politics. Art is an image business and reputation counts. So, rather than honestly explore your perspective on an issue, it’s often the first thing people who disagree with you will try to chip away at. Many people in the art business don’t have any money, so their cultural status is everything. If they think you’re attacking that status, they’re ready to fight you tooth and nail. I was always surprised how closed-minded a lot of this city’s career academics could be. For instance, it’s where I learned how bread-in-the-bone conservative Chicago actually is: many of the attacks were made in response to my more egalitarian statements.

My personal political views are, after all, in the main Democratic, even libertine. But in this city, there a lot of little cliques, mainly clustered around what school you degreed at or whether you’re ideologically anti-consumerist in your art-making. There’s a ferocious anti-consumer streak in Chicago, and sometimes it’s hard to understand why. While it’s clear that artists need to have the freedom to mold their ideas and shape their art outside the influence of market forces, it’s not at all clear what’s so offensive about enjoying the commercial success of your efforts once you’ve done so. In any case, these kind of cliques are harmless until they start perceiving themselves as a kind of ruling junta, and so start working to tamp down threats to their cultural authority through assaults on your character.

As a critic, it’s specifically your job to challenge perceptions, even and especially when that means speaking truth to those with a kind of cultural power, whether gallerists, museum directors, or artists. At times it gets just ridiculous, people scrambling for position in an already crowded marketplace. I once had a gallerist tell me I couldn’t use the name of their gallery in print without written authorization or they’d sue me for copyright infringement. It’s like, “huh?” It’s a tactic, and one largely ineffective on smart people, but if they’re able to convince enough dumb people that there’s an injustice to rail against, it can make your life somewhat miserable. Most disappointing was that many of these kind of image-manipulation attempts came from people out there whose work I respect, from people not at all dumb.

All of this is my attempt to articulate perhaps the biggest misperception of them all, that the art world is somehow a more level playing field than a more mainstream professional environment, where talent distinguishes one person from a whole playing field of others. Chicago is less of a PR town than similar-sized large metropolitan cities. We like to hunker down here and concentrate on our work, and as a result we have a huge talent pool that far outstrips the regional demand, a situation unique to the Midwest. It’s a cliché, in fact: “the city that works…” In New York, “hot” artists simply can’t produce enough work to keep up with the market demand. Talent goes a long way, but you have to be prepared to fight for what you believe in and educate yourself as to where the lines are between your role as an artist and the job of a curator, a critic and all those other inhabitants of the art world. You’ll avoid a lot of stress and be more successful that way.


Michael Workman is Director of Bridge, NFP, a Chicago-based arts programming organization. Bridge, NFP, organizes annual Bridge Art Fairs in New York, Miami, Berlin and London and pioneered a multi-use facility that provides incubation space at 119 N. Peoria for developing arts organizations. Bridge, NFP, also formerly published Bridge Magazine, for which Workman served as Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. He is Art Editor for the Chicago alternative weekly newspaper, NewCity, and Chicago correspondent for Flash Art . His writing has appeared in New Art Examiner, the Chicago Reader, zingmagazine, TenbyTen and Contemporary magazine.

 

More Arts Professional Stories by Michael Workman:

On Art Fairs
On Bridge
On Chicago
On Getting Published