CRITIC AS GRIST

Alex Bag
Bill Beckley
Paco Cao
Terence Gower
Josh Harris
Jane Kaplowitz
Komar and Melamid
Les Levine
Ryan McGinness
Dennis Oppenheim
Erik Parker
Martha Rosler
Peter Saul
Schuldt
David Shapiro
Paul D. Miller
Fairsbie Tabs
Xar Taplik
Claude Wampler
Thomas Zummer

Curated by Michael Portnoy

7 September – 17 October 2000

Each artist has been asked to choose a living art critic and/or his or her work as the subject of a piece to be created for the show. The work will involve painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, installation, video and performance. Though very divergent in concerns, styles and methodologies, the artists featured share a certain courage and a rigorously playful intellectuality.

The Subjects
Benjamin Buchloh, Fernando Castro Flórez, Arthur Danto, Jacques Derrida, Hal Foster, Dave Hickey, Robert Hughes, Michael Kimmelman, Hilton Kramer, Rosalind Krauss, Donald Kuspit, Lucy Lippard, Thomas McEvilley, Peter Plagens, David Rimanelli, Jerry Saltz, Peter Schjeldahl, Roberta Smith, Grady T. Turner, and others.

Despite a rich artistic tradition in the 20th century of art world critique which exposed and tampered with its institutions, galleries, and overall systems and structures of commerce and representation, the critique of journalistic and academic art criticism has been largely and curiously absent from these polemics, and such critique has mainly been initiated by academics, journalists and critics rather than by the artists. “Critic as Grist” organizes artists to fulfill their responsibility in furthering and redirecting this discourse. As critics define and create the meaning of art and artists through selective attention, interpretation, contextualization, evaluation, appropriation, consumption, etc., these artists will define and create the meaning of critics and criticism.

While this exhibition is primarily intended as an exploration and critique of individual critical voices, tastes, narratives and theories, it will also examine the Critic’s role and responsibilities, the Critic’s instruments, the Critic’s power and mystique, the Critic’s audience, the editorial and art market agendas and restrictions of newspapers, magazines, and art publications, the politics of the art world, the politics of interpretation, the effect of criticism upon the artist, the effect of criticism upon the direction of art practice, culture, etc., and the very materialization of critique itself.

PRESS

Show: Critic as Grist
Publication: Flash Art
Writer: Grady T. Turner
Date: 3.01

Dear Fellow Art Critics,

Let me begin by saying how much I enjoyed singing Wassails with you all around Michael Kimmelman’s piano at our year-end meeting. And imagine: with all that fun, we still managed to reach consensus about which upcoming shows we will acclaim or pan. We may have yet to see the actual art (details, details! ha, ha!) but our planning ensures that we will be on the same page when we sit down to write our reviews.
Many of our members were on concerned about “Critic as Grist” recently on view at White Box in New York. As this group show invited artists to submit work about art critics, there was some concern that it was an open call for aggrieved artists to besmirch critics. It is true that curator Michael Portnoy turned the tables by according artists the opportunity to “review” critics. (Portnoy first gained fame by jumping onstage during the 1998 Grammy Awards as Bob Dylan performed, with the words “Soy bomb” scrawled on his naked chest.) But let me put your fears to rest: these artists were not interested in undermining the privilege of our critical authority—although some took pleasure in tweaking our colleagues. Hilton Kramer and Peter Schjeldahl, please take note: Peter Saul’s Art Critic’s Suicide depicted the both of you as a two-headed freak, each head suicidally determined to do in the other. Was Saul alleging that criticism is a Janus-faced masturbation machine? If so, then my apologies for nodding in amusement before realizing the artists’ vile, vile allegation. Erik Parker drew a cartoonish flow chart to follow the far-ranging mind of Dave Hickey through the Zeitgeists of Austin rock, suburban jazz and Siegfreid & Roy. But for bravura hagiography, kudos went to Thomas Zummer, who set a spoon on a shelf undeer a letter written to Derrida asking the one-time darling of art theory to bend the utensil through mental telepathy.
Of course, some killjoys had to trot out personal grievances. On a pile of cardboard boxes, Claudce Wampler placed an old portable television that was purported to show an interview with Peter Plagens of Newsweek. In fact, it featured a black homeless man offering his opinions about provocative topics in contemporary art.
When asked his opinion of the piece, Plagens professed his disappointment that artists, when offered the chance to lampoon critics, could not do better. “Art as satire ought to be insightful, funny or vicious. Wampler’s piece was none of those. Seems to me I’ve got enough salient flaws to deserve something a little nastier and more specific than Wamper’s fairly generic send-up. And did she worry that the work is just a tad racist?” Plagens regretted that he artist dealing with me had not satirized him. Ryan McGinniss subjected my output to rigors of quantitative analysis, charting my biases (why, I didn’t know I had any!) To my distress, a bar graph revealed that I have a decided bias toward male artists, covering them 68% of the time. I was shocked. Someone should look into this whole thing about women artists being overlooked by male critics—- should some sort of committee be formed? If so, can I please be cc’d copies of its minutes? (I’m afraid I’m too overly committed to attend more meetings, but I’m really with you gals!) I suppose I should be grateful for this wake-up cal, but I can’t help but feel discomfited by McGinniss’s doggedness.
Therefore, I’m asking all members to dedicate future reviews to putting McGinniss in his proper place. I’m not recommending a full throttle critical assault like last year’s roast of Damien Loeb (good teamwork, guys!) but let’s stick it to him just enough to say that we noticed, and we are not amused.
Looking forward to our annual Labor Day retreat in the Hamptons, I remain your humble reviewer,

Grady T. Turner.

Show: Critic as Grist
Writer: Hilton Kramer
Publication: The New York Observer
Date: 10.2.00
Title: If You Strike a Critic, You’d Better Snuff Him

There are exhibitions whose titles are as ill-chosen as the works that comprise them are ill-conceived, and one such show of this kind is something called Critic as Grist, which Michael Portnoy has organized at the White Box gallery in Chelsea. Clearly, the title is a misnomer. According to my handy dictionary, the word “grist” has two current meanings. It refers either to “grain or a quantity of grain for grinding” or to “something that can be turned to one’s advantage.” Yet nothing as important to our survival as grain is on offer in this exhibition, which is mainly devoted to the dumbest varieties of Conceptual Art, and it is anyone’s guess as to whose advantage is being served in a show that is almost entirely devoid of artistic interest.
Mr. Portnoy had the idea—if I may be permitted to use the word “idea” as loosely as this curator uses the word “grist”—of inviting nearly 20 artists, or would-be artists, to create works of art, so to speak, that would “define and create the meaning of critics and criticism.” In principle, this is not an altogether uninteresting agenda for an exhibition. Artists as different as Daumier and Arthur Dove succeeded brilliantly in satirizing the critics of their time, and more recently Benny Andrews produced an entire exhibition devoted to the subject.
In practice, however, the gaggle of aspiring talents that Mr. Portnoy has assembled for this show isn’t—with a single exception—up to the challenge. And this single exception- a painting on canvas by Peter Saul called Art Critic’s Suicide (1996)—was well-known and talked-about in certain quarters of the art world several years before Mr. Portnoy undertook to organize the debacle currently on view at the White Box.
It may also convey something of the character of the Critic as Grist show to know that in addition to Mr. Portnoy’s services as curator, the exhibition lists Marianne Vitale as its “curatorial engineer.” This is a job description that is new to me. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to assess Ms. Vitale’s contribution to the show, for on the day that I saw the exhibition not all of its engineering feats were functioning. Some of the television monitors weren’t working, not all of the sound systems were audible, and some of the slide shows were not projected. Ah, the hazards of technology! It was owing to such technological failure that I did not get to see or hear Claude Wampler’s video (?) Interview with Peter Plagens at His House. I regret missing this, for Mr. Plagens can usually be counted upon for his intelligence and wit, and this is a show that desperately needs every scrap of intelligence and whit it can muster.
I did get to see and hear the work that Paul D. Miller devoted to the criticism of Lucy Lippard. This is something called Glitch Music, which consists of abstract computer images on a screen accompanied by a soundtrack that combined a Philip Glass-type endless hum and what may or may not be the noise of fingernails scratching on a blackboard. I’ve certainly had my differences with Ms. Lippard’s criticism over the years, but she has never been guilty of producing anything as mindless as Glitch Music.
Arthur Danto doesn’t fare much better in Xar Taplik’s mixed-media installation of a steel table, a water tank, a computer screen, and a variety of works and numbers; and Robert Hughes fares a good deal worse in Fairsbie Tabs’ installation of what looks like an overlighted corner of an abandoned cellar. What any of this has to do with the content of criticism is anyone’s guess.
By a process of elimination, then, Peter Saul’s painting Art Critics’ Suicide has become the show’s primary attraction. It could be that I am prejudiced, of course, because I am one of the picture’s two principal subjects. The other is Peter Schjeldahl, the art critic of The New Yorker. Exactly why we should be linked for the honor of serving as Mr. Saul’s principal villains is a matter I can only guess at. Mr. Schjeldahl’s critical views on most things are very different from my own. About the only thing we have in common as critics is that we both write moderately readable prose, which so many other critics on the current scene do not. And in my own case, to be sure, I have at times written very unfavorably about Mr. Saul’s work. I cannot recall whether Mr. Schjeldahl has also been disobliging about the artist’s accomplishments. Is it possible that Mr. Saul objects to readable prose?
According to the legend inserted into the upper left-hand corner of the painting, Mr. Saul seems to be under the impression that both Mr. Schjeldalhl and I are “TOO STUPID TO LOOK AT PICTURES THEY THINK ABOUT ART.” I cannot speak for Mr. Schjeldahl, of course, but I will confess that I do not spend a great deal of my time thinking about art, especially when I am looking at specific examples of it. I can (?) understand why this annoys Mr. Saul, for his own pictures do not bear much thinking about. They always introduce an element of sordid violence that is far in excess of what is appropriate to his subject, and the same goes for all the gun play in Art Critics’ Suicide.
This penchant for violence is something that Mr. Saul seized upon in the days of the Vietnam War, and in one way or another he has gone on re-fighting that war no matter what his current subject may be. For this artist, apparently, art criticism is war by other means. He doesn’t really have another subject, and that is something that is more to be pitied than objected to.
Still, compared to the claptrap in the rest of “Critic as Grist,” Mr. Saul’s picture at least gives us something to look at. But it is only in such dismal company that he can be mistaken for a serious critic.

Show: Critic as Grist
Publication: The New York Observer
Writer: Michael Portnoy
Date: 10.23.00
Title: Kramer vs. Curator

TO THE EDITOR:
After reading Hilton Kramer’s review [A Critic’s View “If You Strike a Critic, You’d Better Snuff Him,” Oct.2] of the exhibition Critic as Grist at White Box, and learning about his behavior in the gallery, I suspect he suffers from a combination of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Predominantly inattentive type, and other perceptual and cognitive challenges which severely impair his abilities to see and think about art. My observations are organized in relation to corresponding symptoms listed in the DSM-IV.
( c ) often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly: Mr. Kramer arrived at White Box around 11:15 and was told the gallery would not open officially until 12. Nevertheless, he asked that the overhead lights be turned on and insisted on seeing the show. Hence, the two video pieces and the slide projection which Mr. Kramer snidely suggested suffered “technological failure” due to curatorial neglect were actually in a state common to many electrical objects, art-related and otherwise, known as “not turned on yet.”
(h) is often forgetful in daily activities: Mr. Kramer has apparently forgotten much of art history since the 60s as some of the “aspiring talents” in the show (Dennis Oppenheim, Martha Rosler, Komar & Melamid, Les Levine) have accomplished quite a lot since then. Ms. Rosler just had two concurrent museum retrospectives in Manhattan
(f) often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort: Mr. Kramer admits, “I do not spend a great deal of my time thinking about art, especially when I am looking at specific examples of it.”
(a) often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in work: Mr. Kramer seems to attend to few physical details of artworks and is unwilling or unable to synthesize these details into a whole about which he could potentially offer an in-Part-to-Whole Formulation, possibly resulting from trauma or organic brain defects.
Perhaps you are aware of Mr. Kramer’s challenges, and believe they help to establish a refreshingly “pre-conscious” refiguration of the role of art critic—if so, please apprise your readers of this experiment, with a short explanation preceding his column. If not, I recommend that you have him thoroughly examined.

Michael Portnoy
Curator, Critic as Grist

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