Right now I'm repeating a phrase to myself that I was told by Mexican curator and critic Cuauhtémoc Medina: "Being a critic means making your education in public."
Being a critic means making your education in public. Being a critic means making your education in public.
I'm repeating this to myself because, well, something I blogged last year, and later regretted blogging about--because blogging is a form of professional writing, and I was treating it at the time as private--has been quoted in an Eye Weekly feature by Chandler Levack that's up online today and out in print tomorrow.
Ah well. The main piece of Levack's implication that I'd like to correct for the (seemingly undying) Internet record is this:
My policy is to refuse reviewing work by people I have a personal like or dislike of. Why? Because personal feelings of like or dislike either way will bias me in reviewing their work, and ultimately create a disservice to a reader who wants a relatively objective point of view about the work.
Also, for this reason, since becoming a full-time freelancer, I've cultivated professional rather than personal relationships with artists and curators.
Being a critic means making your education in public. Being a critic means making your education in public.
Yay! Today, I guess I'm a critic.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
When Being A Critic Means Making Your Education Public
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4 comments:
This reminds me of something Earl Miller said at a panel discussion about criticism at York last year: "Being an art critic means changing your mind in public." I think he even added "a lot" to the end at some point.
In any case, I understood the way you were quoted in Eye as being pretty civil towards both artist and project. And it is creepy that the internet/blogging world will never die.
Thanks for the comment Gabby. It's basically all part of the job.
Nothing creepy about it at all, it's a record of an interesting public conversation.
(and being an artist involves growing up in public -- can't remember who said that first)
The deed has been done. We wed, we honeymooned, and now we are back to Real Life™
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