Almost all of the prestigious institutions (museums, galleries, biennials, expositions, magazines etc.) of contemporary art are members of this website and they give a special care to make their art events reach to the world from here. Not only in terms of communication and information, but also having a theoretical significance, e-flux on-line magazine Journal includes articles from important names such as Antonio Negri, Iritt Rogof,Hal Foster, Slavoj Zizek, Boris Groys, Bruno Latour, Maurizio Lazzarato, Suely Rolnik. However, none of the significantly theoretical articles published in e-flux since 2008 are about criticism in contemporary (or generally) art. If this on-line website is having a importance for today's art, then not feeling to say something on critics in contemporary art can not be slurred over as a simple detail. What do you think this situation points at? Does it point to the end of criticism or the awareness of the existing state of criticism?
As I have said in a different article of mine on critics with its changing style with the 1960s that has been dominant since 18th century, the fact of critic today conscientiously avoid the statement of judgement 2. In fact critic functioning in a positive mood is not something new. According to Walter Benjamin, the roots of positive criticism can be taken back all the way to German romanticism in the beginning of 19th century 3. After all, the etymology of word critic in the western languages enables this positive mood. The word critic (kritika) in Latin comes from the Greek work krinein and this root word means "to separate, dissociate (something from something else)4. So criticism doesn't always have to be a matter of judgement - it can refer to the difference in between two things. This separation activity is as if subject to a judiciary procedure when modernity is in question. Here the logic that is in charge is the activity of krinein that is being carried out as kritike (judgement). In this respect, the person who is doing the critic (kritike), is a kind of a judicial person in the state of a judge, who is providing judgement. That person has a great power in the area of art by stating the judgement on which art is good and which art is bad in categorized way.
The judgemental and correcting style of modern criticism has been left out and instead the affirmation of the difference of the artist's work considered to be more important. Criticism has turned into the regime of differences (temporarily suspending judgement by claiming that every judgement has a arbitrary origin) from the regime of equality (the one that is formed by referencing to a certain fixed judgement). Contrary to the general presumption, the first step for this was taken by the avant-garde art (historically) in the beginning of 20th century rather than contemporary art. As Boris Groys has written, avant-garde art "has consciously disclaimed itself from being the power of society's power of judgement"5 and placed itself in a state, where it judges the values of society.
Avant-garde artists were hoping to create a new society, a new human type, who would share their taste and look into the world from their perspective. They were after changing the people, not the art. The final artistic action was not producing new icons for the old society, but to create a new society who would look with new eyes. 6
The logic here had connections with the idea that was supported in different ways by radical leftist philosophers such as Marx and Engels and important representatives of Markxism such as Lenin, Lukacs and Gramsci in 19th century, stating the necessity of intellectuals and leaders of the party (vuangard) to play a role on the battle to correct the "wrong state", in which the society is in. The political strategy of the intellectual or the party on raising the awareness and pioneering the society in the name of creating a new society with social equality has become a fortiori radical in avant-garde art by completely rejecting the old society and planning the new one on paper. As Adorno and Horkheimer has mentioned in their work Dialectic of Enlightenment, all these were the results of an illusion that Enlightenment could have changed the existing society completely by having the positivist science on its side. According to them, philosophy of Enlightenment from Marxisim to the derivations in 19th century has resulted with the self destruction of mind, which works negatively and critically when dealing with the phenomena. 7 However, it can not be said that the critical theory of the Frankfurt School have completely rejected the critical spirit of Enlightenment heritage. It has been clearly expressed by Horkheimer that the aim of the critical theory is to transform the society and the freedom of humanity.8 But it has been argued against the fact that this change and freedom request is being thought within the positivist or scientific frame.
When contemporary art was in question, there was neither a society nor an art to be corrected completely. It should be kept in mind that the main parameter here is economy. The radical politics had to be mostly revised with the relief and integration of Working Class in the Western world into the system after the II. World War. Political (and artistic) avant-garde strategies wouldn't be in fashion that much when especially the failure of leftist utopia got added to it.
As well as these sociological changes, breaking down of the absolute reality ideas by modern scientists such as the relativist (Einstein) and chaotic discoveries of modern science and Freud (legitimization of subconscious), the scruffy style of Joyce, Kafka, Artaud, Beckett which works in its own accord, and cubism and ready-made phenomena in modern art have drew the art theorists and critics away from the adjudicating/judgemental criticism.
We also need to remember that anthropology has played a great role on coming up to this state. Contrary to the sociology reviving modern societies, (cultural) anthropology had presented that the societies of "the others" were perfect social partnerships within themselves producing cultural richness and these societies could not be judged according to the scientific, moral or economic values of modern society.9 Indeed the avant-garde art has appreciated the African culture, which was described as 'primitive', through Matisse, Picasso and Braque and contributed to the converging of despising, ruthless judgements in philosophical level done for the African culture and art by 18th century Enlightenment philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Hume and Rousseau.10 Hence after, the art of African people could have been subjected to evaluation from the aesthetical aspect besides/beyond them being religious or ethnographic objects.
The aesthetic phenomenon has become a phenomenon showing variability from one society to the other, from one culture to the other and versatile in different times. The winner of the famous debate in between Kant (universalism) and Herder (culturalism) by the end of 18.century, seems like Herder. According to Kant, who is the creator of modern aesthetics in a sense, human mind had an ability to judge and this was also working as a judgement for taste at the same time. Although taste seems like it is related to sentimentality/feeling, since the senses can not judge, the aesthetic judgement ability of the mind was the one, which decides if something is beautiful or ugly.11 Although admiration looks subjective, it was actually objective. It had to comply with the relations of the mind such as order, symmetry and harmony. The thing that was making us to gain our admiration in art, make us enjoy from the art work was the harmonization of a priori principles of mind's understanding ability with the representations in our brain by triggering our imagination.12 It was impossible to make an aesthetical judgement on something without these principles.
But, as it turns out the principles of aesthetic taste from Kant's point of view was not that universal. Yet, when the societies of Africa is in question, statement of universality give its place to racism. Kant's student Herder has sensed the Eurocentrism -although this term is yet to be known- of Kant's universality claims very well. According to Herder, no idea, action or behaviour could be exempted from its own cultural environment and could not be evaluated. That is to say the universality claim was only an empty abstraction13. Thus, according to Kant, the Black people were the members of a race, which cannot be even good farmers since doesn't have working skills, yet alone producing artistic creativity or build aesthetic taste.14
Herder style criticism looks as if being affirmed in practice by modern art in the beginning of 20. century. There would be a need for a different digress at this point specifically for Picasso. There was something amazing in Negro art for Picasso and it has to be within the scope of aesthetic evaluation. Negro mask stops being an ethnographic object with Picasso and reaches to an artistic state.15
We can say that Herderian state is completely affirmed with the post-modern period. The best expression for this has been given by Jean François Lyotard in his famous book The Post-modern Condition by using 'the end of meta-narrations" expression. This concept was simply implying that any statement with a universality claim is doomed to have a failure. According to Lyotard, while modern meta-narrations work with the idea that reality can be correctly revealed on an objective and universal level, in the post-modern state this kind of knowledge claims wouldn't have any special status within infinite word games as any other 'word game'.16 As a result of all these effects: criticism sourced from Enlightenment that is giving the right or wrong, good or bad, beautiful or ugly judgement has reached to a new form within a post-modern thought, which affirms differences.
Contemporary art (current art) has rooted inside post-modern state (or condition= and critical thought has proceeded in the same direction. Criticism in art is now going after small scaled changes/molecular revolutions rather than big changes/revolutions just like in the theory of society. Big judgements left their places for rather small evaluations, analysis and comments. Therefore, we can easily say that the critical thought is not yet finished, but changed its form.17 When a critic chooses an artist not another artist or commented on not an exhibition of an artist, but another one, the critic in fact continue with his/her criticism activity.18 This positive criticism is an activity that is being carried on by doing 'separation, elimination' as in the meaning of krinein, in a sense without hurting others, rather than done by a 'judgemental', negatively affirming, punishing critic, who is a judicial subject as in the meaning of the term kritike that working in an ulterior motive.
New generation of art critic and writers in Turkey who have been writing since the end of 90s and predominant in the art environment by 2000s, had to defend contemporary(current) art more when compared to their equals in Europe and States. Because, a conservative understanding of art, which had in extreme control over the art market and education, and kept contemporary(current) mediums like installation, performance, video out of the aesthetic experience and didn't see them as art, was on duty. That is the reason the role of a new critic was to defend contemporary(current) art at any rate. We had a settled powerful block against contemporary(current) art in front of us and this conservative block had to be broken in order to update our understanding of art and widening our horizon. Today the effect of that conservative power is in a rather weak state and this offers new opportunities for us to evaluate art critically. Now we can start to read contemporary(current) art in a more critical way and can guide art followers in a more beneficent way. Not in a judge critic who gives negatively affirming final judgements, but we have to assess the relation in between good and bad from a new perspective by giving light judgements. Maybe we should re-assess everything from the very beginning and create new values as in the utopia smelling strategy of Nietzsche; but we can show the 'difference' in between good and bad art by creating smaller scale thought and action areas and keep on making 'the philosophy of difference' in art.
[1] See Çağdaş Sanatın Başarısının Bir Bedeli Var mı? (Is There a Price for the Success of Contemporary Art?) Sinziana Ravini, Thomas Boutoux, Nicolas Bourriaud, Harry Bellet, Catherine Millet, Richard Leydier, Artist Actual, inside March-April 2011 , p. 68, trans. Nusret Polat
[2] See Nusret Polat, Eleştirmen Öldü, Yaşasın Eleştirmen (The Critic is Dead, Long Live Critic), Artunlimited, issue: 23, December 2013.
[3] See Nusret Polat, Ibid.
[4] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=critic
[5] Boris Groys, Sanatın Gücü (Power of Art), p. 115, trans. Firdevs Candil Erdoğan, Hayalperest Yayınevi, İstanbul, 2014.
[6] Boris Groys, Ibid, p. 149.
[7] Tom Bottomore, Frankfurt Okulu ve Eleştirisi (The Frankfurt School), p. 22, trans. Ümit Hüsrev Yolsal, Say Yayınları, İstanbul, 2013.
[8] Tom Bottomore, Ibid., p. 37.
[9] According to the great anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, an anthropologist "reveals what we consider as natural since they have been done the same way, only consist of abbreviations and mental habits that is unique to our culture" and therefore prepares the environment, in which "we can not label different societies and cultures as abnormal or perverted beforehand". Claude Lévi-Strauss, Modern Dünyanın Sorunları Karşısında Antropoloji (Anthropology Confronts the Problems of the Modern World), p. 54, trans. Akın Terzi, Metis Yayınları, İstanbul, 2012.
[10] Michele Wallace, The Prison House of Culture – Why African Art? Why the Guggenheim? Why Now, p. 371. inside The Visual Culture Reader, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff, Routledge, London&New York, 1998.
[11] Maurizio Ferraris, İmgelem (The Imagination/L'immaginazione), p. 102, trans. Fırat Genç, Dost Kitabevi Yayınları, Ankara, 2008.
[12] Allen W. Wood, Kant, p. 196, trans. Fırat Genç, Dost Kitabevi Yayınları, Ankara, 2009.
[13] For the arguement in between Kant and Herder and his ideas on race please see Robert Bernasconi, Irk Kavramını Kim İcat Etti? Felsefi Düşüncede Irk ve Irkçılık (Race), trans. Zeynep Direk, İsmail Esiner, Tendü Meriç, Nazlı Öktem, Metis Yayınları, İstanbul, 2000.
[14] Manfred Kuehn, Immanuel Kant, p. 348, trans. Bülent O. Doğan, İş Bankası Yayınları, İstanbul, 2001
[15] Michele Wallace, Ibid., p. 373.
[16] Jean François Lyotard, Postmodern Durum (The Post Modern Condition), p. 11-12, trans. Ahmet Çiğdem, Vadi Yayınları, Ankara, 1994.
[17] For this debate please see Ali Akay, Sanat Yazısı Devam Ediyor: Formu Değişti (Art Writing Continues: The Form has Changed), 1.11.2013, http://www.radikal.com.tr/hayat/sanat_yazisi_devam_ediyor_formu_degisti-1116319
[18] Thomas Boutoux, a.g.m, p. 69.
