Art Criticism Summer School Saint Martins College, London 2007

White page, what am I going to write about? Face of Fashion Exhibition at National Portrait Gallery, in which I wonder why they bothered so much in moving those huge panels, in such a small room for unnecessary huge pictures trying to make it look cool or who knows what. No, I hated that exhibition and its void expensive look, but I loved the creative composition of space and colours of Bjork’s pictures from Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot. Then I thought of writing about Peter’s Blake retrospective exhibition at Tate Liverpool. I would might like to write about that one, but I still feel that I don’t have enough information and my questions came from the curatorial work, how to curate a life time work and still give more importance to art than to time in such a space? It felt like a Hollywood movie where there is a little bit of everything for everybody. It wouldn’t work either.

So I decided not to write a review, I still don’t know how to write one. I thought that if I committed myself to become an art critic I should start writing my own blog, (and if I have enough visitors on my site and some good reviews about it I would probably give it a go with some editors). That’s why this piece of writing could be one of the first pieces on my still unnamed blog, thinking about art criticism in a summer school.

In the first place, why did I take a course of Art Criticism anyway? Didn’t I quit that idea long ago? I became an artist because I wanted to be an art critic and for that matter I wanted to be in the artist's shoes because I thought I could understand art a bit better, but then I decided to stay in the artist shoes. Now I took this course of art criticism because I need to look at my own work?. Anyway when I first came into the 711 room I wasn’t thinking about the writing job, I was looking for new questions, different kinds of critics, confrontation, different approaches to see art, philosophy and who knows what else. Then I found commercial art, magazines and politics, things that even tough I wasn’t expecting, made me ask some other questions. What would really be the best way to become an art critic? Becoming a writer or a journalist? Have I seen enough art to start thinking as an art critic? Does it depend on it? When does anyone become an art critic? When does he or she actually start publishing? What if a very good critic or somebody with a very accurate critical position doesn’t write that well?

In an interview, Damien Hirst spoke about the way he became successful in the art business, explaining how Jay Jopling introduced him to a different way of understanding money. He explained Hirst that the artwork is worth as much as somebody pays for it; which in the same meaning of value lays Manzoni’s famous work Merda d’artista, he claimed that he came up with this idea after his father kept telling him that his work was shit; and one episode in a gallery when a lady said that any shit that an artist put in the wall would become art when somebody was willing to pay for it.

As Dave Hickey said, and I agree, art and money exist in parallel universes, they never touch, but somehow, some people manage to understand both and make them work together and that is what we call success. Artists and art critics actually have jobs in these coexisting universes, but that is a whole different structure for a developing country as Colombia where the art market is reduced to a few prizes, very few commercial galleries, and a secondary market just doesn’t exist. So art universe is less likely to be touch by money which from another point of view allows the artist and even the art critic become successful in the universe of art.

As a universe, Art has so many different ways of being part of and having a certain understanding of it may allows anyone to go through it in different directions, and that is a response to the lack of hierarchy that this universe has. Anybody can switch positions as many times as he or she wants, needs or has to. Somebody (or may I say Dave Hickey) can be an academic, then become a gallery owner and then write essays in a literature sort of way and be called hippie along the way. Nobody is right or wrong, there are some voices that are stronger, louder and more consistent than others and there are the ones who believe in them. And in the middle of the struggle, every now and then master pieces are born, the rest of the time this universe is an act of faith in potentials. An act of faith living from the concerns, forms, statements and dialogues between what we think art might be and what we do about it from each position we take part of.


And there is a point where I have to ask myself how I fit into all of these. So far, I have been an artist, a copywriter, scriptwriter, lecturer of art history and I am trying to sell my friend’s art work to a small collector, but I have decided again not to become an art critic, at least not in a way I would feel as a journalist or having to quote all critics around publication after publication. I strongly believe in Art Schools as conscience builders, in organized and disorganized debates, in independent publications and in some powerful egos that are not afraid to speak up and say that some art works are just a piece of shit and still, sell them for millions.

In a way to becoming somebody or nobody in the universe of art or in any other, there is one thing I learned sitting at Soho White Cube’s main entrance, and is a quote from somebody I have just forgot his name who said "There is no method, except to be very intelligent".