Why are virtually no more exhibition reviews being written?

Death of criticism. Disappearance of criticism. Crisis of criticism. It has been talked about so much, and for so long, that by putting together everything that has come out on the subject in the last thirty years, one might think of starting a new literary genre. The subject cyclically returns to take over the pages of newspapers and magazines (typically those dealing with visual art or literature, i.e., the two subjects where the absence of criticism is most noticeable), updating from time to time on the news of the moment, without, however, the basic situation undergoing substantial changes. What follows, then, is not a contribution animated by the claim of being original, even less by the desire to be exhaustive, but simply by the purpose of taking a quick snapshot of one of the means of art criticism, the review, which has been the subject of a recent debate in the United States that began with a long and detailed article by Sean Tatol published in The Point Magazine a few weeks ago. We will refer, in the few pages that follow, mainly to reviews of exhibitions, since exhibitions are the type of production with which both the public and insiders are used to measure themselves most frequently, whether we are talking about ancient art or contemporary art. The review, of course, is not the only medium through which critics express themselves, but it is probably the most immediate means of checking their health: those who would like to trace a history of the “crisidellacriticology,” to use the effective noun that Daniele Capra coined on these pages a year ago, when Finestre Sull’Arte launched yet another round of the debate around the death of criticism, could go back as far as 1959 (although I do not exclude that one could go even further back), the year when Elizabeth Hardwick, inHarper’s Magazine, published a piece with a self-explanatory title (“The decline of book reviewing”) identifying even at that time some of the problems from which literary criticism was beginning to suffer. And it is useful to point out that even at those chronological heights Hardwick found the symptoms of the decline of literary criticism in the sluggishness and assertiveness of much of the reviews that were being published even in major journals.

The voice of criticism, throughout these decades, has become weaker and weaker and has entered a crisis all over the world, despite the fact that there is an apparent paradox: never before have there been so many people talking about art as in recent times, facilitated by the ease of the means that technology now makes available to us to reach an audience (until about ten years ago, one could not even consider touching an audience if one did not have some technical knowledge necessary to activate one’s presence on the Internet). Yet the review genre seems to have now completely disappeared from art publicity: the panorama, rather discouraging for those who still believe that the review is a useful means of orienting themselves in the increasingly vast panorama of artistic productions (it applies as much to contemporary ones as to those dealing with ancient art), is the one photographed by Letizia Lala in an essay of hers, entitled “The art chronicle on the web” and published in 2020 in the journal Lingue e culture dei media of theUniversity of Milan, in which it was noted, with rare exceptions, a substantial “renunciation of the task of judging” that "finds in modern means of communication, with their high degree of informality, and with their contracted and ephemeral productions, of rapid writing and rapid reading, a particularly powerful vehicle, which is stimulating forms of art chronicling that are little engagées: Of uncritical criticism.“ The scholar, in her full-bodied article, cast her gaze only on the productions available on the Internet, but one could make the same argument for print newspapers as well. There is no denying, of course, that there is a criticism that expresses itself through small, independent print publications, the results of which, however, struggle to get out of the narrow circle of insiders, and often are not even able to reach the latter: the ”we party ourselves" paradigm is, unfortunately, not a sufficiently incisive dialectical argument. It is not for a rather simple reason: because when the vision is broadened, the situation is the one that was lapidarily described two years ago, in December 2021, by Alfonso Berardinelli in an interview with Repubblica, in which he found that “cultural journalism has worsened, as if inhibited, paralyzed. It justifies, it makes apology, it becomes publicity.”

Not that the past two years have not produced some significant situations that, while obviously not having the potential to subvert the fortunes of criticism (or even those of the review genre), could at least aspire to play a palliative role, running to mitigate the effects of the crisis: I am thinking, in particular, of the explosion of Instagram, where from the first lockdown, in the spring of 2020, hosts of users who before then perhaps had not even considered speaking to an audience, opened their profiles from which they began to talk about art. Instagram, of course, put its own spin on it: having to curb competition from Tiktok, at the same time it facilitated all those creatives who, instead of expressing themselves through images, graphics and photographs, i.e., the means that allowed Instagram to distinguish itself in the world of social networks, set out to create short videos, usually under a minute, in the formats typical of Tiktok, with semi-professional edits made possible thanks to the’paraphernalia that Meta’s social has made available to its users to create pleasing, engaging content in line with what Instagram’s algorithm is used to promote. From this soil, fertile and relatively easy to cultivate, has sprouted a vast herd of popularizers, influencers, assorted entertainers, the vast majority of whom are young and who, strong with more or less vast followings, almost daily pour out videos, reels, stories that typically exhaust the topics addressed in the space of about thirty seconds. Lacking, however, are profiles that do critique, even at the most basic level: visit an exhibition and offer the audience a judgment, even a brief and limited one.

The medium, then, despite its potential (ease of use, transversality, pervasiveness, adaptability) and the characteristics that make it particularly suitable for, say, a possible figure of a young critic at the beginning of his or her experience, as well as for more experienced profiles, has not catalyzed alternative experiences: on the contrary, it has reproduced here the logics that characterize traditional media and that were already identified exactly twenty years ago in a paper by James Elkins (“What happened to art criticism?” of 2003), among the most cited on the subject by virtue of its effectiveness and comprehensiveness. That is to say, those who deal with art prefer to describe, evoke or interpret rather than say what they think about the object in front of them: it would be as if a physicist, Elkins wrote, “declared that he no longer wanted to try to understand the universe, but simply to appreciate it.” The vast majority of art writing today is limited to description or interpretation. In describing the work of a contemporary artist, one is more often than not limited to observing the work and reporting the artist’s thoughts: it is becoming increasingly rare to find critical writing that manages to place the artist’s production in the context of a historical framework, or that manages to find any derivations, filiations, elements of comparison. It applies, of course, even in the case of positive criticism: criticism does not have to be negative. The same problem arises when reading articles about ancient art exhibitions: the review, an argumentative-evaluative text by definition, when it is not replaced by the rinsing of the press kit or by a particularly fashionable genre such as the press release summary followed by the interview with the curator (and, of course, interviewing the curator of an exhibition is not an execrable activity; on the contrary, it is often useful to listen to the account of the person who organized an exhibition: it is not good if this medium and the rinse become the only means through which one talks about exhibitions to the public), has given way to articles in which one simply describes what one sees in the halls, renouncing one’s own judgment, whether positive or negative. A kind of chronicle of the exhibition, then, usually rendered in the space of a day or two after the opening, where the ability to arrive first to provide a narrative counts more than the ability to make a judgment about what one has seen. These genres of art writing, which are often prodigiously passed off as reviews while lacking both the evaluative and argumentative elements, have taken over everywhere: in generalist newspapers, in trade magazines, on the social profiles of entertainers and popularizers of greater or lesser renown. Everyone talking about exhibitions, almost no one expressing their position on what they observe.

How did this situation arise? Two very valid reasons, referring to the literary sphere but perfectly fitting for the visual arts as well, were identified as early as 1991 by one of Italy’s leading literary critics, Romano Luperini, in an essay entitled “Current Trends in Criticism in Italy,” published in the journal Belfagor. Luperini, meanwhile, drew a distinction between militant “journalistic” criticism and militant “partisan” criticism, meaning by the former that which collaborates with artistic-literary research and expresses itself substantially by issuing judgments on artistic and literary productions, and by the latter that which is aimed at supporting a particular poetics against others. Luperini believed that journalistic criticism was “dead mainly for two reasons”: on the one hand, the new industrial organization of culture, responsible for having “revolutionized not only the cultural pages of newspapers and weeklies, but also the entire massmediological universe,” and on the other hand, the institutionalization of criticism, transformed into an academic discipline, into an “aseptic object of study.” Luperini, as anticipated, was thinking of literary criticism, but the same reasoning can also apply to art criticism. One could then add two more elements, which the gap of thirty years since that brilliant piece of writing has made quite evident: the fact that the visual arts no longer represent the dominant art of our time, and the rise of what Byung-Chul Han called the “palliative society,” constantly oriented toward the pursuit of happiness at any cost.

One could start with this last point: palliative society tends to avoid painful confrontation, and “attempts to get rid of everything negative,” writes Byung-Chul Han, preferring to replace confrontation with positive thinking that moves the horizon of pain away from the human being’s experience. As a result, "the palliative society is [...] a society of liking, falling victim to the mania of wanting to please. Everything is polished until it elicits approval. The like is the emblem, the real analgesic of contemporaneity. It dominates not only social media, but also all areas of culture. Nothing has to hurt anymore." It happens, therefore, that the activity of those who make judgments is looked upon with suspicion, especially if they express themselves in negative stances: the critic is seen as an annoying and unnecessary interference that has come to disturb the ecstatic contemplation of the audience, he is called upon to refrain from disturbing the work of those who make a cultural product available to the public, sometimes he will even be accused of being resentful or even envious of the object of his criticism (I think it has happened at least once to everyone who has written a negative review). These transformations that have affected our society partly explain why it is now very rare to find critiques in all media, but by themselves they are not enough to provide sufficient explanations, since even positive evaluations are increasingly difficult to find (we are talking, of course, about the review where one’s judgment is supported by even a basic argumentation, and not the mere superficial appreciation, which instead abounds). A first explanation could be supported by reasons having to do with the critic’s individual experience: if you find yourself always speaking positively, even arguing, you risk losing credibility, because the audience sooner or later expects a critique. One can then counter the legitimate argument of indifference, pointing out that not wanting to pay attention to a poor exhibition is itself a critical judgment. But it is always better not to risk it: by foregoing judgment one avoids having to explain oneself to the public.

Of course, the individual evaluations of the critic placed in front of the eventual reactions of the audience are only part of the problem. It is then necessary to move to another plane: the fact that the visual arts have lost their place as the dominant art (I think that today the role of dominant art should be given to the cinema, followed at some distance by music: the visual arts are perhaps no longer even in the top five, wanting to attempt a ranking of relevance to the public and the industry) has had the effect of a progressive atrophy of the whole sector, directly proportional to the loss of relevance of the visual arts to people’s lives. It is not that the visual arts sector lacks vitality, but the numbers of our world are not even remotely comparable to those of the cinema (for the difference between art criticism and film criticism I refer to a fine article by Luca Bochicchio in the pages of Finestre Sull’Arte), or, say, to those of design. It will suffice here to recall that the world’s most important art fair, Art Basel, was visited by about 95,000 people in 2019, while the world’s most significant design fair, the Salone del Mobile in Milan, totaled more than 430,000 visitors: it is true that the Lombard kermesse lasts two days longer, but the numbers nevertheless say that the leading design fair draws three times as many visitors as the leading art fair. What happens then is that in the visual arts sector, more often than elsewhere, interrelationships take shape between those who invest and those who write, which end up producing rather typical situations: one avoids, for example, making judgments about an exhibition organized by a person who has invested in advertising in the journal (although there are institutions that are well aware that criticism and advertising travel on separate channels, and that therefore have no problem investing in advertising even if the possibility of of a non-benevolent review), or there is a tendency not to review the exhibition of a subject with whom one plans to open a channel of communication, or it may even happen that a magazine chooses to have a benevolent reviewer talk about an exhibition (when, of course, one does not have the curator himself write the piece on the exhibition: that happens, too). Again, the shrinking size of the field is responsible for the frequent overlapping of roles, in the sense that it often happens that those who organize or curate exhibitions find themselves, in the moments of interstice between one review and the next, playing the role of journalist or critic, and in order not to risk antagonizing those who will later have to review their exhibition will refrain from producing a negative judgment on the activities of their colleagues. When the mesh widens, obviously the possibilities for criticism deemed less risky also grow: “It can be seen [...] how, in contemporary art, a certain criticism-even negative criticism-emerges especially with respect to works and operations by artists with an international or global profile and resonance, and this by virtue of the distance that is established between these artists and a good slice of militant criticism”, whereas when “one moves within a smaller network, the community collaborates, dialogues, exchanges favors and works, and it is therefore in human nature that one sometimes prefers quiet life and professional opportunity to the integrity and depth of critical discourse” (so Luca Bochicchio).

For the same reasons, “uncritical criticism” can also become a calculated activity especially where the writer aspires to obtain positions, from the most prestigious ones (the direction of a museum, or the curatorship of an important and well-paying exhibition) to the more occasional but resume-building ones (attendance at a conference), and thus finds it more convenient to maintain a conservative attitude when writing. Because of the way the art system is structured today, and also taking into account the precariousness of work in the field, many consider it more advantageous to cultivate public relations (even by writing in magazines: an article written in a certain way can be a useful promotional vehicle) than to exercise even minimal critical activity. There is no shortage, of course, of those who instead make much more trivial calculations: given the fact that press offices are always "ready to gratify you with a thousand benefits and smother you with care“ (so wrote Antonio Pinelli in his memorable ”Confessions of an Exhibition Reviewer," 2005, one of the most enjoyable, insightful, and useful for understanding how review writers work), there is a vast plethora of reviewers who are unwilling to gamble the possibility of receiving these benefits (i.e., previews, trips paid for by exhibition organizers, opportunities to attend lunches and dinners, and thus weave relationships) in the face of a negative or even simply critical review.

The changes undergone by the culture industry since several decades have of course played an equally prominent role in reducing opportunities for criticism. Artistic and literary production has intensified considerably, editorial staffs are forced to chase novelties, and the time to observe them critically has been greatly reduced: reviewing is time-consuming and requires knowledge (not only about the subject of the exhibition, but also, for example, about topics related to the subject of the exhibition, and possibly also about the academic production around the subject of the exhibition and the exhibition history that preceded theevent in question, and so on), especially when one is faced with the task of producing a critique, since a negative review obviously exposes the writer to the risk of counterattacks, and in the face of the possibility of being subjected to counterattacks one must make oneself as little vulnerable as possible, and to achieve this there is no other way than to write prepared. The risk, of course, is not taken if the journalist in charge of reviewing the exhibition will limit himself to a report of what he has seen, an activity for which no specific knowledge is required, except for the technical skills of the journalistic profession (checking sources, knowledge of ethical rules, and so on): I happened, once, to be at the press preview of an exhibition on Giulio Romano in Mantua, during which a colleague, conversing with another journalist, after listing the latest exhibitions she had visited in New York, asked her what Giulio Romano had to do with Mantua. A more than legitimate question from a casual visitor, less so if it is formulated by a journalist to whom her own newspaper entrusts the task of writing about the exhibition: I seriously doubt that an informed review could have come out of it, while more likely the colleague’s piece resolved itself with a simple rinse of press material. It is, after all, common knowledge that the editorial offices of generalist newspapers now have virtually no staff devoted exclusively to the visual arts (with all the attendant consequences: the hoaxes around the attribution of bad works to high-sounding names are the most conspicuous fruit of this disinterest).

A cultural industry that continually offers new products (think of how many exhibitions are organized each year in Italy) then has to deal with a public that is subjected to an ever-increasing amount of stimuli: it then becomes crucial to reach the public, rather than to provide it with tools to orient itself. Indeed: criticism risks becoming a hindrance. Roberto Carnero explained it well in the pages of L’Avvenire last January, in reference to what happens in the field of literature: “the publishing houses, through their more or less efficient press offices, are very present when it comes to promoting a certain book or a certain author, but they react in a not always diplomatic way when the critic allows himself to really do his job, that is, to criticize the work in question, perhaps by advancing objections or reservations.” Replace, say, the term “publishing houses” with the word “galleries,” and you will find a description adaptable even to the contemporary art system, which is less and less interested in producing criticism. Thus, good communicators are needed more than good critics, people are needed who can tell the story of art more than make judgments, and those who develop their narrative or relational skills will certainly have a better chance of employment than those who have developed a critical attitude. In this sense, the coldest and most lucid calculators are precisely the popularizers, entertainers, and influencers who operate on social media, since they are aware that the only chances they have to work in theenvironment are either to develop such a large base of followers that they become attractive to those who want to promote their own product (a difficult road), or to demonstrate communication skills and offer themselves as consultants to all those entities (museums, galleries, production companies, publishing houses and so on) that need to promote their own products on those same channels with which the new web-based art communicators are fully familiar. Who then benefits from reviewing? Better to be organic so as not to cut off business opportunities. “There is a leisure industry to capitalize on and an artistic field to capitalize on [...]. How? By indiscriminately expanding the audience [...], equating culture with entertainment, fomenting its needs and demand, initiating the celebration of a ritual. How? Through an art that is easier, impactful, immediately communicable, accessible, usable. A ’popular’, mass, consumable art. How? By entertaining, by spectacularizing, by creating an event to be conveyed through the power of marketing: to amaze and surprise” (so Luca Zuccala).

Is there still room for critics to produce reviews? Or in general, is there still room for a critique? Can one hope for improvement? To the second question we have to give, for the time being, a negative answer, because the problems are not contingent, but are structural, so unless far-reaching events are produced that introduce radical changes (and at the moment it is not given to imagine any), the general situation will remain unchanged. There is, of course, “institutional” criticism, so to speak, produced in the scientific sphere by universities or institutes that do research, which study the productions of the present with an academic approach. However, this is research that almost never crosses the boundaries of the academy by reaching a wide audience: when people lament the death of criticism, they tend to think of criticism capable of reaching wide audiences, or at least not composed only of insiders. Who can afford to do criticism on this scale, removed the daredevils and removed the outliers? One would come to think of only one category of people, namely those who are willing to forego the risks that may arise from exercising their faculty of judgment, or who believe that such risk in their case is minimal. I am thinking of academics who do not aim to obtain positions, positions or assignments within the culture industry, I am thinking in general of all those who do not have to account to anyone for what they write, because they do not have to tie their fortunes to the moods of those who will read their writing, or because they do not have to entertain relationships that could be damaged by a review. As long as these people feel like writing, and as long as there are spaces willing to accommodate what they want to write (our magazine is among them), there will still be room for reviews. The fortunes of criticism may not be saved, but at least it will be allowed to survive.

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