Reflections on Reviewing Art and Culture in the Blogosphere

Google Alert! Here's a post with your name on it!

During the glamorous days of the New York theater on opening night, actors would head to a swell place like Sardi's after the performance to anxiously wait for the reviews. I imagine that during the wait, amidst a boozy haze of cigarette smoke and clinking glasses of scotch-on-the-rocks, one actor would breathlessly run in with the freshly printed early editions of the newspapers, and then someone at the table would start reading the reviews out loud to the assembled party.

Google Alert has now replaced the breathless actor as the delivery device. After posting an art review on this website, for example, I can then trace, thanks to common analytics programs, a "hit" from the location where the artist may live. I don't know for sure if it's the artist or his or her "people," but since I know that many art professionals have created Google Alerts for themselves, I think it's most likely the artist.

There have been occasions, after posting a review, when I can analytically deduce that only the artist has read the post. At these times, I regret not writing the review as a letter: "Dear Artist, I like your work, but I didn't care for the red thing in the corner."

Sorry. A good opening, but Clement Greenberg won't be seeing it.

While many artists protest that they don't pay attention to reviews, it's always good to have someone who takes notice. Many artists work hard all the time and particularly drive themselves hard to prepare for an opening. I walk around New York feeling frustrated that there are too many artists in search of one decent review.

I'm not talking about promotional puff pieces of two sentences with a picture. I'm talking a 500-word review with description, evaluation and interpretation, one that gives the reader a sense of the artist. Writing a real review is hard.

There's little method to my own madness. Sometimes, I will seek out a particular exhibit, but often it's one I've encountered by chance. Out of the zillions of exhibits, I select for review a handful that inspire me to write. That's how I felt with my recent reviews of Rosalind Solomon, Luc Tuymans, Macbeth, and Jasper Johns. And, in my case, I have other things on my blogging agenda. I have to keep walking.

While I've found some excellent examples of arts writing in new media, the blogosphere and the expansion of internet journalism has not yet produced a new golden age of art criticism, I'm afraid. It's very easy to write, "I ate pancakes this morning. Last night I went to the Whitney opening party. The tequila drinks were good. I just broke up with my boyfriend."

When blogging about art becomes as lucrative as blogging about blogging, this new golden age may come to pass. I can't wait.

Image: Man reading newspaper while waiting for streetcar. Streetcar station, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Russell Lee, photographer. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USF33-012324-M3 DLC (b&w film nitrate neg.)