Blunt. Basic. Concise. Unencumbered. Impervious. Unsentimental. Sensible. Compressed. Instructive. These are a few words to describe Roberta Smith's recent Shenkman Lecture at the University of Guelph School of Fine Arts and Music, and maybe the larger temperament of Smith's writing in general. Trying to pinpoint moments in Smith's past reviews in which her language, ideas, particular angles or points are singularly remarkable, I come up with similar words, although there is a more acerbic and barb-like deliberateness in her text (see her recent take on the "generic Surrealism" of Germaine Richier). But then what am I talking about exactly? Smith's ability to thoroughly organize context outside of the galleries and point out the general level of clarity and affect of the many exhibitions she encounters? Or the voice/tone/inflection of Smith as a critic via her pragmatic writing style? And what are we talking about, expecting, wondering, thinking of, or utilizing when we read or talk about Smith's criticism?
Roberta Smith
Comparisons between Smith's writing and that of her partner since 1992, Jerry Saltz, are inevitable. Saltz has a spontaneity and brashness that is expected, delivered through unpredictable and personal language. Smith's writing in contrast is immediate in a different way, with a pruned and spiky tone, yet dense and full of reliable (and buzz-wordy) anchors. Asked if her longstanding employer, the New York Times, mandates that Smith remove any hints of the first-person from her writing, Smith says simply that no, it's more of a reflection of her own style. Saltz's writing is conversational, while Smith's, as she says, is simply "a way of working, disseminating, trying to activate something in people."
The title of her lecture, Criticism in the Expanded Field, certainly played a part in influencing expectations and reactions to Smith's talk, even while immediately grounding it within a cut and dried structure. It follows then to wonder what Smith's position on Art Criticism (in uppercase) is. And it makes absolute sense, really, that Smith has no all-encompassing advice or instruction on critical art writing outside of her own practical habits and motivations as a weekly reviewer where "criticism has a short shelf-life" and is read and consumed quickly. Speaking about her trajectory as an art writer via arts journalism and as an early proponent of Donald Judd's writing, she ascribed her interest in avoiding writing about art only "from the neck up" to a certain breakthrough in learning to "open up the whole body to art." For Smith, this is the expanded field, made possible after a shift from writing reviews post-exhibition to writing weekly reviews, which she relates to "recording in the studio versus performing live".
Preferring to open up the bulk of her talk to Q&A, pointed questions on Smith's methodology generally failed to yield sticky details, but was followed with some basic tools for art writers. What does and should criticism provoke? How should it operate? What is your criterion when you critique art? Smith: "Work back from the artistic experience", and "critics demonstrate a discernment", but also: "These are pieces of evidence of things going on inside you when you write criticism." To questions about how art writers in Canada might work within/around a basic lack of negative criticism, Smith can only speak about what she does: "I write editorials really, I write opinions." Consequences after writing a positive or negative review? "Artists do not own the meaning of their work". Overcooked versus experiential? Careful and meticulous research versus knee-jerk? The reworking of opinions is constant, but "if we knew what we were going to write, we wouldn't write." Would you ever consider putting together a collection of your writing? Smith: Ughh (paraphrase); rather than look back, Smith is much more interested in the pressure of writing weekly.
These were the tools, generalizations, deflections, and missed connections within a larger idea of "criticism as a valve", or as a voice from the audience put it, a particular critical system or tactic via "conduits". While all-too-brief, Smith's lecture was a refreshing glimpse of Roberta Smith on Roberta Smith in which, through the daily practice of criticism (which, she insists, we all have and are always doing), "you have a much richer experience than your conscious mind knows."
Shenkman Lecture Series: https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/shenkman-lecture-series
Kim Neudorf is an artist and writer currently living in London, Ontario. Her paintings have shown widely in Alberta, and she exhibited in The Room And Its Inhabitants at Susan Hobbs Gallery, organized by Patrick Howlett. She has contributed writing most recently to Susan Hobbs Gallery, Cooper Cole Gallery, Forest City Gallery, and Evans Contemporary Gallery. She is Akimbo's London correspondent and can be followed @KimNeudorf on Twitter.
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Roberta Smith at the University of Guelph
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