tsnoK

A piece of art

A text that treats a single work of art. The advantages of dealing with only one piece should not be underestimated. Not only are you relieved from the constraints of exhibition periods, you could also extract the work from its inferior position in regards to the exhibition – and to the Exhibiton as a medium – it that it originally was a part of. In that sense, we will probably excercise a fragmenting kind of criticism, completely insensitive to contexts. It is all about getting rid of the more or less abstract unities which are used to fetter the single work, such as where it fits into the artist career, or how the work functions as a part of an artistic development. By fragmentation, we also hope to avoid the excessive use of a historical perspective which constitutes minimal historical developments leading up to the exhibition under consideration. No, not that. We want the single work to be, just like Novalis said of every beloved object, “the center of a paradise”. Context should appear as an effect of the single work, not the other way around. Moreover, and completly prosaic: this approach will also let criticism profit from art fairs, otherwise notorically difficult objects for criticism.

Criticism without art

Criticism has to some extent detached itself from the arts today. It has thereby given a new sense to Robert Smithson’s characterization of critic as “writing in the vicinity of art”. This detachment is for instance notable in the so called “expanded field” which (among other things) refers to a certain writing practice that is relevant to general, overall discussions within the artworld. Or in artcriticism´s equivalence to pop art, which has developed alongside the discipline of culture studies and become integrated into art history: iconographic studies of stamps, advertisements and sports heroes, as well as analysis of eurovision song contestants based on theories by Slavoj Zizek.

For tsnok, criticism without art is interesting because it makes the ways critics create their objects legible. This is why Mythologies by Roland Barthes is a model for us. What we find interesting with Mythologies is not necessarily what has been most notable, namely that it is about popular culture and advertisement, and that it deducts unexpected content (ideology) from a beef (for instance). Instead, we are attracted by Barthes’ and criticism´s capacity to create their own objects.

This section is analogue to the one where artists writes about a hobby; an activity which renders great pleasure but no obvious object to contemplate, sell or trade within the field of signs and meaning that cherish both artists and critics. In this section the ambition is to contemplate how something, anything, that is not a piece of art or part of an institution, establishes a new relationship to critic by becoming relocated to the vicinity of art. And perhaps we can more fully understand how the apparatus of criticism operates through a better understanding of critical constructivism.