Critics don’t R.I.P
You might want to read the recent essay written by Rick Poynor on The Death of the Critic. Here Poynor comments on the state of criticism in the Art field in general and the Design world in particular and summarizes the different levels of criticism from the mild version of it, journalism and observing the new, to a more hostile and arcane ‘cultural-studies’ way of criticizing the world around us. A 1955 article on Subtopia written by Ian Nairn and published in the AR (Architectural Review), is seen by Poynor as the essence of what design criticism should be and where it should go. Critics should be less accommodating and have a «profound idealism and shared sense of what matters». A quick look around and it’s easy for Poynor to notice the lack of critics these days. He suggests that, amongst other things, critics are hard to spot because they are probably missing good publishers. I wonder though if what we are missing is publications or just good/serious writers/critics. If we lack good critical writing then who really cares about publications?
Still, when RP says the critic might be dead, I wonder where the body is…
Poynor’s article somehow reminded me of Martin Walser’s Death of a Critic not just for the obvious similarities in their respective essay/book titles but in the way Poynor keeps being the trublion of the Design Critic scene… in a very good sense.
Walser’s book, a roman noir, tells the story of journalist Hans Lach, who is suspected of the death of famous critic André Ehrl-König. One of his colleagues investigates and discovers, in the media and publishing milieu, a web of relationships between critics that protect each other, a web that also guaranteed the power of Ehrl-König. A web that will, later in the novel, accuse Hans Lach of an anti-Semitic murder without any proof.
Let me pause for a second here and go back to the violent polemic that took place in Germany in 2002 around the time of the book’s publication :
Walser as part of the so-called Gruppe 47, a German post-war literary association of left-wing realist writers, was severly criticized for crossing the line with his novel Tod eines Kritikers (Death of a Critic). In May 2002, Frank Schirrmacher, publisher of the conservative newspaper Frankfürter Allgemeine Zeitung, wrote an ‘open letter’ in which he refused to reprint Walser’s latest novel arguing that it was a «document of hate» full of «anti-Semitic clichés». Obvious for any German reader, the main character of the book, André Ehrl-König, was a caricature of the Jewish German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki .
The question raised by this polemic revolved around the idea of whether an author was allowed to attack the most famous critic in Germany, previous Head of the Cultural section of the most read German newspaper, survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and German for half a century.
For months the different newspapers and literary magazines in Germany fought a Bataille d’Hernani over a book that most of them had not even read ! (1)
In his article for the French newspaper Le Monde (01 July 2002) Daniel Vernet described the ‘war’ between the pro-Walser and the anti-Walser as something that lightly looked like the duel for the defense of the author against the critic, and more sadly underlined the denunciation of a supposed anti-Semitic book.
Walser defended himself against anti-Semitic calls by stating that he was «breaking a taboo» and that Germany had suffered enough of the «moral bludgeon that was the Holocaust». «I am not an Anti-Semite» he said in a speech in Frankfurt, «if I had smelt a single trace of Anti-Semitism in my book, I would have erased it». He instead suggested that the subject of his novel was the «exercise of Power in the Intellectual and Cultural Milieu».
This description of a fight between an author and a critic particularly interested me in the light of Poynor’s article in Icon.
Walser at the time of the polemic is 75 and Reich-Ranicki 80. One is a famous writer, the other «makes and unmakes the reputations of authors and still attracts the hatred and love of the big names of German Literature». They’re both long time adversaries and lived under the spell of criticism and counter-criticism for almost half a century.
Perhaps Sigrid Löffler (ex-assistant to Reich-Ranicki) is the one who best described the whole affair : «Walser’s book, if it is a document on this love-hate obsessive relationship between an author and his accredited critic, is stupidly clever. If it is the mad revelation of all the disturbing weaknesses and human defaults of this critic then it is disgusting».
In Lire (October 2002), the journalist David Midgley also mentioned that Walser when calling his critic André Ehrl-König was not simply creating a double of Reich-Ranicki. The name is more a jeu de mots on the demoniac character in Goethe’s poem : Erlkönig (Erlking, 1782) and Walser had already used this name in another of his novels. He once named another character Ehrl-König because books died in his arms. So was all this shaking of the German cultural megalosphere done ‘just’ for the sake of another rivalry between a critic and an author ?
Being a critic and/or an author is not an easy thing. Especially if one of the two is almost dead. I would characterize the relationship between them by quoting a codename in Vergez’s 1985 espionnage film Bras de Fer : Sans Judas pas de Christ (without Judas no Christ). I find it difficult to believe that the critic could be dead. His role is so dependent on the work produced by artists and designers that stating his disapearance would equate to saying that no (new) critizisable form of art or design is being created anymore. I’m intentionally implying that when you usually see the face of the critic appearing somewhere you know you’re in presence of something worth of a certain interest.
One of the best examples of this was a generation of critics at the Cahiers du Cinéma who, in the early 50s, gradually built to become a group of auteurs famously known as the French Nouvelle Vague and invented a new way of making films. Before being recognized as markers in Cinema history, Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol and some others called themselves critics. For them Cinema had to be seen from a different angle and this ment a new and more implicated way of looking at and criticizing movies. The hours spent in the dark rooms of the parisian Quartier Latin’s theaters watching B-movies or more obscure challenging films helped generate their politique des auteurs theory where the movie director was seen as someone whose work you should « love and critic » (Truffaut, Ali Baba et la Politique des Auteurs, Les Cahiers du Cinéma, Fevrier 1955).
There was a real consistency in the way critique was done at the Cahiers. You may take issue with it, but they believed criticism had to be «an exercice of modesty». The critic would always disapear behind the auteur it criticized and if sometimes the general opinion went against a movie then it just meant that the opinion did not judge it properly or didn’t understand it.
In a way Truffaut believed more in the «personal genius of the auteur than in the acuity of the critic, the latter being often too mainstream while the first one would implicitly belong to the avant-garde» hence misunderstandings were to be expected on occasion.
Nonetheless even if they loved the directors they criticized, the critics at the Cahiers weren’t slaves to them. There is a French saying that fits this way of criticizing perfectly: qui aime bien, chatie bien (one who loves well, punishes well) it could also be turned into : one who loves well, criticizes well.
It is hopefully accepted that to be a good critic you need to know your subject, hence Rick Poynor states that «the critic, as traditionally understood, was a person of superior knowledge and insight […] presumed to know best about his areas of expertise».
It takes some time and education to become a critic and something undescribable to be a good one. The same goes for the critics’s reader who should thus understand that it also takes more than a «handy star ratings» to appreciate art, music or architecture. The critical judgement works both ways: from the critic to his audience, everything is a matter of education and passion.
I wouldn’t start writing the oraison funèbre of the critic yet though. What is in a bad shape, not just dead but almost, is not the critic himself but the way critic is being done.
If you’re too mild to avoid polemics, you face the risk of being boring. A critic shouldn’t just «report on the latest news» as Poynor points out. That is indeed the role of the journalist or the observer.
Today’s design critic must face great challenges according to Rick Poynor. First you need to be hyper critical and not just a highlighter. You must «open people’s eyes and make a difference».
With the democratization of the net, almost everyone out there is a critic. Good or bad that’s the way it is. Unfortunately as we use to say, «too much of something destroys the purpose of that something» (replace ‘something’ by criticism and you’ll get the idea).
Blogs were certainly a good thing in the beginning. They helped spot new voices in design criticism or at least make the existing ones more present to some of us children of the web. But looking back I can still hear the voice of Jeff Keedy who warned us in a Design Theory class at CalArts against the overdose of blogs.
A counter-balance to the souk of design blogs-slash-critic blogs could probably be searched for in the publishing world.
Critics need a good editor and this is not a mere cautionary tale. Whether on paper or via. a blog (although blogs still bug me for practical reasons but this is another subject), you need someone that can make choices and give a direction. First you will avoid the risk of isolated pieces of criticism that always feels like someone pouting in a corner. Second, and in this I follow Poynor’s point of view, you get rid of commenters who are not always interested in the subject being criticized but just want to shout.
Still a good editor and a clever looking magazine wouldn’t be enough in my opinion. You need more polemics.
Polemic or dispute was long ago a very stimulating sport not to say an art. Mastering it meant you certainly had convictions but also arguments and fine spirit to support them as insults were usually forbidden. Two good examples of this can be found amongst others in Manoel de Oliveira’s movie Palavra e Utopia (Words and Utopia) or some of Bataille and Desnos’ articles in the über-surrealist publication Documents. Like players on a field, critics and polemists would toy with controversy and challenge the mundane pensée bon marché (you could translate that as cheap thinking). Every effort was made to convince the reader of the solidity and validity of their arguments. Most of the time this implied criticizing the pensée ambiante (ambient thinking or take-no-position thinking) and assuming the position of an outsider. As Robert Storr pointed out, «Criticism is a war against received ideas. The surest way of losing it is to become the full-time promoter of the next generation of intellectual clichés, although this looks like victory to those who value being mentionned more than they value thinking.» (2)
As critics, it seems we’ve become afraid to say what we think. We ‘politically correct’ all the time. We state the obvious to avoid taking a dangerous but perhaps more interesting position. We hate fights. We are the polite critics. Of course they are a few exceptions. But not enough.
As designers we should be careful. If critics don’t do their job anymore we also have to ask ourselves if the work is worthy of the critic in the first place.
Having good critics, whether on the web or on paper, will force us to keep on raising the stakes. It is a necessity. The author feeds the critic and vice-versa. In return the critics will hopefully want to be more like auteurs and less like critics. Meaning that criticism is again not just a matter of saying ‘I like/ I hate’. I mean, who really wants to read that sort of thing anyway ?
There is certainly a third route between plain observation and arcane critical writing. A route that would emphasize good writing that is yet accessible to everyone. I don’t mean by that that critical texts have to become more ‘simple’ but perhaps more digestible. I’m in favor of criticism that is constructive and enlightening, not just angrily impassionate. A critic that challenges us.
Indeed we must fight with critics and they must fight back. No need to be overly sarcastic like Walser and kill them though. Or «remuer la merde» (stir the shit) as Céline once said to denounce the critics who questioned his positions during the Second World War.
Oh wait. Actually no. Shit stirring is good. But just stirring is pointless. You have to dig the bad shit and the good shit to find something we, afficionados of criticism, are craving for. That is something you might disagree with but that will trigger your capacity of arguing with. If not then Céline was right you’re just a shit-stirrer.
The role of the critic has evolved throughout the centuries. From Baudelaire to Bataille, from Benjamin to South Park, the spectrum drawn usually goes from one extreme (bouffon) to the other (auteur) with, hopefully, a consistency in not taking anything for granted.
But as the Walser story tells us, the critic also makes mistakes.
He is not God’s gift nor, as we know designers would say, is he the next design guru… a very pale, near-to-death guru if we are to follow Rick Poynor’s point of view though.
But isn’t it when you’re having a NTD experience that you usually see the light and you’re kicked back into reality ?
What will revive the critic? A bad designer or indeed a very strong one? People ready to express their ideas without fearing (too much) to shock ? A slap in the face ?
Come back in the arena, critic ! The fight has just begun…
Catherine Guiral
(1) the book was sent as a pdf to most of the journalists as it hadn’t been published at the time of the polemic. Read the interesting article by Olga Goriunova here:
(2) Frieze, A Place in the Sun, p.23, May 2006. Robert Storr is a critic and curator and Dean of the Yale School of Art. He will be director of the 2007 Venice Biennale.
How timely!
There is also a very good article in Dot Dot Dot 12 responding to Rick Poynor’s ideas about Criticism that I suggest people look at, it’s interesting and adds to this discussion in terms, not simply of ‘will people write’ but modes and tenses of writing.
/Ray Marsh 03/08/2006