September 20, 2003
Helen Molesworth on art criticism
In a recent roundtable discussion on the state of art criticism published in October 100, Helen Molesworth, curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts, summarized quite nicely my feelings on the topic. She says:
Perhaps we are back to your idea of collaboration [between artists and critics]. In this model really good criticism is a dialog between texts and objects, and I don't think that happens in the popular press; there I see criticism functioning as an interpretive interlocutor of objects for an audience. In some ways I see my ideal form of criticism as potentially very intimate, with the caveat being that the function of criticism is to render the intimate public. For me it is precisely criticism's publicness that transforms what could potentially be a conversation between persons into a dialogue between texts and objects.
She uses the conversation-turned-public metaphor that I use when speaking to writers I approach concerning Ten Verses. It is inspiring to know that we are of similar mindsets, as I am an enthusiastic fan of Documents, a journal she co-founded in the early 1990s with Miwon Kwon (who wrote the amazing One Place After Another: Site-specific Art and Locational Identity) and Margaret Sundell.