Reviews

Art Power by Boris Groys

tararoi_'s review against another edition

3.0

Good essays on curatorship, the "new" (and the end of it), criticism, art and war, and Hitler's theory of art.

Did the rest of the essays raise questions and problems? No. I felt like I was being spoon-fed.

sinogaze's review

1.5

Boris Groys writes from a consumer's perspective, and he writes this book for fellow consumers. Upon undertaking the task of reading this book, it was fairly impressed upon me that I should be approaching and understanding his discourse from a privileged, Western perspective. Although skirting around the topics of diversity and inclusion (which somehow became Soviet-centric), Groys never delves into the elitism and imperialism that the fine art industry has.
For example, in his discussion of museums he praises them as necessary without ever addressing issues of stolen artifacts and who the directors of institutions, the keepers of history are, or what role privilege plays in the curation and display of artwork. Besides that, he addresses tourism and diasporas with a simplistic and lacking tone and disregards the importance of a long-standing legacy. He can't seem to decide whether we should keep tradition in mind or eradicate it entirely. 
While I tended to agree with Groys' conclusions, the groundwork and argumentation he lays out are at times nonsensical, demeaning, and simplistic. It is evident he made an attempt to recognize the elitism of academia, but this book is a good reminder that all academics lack a grasp on reality. 

jacob_wren's review

5.0

Boris Groys writes:


As is generally known, the figure of the art critic emerges at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, alongside the gradual rise of a broad, democratic public. At that time, he was certainly not regarded as a representative of the art world but strictly as an outside observer whose function was to judge and criticize works of art in the name of the public exactly as would any other well-educated observer with the time and literary facility: good taste was seen as the expression of an aesthetic “common sense.” The art critic’s judgement should be incorruptible, i.e. bear no obligation to the artist. For a critic to give up his distance meant being corrupted by the art world and neglecting his professional responsibilities: this demand for disinterested art criticism in the name of the public sphere is the assertion of Kant’s third critique, the first aesthetic treatise of modernity.

The judicial ideal, however, was betrayed by the art criticism of the historical avant-garde. The art of the avant-garde consciously withdrew itself from the judgement of the public. It did not address the public as it was but instead spoke to a new humanity as it should – or at least could – be. The art of the avant-garde presupposed a different, new humanity for its reception – one that would be able to grasp the hidden meaning of pure colour and form (Kandinsky), to subject its imagination and even its daily life to the strict laws of geometry (Malevich, Mondrian, the Constructivists, Bauhaus), to recognize a urinal as a work of art (Duchamp). The avant-garde thus introduced a rupture in society not reducible to any previously existing social differences.

The new, artificial difference is the true artwork of the avant-garde. Now it is not the observer who judges the artwork, but the artwork that judges – and often condemns – it’s public. This strategy has often been called elitist, but it suggests an elite equally open to anyone in so far as it excludes everyone to the same degree. To be chosen doesn’t automatically mean dominance, even mastery. Every individual is free to place himself, against the rest of the public, on the side of the artwork – to number himself among those constituting the new humanity. Several art critics of the historical avant-garde did just that. In place of the critic in the name of society arose social critique in the name of art: the artwork doesn’t form the object of judgement but is instead taken as the point of departure for a critique aimed at society and the world.

The art critic of today inherited the older public office along with the avant-garde betrayal of this office. The paradoxical task of judging art in the name of the public while criticizing society in the name of art opens a deep rift within the discourse of contemporary criticism. And one can read today’s discourse as an attempt to bridge, or at least conceal, this divide. For example, there is the critic’s demand that art thematize existing social differences and position itself against the illusion of cultural homogeneity. That certainly sounds very avant-garde, but what one forgets is that the avant-garde didn’t thematize already-existing differences but introduced previously nonexistent ones. The public was equally bewildered in the face of Malevich’s Suprematism or that of Duchamp’s Dadaism, and it is this generalized nonunderstanding – bewilderment regardless of class, race, or gender – that is actually the democratic moment of the various avant-garde projects.