When I saw that Gabriel Combs’ situation had spiraled down to the point that he was facing eviction and out of options—likely to end up in a shelter, alone and doomed—I debated what I would do.

On one hand, despite my ambivalence about his art but because of a history of being serendipitously “connected” with him, I was terribly curious about what sort of life he was leading, and would lead, through this personal, art-driven disintegration. In a way, I thought, it’d be a kind of window-view into the life of a modern-day Van Gogh—as, in many respects, Combs’s life seemed to mirror the life of the Dutch icon of the quintessentially unrealized-genius/failed artist. After all, like Van Gogh, Combs is remarkably prolific. By perusing his website, scanning through the mnartist forums, and his eBay seller ID, anyone could see he is compulsive about producing art (some of it derivative, some of it rather empty of any meaning, but much of it remarkably inventive and facile in rendering). Further, like Van Gogh, Combs speaks a severe dedication to the act of art-making; it’s all he really wants to do, nothing else—and in fact he had done nothing but art for the past few years.

If Combs had the intellectual discipline to match his hand skills, he could have been, like Van Gogh eventually proved to be, a great artist—he’s that visually inventive. Instead, as with Van Gogh, Combs seems just another angry young (tagger) artist trying to go legit, who, by striking out at everyone—in bar fights, through substance abuse, or by taking offense at every cross word (as he has often described on the forums)—dooms himself to failure.

did’nt sleep much last night. something about 3 liters of wine, mushrooms, and speed. oh, and some whiskey too. and i may have to fight tonight but its not my fault she was left neglected. i will likely lose this fight too, but one never knows. only a little half done with an american tragedy. i like dreisers style alright, but hes fairly long-winded and makes errors. i think i’ll pick up some joseph conrad after this, and may have to read the heart of darkness again first. time passes and certain texts come off a bit differently in going back over them. i am currently morose, confused, and solidly self-destructive but its nothing new and tomorrow will bring new scars to earn. what difference does it all make? to twist out of that moribund shit, here is something cute. hide your fishes… (G. Combs, mnartists.org forums, February 12)

I debated going to visit Combs’s studio/apartment not only because of our history, but because I knew I’d end up accused of “exploitation”—taking advantage of one person’s (in this case an artist’s) dire situation for my own gain, or to get my sick jollies, or for revenge. It’s a conundrum and a fine line. On one hand, one could see this sort of writing as very vulture-like—a feeding frenzy on the dead or dying carcasses of artists. On the other hand, the most compelling stories I tend to write, the stories that get the best response and attract the biggest readership—to this (uncommercial) blog and to my (commercially) published writing—are the personal stories of artists who are teetering, or falling over, the edge. These stories, strangely, are what people seem to want to read, and, despite the inevitable accusations and questions about my motives, I continue to write these stories (without seeking them out), because I think they serve an important and useful purpose. They make people, generally speaking, more aware of the life-realities (and dire struggles) of working artists today. Vultures, after all, serve a very useful function as a warning and spur, for those who are still well-fed and healthy, not to set off on the dry gulch pathways.

So, despite my hesitation, and recalling the Artistic Failure mission—to a record the “struggles of myriad failing and failed artists across the communities of this country, as well as the failure of the “entire structure that supports artists and arts viewing… so that we somehow, someday may collectively rise up and fulfill our national creative promise”—I continued wondering if I should visit Combs, see his work-live space, and get a brief glimpse of what was at the heart of his personal dissolution. My intention was I might (or might not) write about him specifically, but that I would at the very least use information about his situation to feed a large essay about the great make-or-break, career-crushing hurdle that every artist seems to face at some point in life. Still, I continued to have serious misgiving about whether visiting Combs would be worth the inevitable frustration to me, and, likely, to Combs.

I had very nearly decided to back off, let my curiosity die, and ignore Combs’ obvious cries for attention, but then he posted the message below on the forums:

i cannot believe how crazy last night was, and how it was an extension of the days before that. tonight threatens to be worse. i am officially out next friday. things are more fucked up than i can remember them ever being. if you live around stevens, look for random art on the street, as i’ll be setting odd boards and panels out in the next few days. if i don’t get killed. walked right into a crack den to tell someone what was up, like ten people in there. the guy who is evicted today that lived there laying naked on the bed except for his underwear, with the place full of people smoking. landlord “uhhh, just what happened in your apartment last night?” all hell. i’m carrying a hammer with me as i might need it to hit someone (s). mopping up blood thinned by liquor. let it all come, i can take it. heres five drawings i did awhile back. sold the lot for 99 cents to a guy in germany. one of my worse sales lately. got some better prices from a series of people from spain, which makes spain the foreign country i’ve sent the most work to i think. i’m to about $500 a month on art, and maybe 25+ pieces to make that. so desperate today, and out of my mind… (G. Combs, mnartists.org forums, February 15)

That same day, I wrote a hasty email to Combs and to one of his forum friends, and I waited to find out if he would let me visit.

TO BE CONCLUDED…

Note, below is a representative sample of Combs’ most recent work (originally posted by the artist on the mnartists.org forums).
Combs has been supporting himself exclusively for the past few years—ever since he quit a job at a photo-processing company (something to do with the politics of the place and some evil fellow employee)—by selling his paintings/drawings on eBay. These paintings typically sell for $20-$30 a pop, though occasionally a bit more.

You can support Combs directly by bidding on the work he sells on eBay.

I have no way of knowing yet how accurate was Holland Cotter’s NYT review of the just-opened Whitney Biennial, but, based on his descriptions of the show and what I know of it myself, this assessment sounds about right:

…this year we have a Whitney show that takes lowered expectations — lessness, slowness, ephemerality, failure [emphasis mine] (in the words of its young curators, Henriette Huldisch and Shamim M. Momin) — as its theme.

A biennial for a recession-bound time? That’s one impression it gives. With more than 80 artists, this is the smallest edition of the show in a while, and it feels that way, sparsely populated, even as it fills three floors and more of the museum…

Past biennials have had a festive, party-time air. The 2004 show was all bright, pop fizz; the one two years ago exuded a sexy, punk perfume. The 2008 edition is, by contrast, an unglamorous, even prosaic affair. The installation is plain and focused, with many artists given niches of their own. The catalog is modest in design, with a long, idea-filled essay by Ms. Momin, hard-working, but with hardly a stylistic grace note in sight. A lot of the art is like this too: uncharismatic surfaces, complicated back stories…

…the overall tenor of the show is low-key, with work that seems to be in a transitional, questioning mode, art as conversation rather than as statement, testing this, trying that. Assemblage and collage are popular. Collaboration is common. So are down-market materials — plastic, plywood, plexiglass — and all kinds of found and recycled ingredients, otherwise known as trash.

As a side-note, I have visited the past two Whitney Biennials, and I have reviewed them—usually focusing on the Minnesota angle for a little Minnesota-based web-publication. I find Cotter’s quick take above on the past two Biennials to be pretty spot-on, though I’d probably be a little harsher in my assessment of the 2006 show (and, indeed, I was). So, I have no reason to doubt him about the 2008 version.

I also then must say, “kudos, Whitney!” for recognizing—like CAFA—that failure is the order of the day in art.

As a final note, I do plan, once I can break free long enough to do so, to visit this failure-focused Biennial. In a perfect world, in which I have enough time away from my day job and enough left-over energy, I’d write more regular reviews of local and national art for a hungry local audience. (I say this fully realizing that all the local art criticism venues are rapidly dying off.) Still, I’m hopeful that I can, later this spring/summer, visit the seemingly less dire, more circumspect, more internationally derived Carnegie International, which opens in May, and write a comparative survey of these two major art events.

And heck, if I can’t get the review published somewhere good, then you can be sure it’ll end up just another feature of Failure. Stay tuned!

When downturns happen, when people are shocked out of their regular ruts, when the bombing starts and buildings are knocked down–whenever something bad happens on a large scale in the country, the arts are the first thing that goes out the window.

Case in point for today (March 4, 2008), as the collective economic hand-wringing mounts to a deafening pitch:

• Critic Sasha Anwalt, on the NAJP blog, yesterday pointed out that the L.A. Times is canning its long-time dance critic Lewis Segal. Anwalt writes, “this signals a gigantic disconnect between the people and press…. and his loss is worth protesting on many fronts.”
• Last week, Douglas McLennan wrote on the same blog about the Hartford Courant’s buyout of its television critic. McLennan also posted, a few days ago, an analysis of the ongoing failure of newspapers in this country.
• Andrew Taylor, on his Art Journal blog on arts management, wrote about the need for nonprofit mission-driven organizations to consider when to close their doors. (This relates to a story CAFA has been following out of Boston, where the Boston Foundation has suggested that the directors of “struggling arts groups” should perhaps begin seeking “exit strategies.”)
• The arts & architecture blog of the Guardian Unlimited recently posted about the inevitability of suffering for artists, and, appropriately, about the British Arts Council’s painful upcoming funding cuts to arts organizations.
• And, to top it all off and tie it all together, a recent story in the New York Times examines the quaint American habit to eschew all things intellectual. To quote the main subject of the story, Susan Jacoby, author of several books on this subject of American anti-intellectualism: “Now… something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way. Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.”

Be wary of walking under windows, lest you be hit in the head with all the art and culture we’re tossing out.

Things are really beginning to get bad for the arts these days. So bad, that even our enlightened and genteel northern neighbor, Canada, has undertaken an American-style slash-and-burn approach to spending on the arts in its current budget. According to the Globe and Mail online edition:

In short, yesterday’s budget, in the name of maintaining what Finance Minister Jim Flaherty called “strong fiscal management,” seemed to duck virtually every concern that the Canadian cultural community has been voicing in the past five years.

According to this story on the CBC’s website, arts groups are bitterly disappointed in the budget’s disregard for spending on arts and culture. “Cultural investment generates economic activity,” said one artist representative, “provides opportunities for performers and other creators and generates high-quality Canadian programming and films audiences want to watch… In tough times, that’s exactly the kind of investment government should be making, but they’ve failed to act.”

Meanwhile, not to be outdone by Canada’s new-found “Americanness” in regards to the arts, it appears our very own lame-duck president’s parting policy shot will be to eviscerate an arts community already deeply struggling to survive. According to a story called “National Endowment for the Arts budget cuts should be met with outrage, not complacency,” from the Louisville Courier-Journal, Bush is attempting an arts funding end-around in the last budget that he’ll ever sign off on:

Tucked away in the thousands of pages covering $3 trillion worth of proposed expenditures was a $16.3 million cut in support for the National Endowment for the Arts. That would reduce its operating budget from $144.7 million during fiscal 2008 to $128.4 million in 2009.

You heard right. Barely two months after signing off on a $20 million increase in the NEA’s budget — the largest in the endowment’s history — our nation’s chief executive quickly shifted into fiscal reverse. In budget-speak, this is called a “rescission.” In plain-speak, it’s an outrage.

First, some rare good news: The Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America has learned that one of its blog postings, the first of a two-parter about the Colorado artist Dean Fleming, was picked up this week by the website of the Minneapolis-based magazine, The Utne Reader. Thanks to the Reader for their interest in this unusual artist, and in the Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America.

To read more about Fleming, you can also go to this post. To read more in general about struggling, aging artists go here.

Meanwhile, the bigger news this past week in Minnesota was the demise of the monthly feature magazine The Rake. Now, some would say–in a market where the local papers have downsized significantly over the past few years (cutting numerous arts and cultural writing position), where the local newsweekly has fired and replaced its entire writing/editorial staff over the past year, and where the local media market is constantly in flux–the loss of The Rake was just another blip on the path to local media/cultural/practical illiteracy.

It’s not putting too fine a point on things to say that all local publishers (and media professionals) are running scared. “Things have changed radically in the last six years, and I think it’s going to get worse long before it gets better,” Rake Publisher Tom Bartel said. “It’s too expensive to produce journalism and then have Google come along and take all your advertising.” “At best, these are challenging times, maybe even recessionary times,” said John Rash, a senior vice president at advertising agency Campbell Mithun who follows the media market and writes a monthly column for the Star Tribune. “While there is some tremendous journalism on websites and in smaller publications, it is more difficult to monetize it, both locally and nationally. Newspapers themselves have struggled.” “We think the next 18 months are going to be tough for advertising in general,” said Deborah Hopp, publisher of Mpls.St.Paul magazine, based in Minneapolis. “Our expectation is that, around here, weaker players will fall by the wayside.”

For purposes of our interest in artistic failure, however, the loss of The Rake hits home because this publication was particularly invested in and involved with the arts locally—initiating a quarterly arts insert (and a celebratory event) called 10,000 Arts, hiring a former arts writer as their editor-in-chief (which meant lots of interest in arts writing), and partnering with and supporting a number of local arts organizations on a range of projects.

The Rake will be missed…

By the way, as a separate, but related note: I wasn’t even aware that the Utne Reader still existed, were you?…

An inevitable result of any widespread economic downturn in America are rumblings and stories of politicians and policy-makers seeking to cut arts funding in their state. Never mind that the arts take up a rather miniscule part of any given state’s budget, and that diversion and distraction (in the form of the arts) are often what we most need in times of economic downturn, the great American impulse is: when the pocketbook constricts, it’s time to kill off the artists.

And so we’re seeing such stories start to roll out over the virtual transom:

• In New Jersey, which faces $32 billion of accumulated debt (and a $2.9 billion project budget gap this year), Gov. Corzine has announced plans for “deep cuts to higher education, health care and the arts…,” as well as to state employees’ jobs. This despite the fact that New Jersey’s art budget makes up only about $40-$50 million of an annual $33.5 billion state budget.
• Indianapolis, meanwhile, is facing its own budget woes and so is looking to cut the $1.54 million the city distributes to 75 local arts organizations. This has resulted, understandably, in a lot of nervousness among Indy’s arts community.

CAFA will continue to monitor these budget-cutting developments as more stories are published.

So, on the eve of Hollywood’s annual bloviatathon, before we get sucked into, as A.O. Scott put it in the NYT, “the pomp and tedium of Hollywood spectacle,” let us call an end to—once and for all—any further discussions of the great (personal) waste of time that is the American Entertainmo-Industrial Complex.

Are we all agreed?… Great! Now we can return to more pertinent and pressing issues (and CAFA obsessions): The impending failure of the art market.

A recent story, in The Art Newspaper, speculates on what will be the exact timing, depth, and duration of the inevitable, looming bust. Anyone who has any sort of interest in art, or in the art market, should read this article. While there is no consensus about what shape the market crash will take, make no bones about it, arts-lovers (much as I hate to say it): Doom is neigh.

“Everyone is wondering if the downturn will be like 9/11”

New York dealers fear the worst

Brook S. Mason | 2.13.08

US dealers are admitting to sluggish sales, hesitant clients and cancelled deals amid continuing financial market woes, which last month saw America’s largest bank, Citigroup, post a $9.8bn fourth-quarter loss.

“Nobody wants to say the sky is falling but perception affects every market and clearly, we are entering a new period in the economy,” said Martha Fleischman, president of Kennedy Galleries. “The people who see art as part of their portfolio and like to flip will get an education very quickly this year,” she added.

“There are more dealers hanging on by their fingernails but no-one will go on the record,” said a prominent art world public relations expert who did not want to be named. “Everyone is wondering if the downturn will be just like 9/11,” she added.

Here are some more of my (slightly more cogent) thoughts on what’s messed up about Hollywood, written nearly five years ago by a younger (slightly less jaded) version of myself.

(*Note: Just so you know, I grew up in the shadow of Tinseltown and am quite aware of what LaLaLand is all about.

**Note too: Just so you know, I’m a critic (on art, culture, etc.). I critique. It’s what I do… This doesn’t mean I hate Hollywood. Actually, I critique because I love. Things that I hate, I don’t write about…)

Hollywood Art Critic, Part 1

August 29, 2003
Michael Fallon

HOLLYWOOD LIKES A GOOD YARN—especially a tidy tale that’s been telegraphed in advance, hits all the right emotional points, and plays out exactly as expected.
Consider the recent hit summer flick Seabiscuit. Never mind that the truth of the story of this 1930s-era race horse—as told in Laura Hillenbrand’s book, on which the movie was based–was much more intriguing than the movie version. The producers/writers/consultants/test audiences couldn’t help but keep the story satisfyingly predictable for the glazed but touchingly unjaded eyes of moviegoers.

The very emotional climax of the film—the race with War Admiral–was a complete put-on. Oh, I don’t mean that the race didn’t happen, and that Seabiscuit didn’t win, but in reality War Admiral’s owner didn’t exactly shy away from the challenge, as the movie implied. Both War Admiral’s and Seabiscuit’s owners attempted to gain advantage by setting and canceling the meeting for over a year, and in fact Seabiscuit cancelled more races with War Admiral than the other way around.

Even more egregious a falsehood is Seabiscuit’s depiction as a tiny colt up against the majestic and massive War Admiral. Though the real War Admiral was the more stately and beautiful animal, Seabiscuit was actually the heavier horse. What was odd about Seabiscuit was his shape—he had short splayed legs, and a wide massive chest; but he certainly was no puny runt, and this was no David vs. Goliath race. And, absolute truth be told, Seabiscuit and War Admiral were actually close relatives. War Admiral’s sire, Man o’ War, was Seabiscuit’s grandsire—making War Admiral half-uncle to Seabiscuit. None of this was revealed in the simple underdog-makes-good sweep of the Hollywood plot.

Our culture today is pre-programmed to expect Hollywood-style narrative. There is little room for messy exposition or explanation. I have to believe this is what’s behind the gubernatorial candidacy of Arnold Schwarzenegger in my home state of California. Why else would a guy with no experience and few qualifications suddenly be a front runner in the race to govern the biggest state in the nation? It’s all for the sake of the story—Arnold, the humble immigrant with a dream. Arnold, the boy who overcame his father’s fascist past. Arnold, the party boy who made good (Married a Shriver! Rules the cutthroat world of Hollywood!). Even Gray Davis recognized the Tinseltown quality of the race., He said on August 15: “This election has turned into a Hollywood movie, and I assure you it will have a surprise ending.”

Simple stories seduce us—just ask your average Minnesotan who got sucked into the bad-boy-made-good narrative of the Jesse Ventura show. No need to remind you that the movie didn’t turn out as had been advertised, and our fair frozen state was left with a pretty bad taste in its collective mouth once his term ended. The real world often trumps the fantasy narrative.

“SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ART, Mr. Art Critic Man?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell ya. I’ve been wondering lately why art gets so little play in the national discourse despite the ever-growing number of people claiming to be artists. To cite some statistics, the most recent population survey revealed that in the U.S. in 2001 there were 2,108,000 people who claimed as their primary career one of the 11 artist occupational categories established by the National Endowment for the Arts. This equaled 9.8 percent of the labor force—nearly one out of every ten worker in this country. In comparison, engineers and surveyors accounted for 2,145,000 U.S. workers, and scientists/mathematicians/computer scientists accounted for 2,685,000. If you add in the extra 315,000 workers who were employed in secondary jobs as artists, and the 88,000 artists who were unemployed, we end up with a whopping 2,511,000 million American artists cluttering the labor force!

Yet despite the numbers, artists have relatively little national cachet. Ask anyone off the street to name a favorite living artist and you’ll no doubt get a blank look. Ask anyone to name the latest contestant to be eliminated on The Bachelor, meanwhile, or, more to the point, to converse about the differences between the porn peddler and the ex-porn star who are running for California’s governor, and you’ll be in business.

More and more I think this loss of prestige in the fine arts—even as the practice of them has grown exponentially–has to do with the Hollywoodification of our culture. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at art over the years, grappling with the complicated issues and trying to describe them to an audience, and I, and the sixteen people who read my writing, get satisfaction out of this. But the rest of the world, I’ve come to realize, just doesn’t care. Art doesn’t make a sexy enough story. Sure, there are exceptions–Picasso, Warhol, Pollock, Kahlo–but not every artist lives a made-for-Hollywood life, despite what Hollywood would have you believe. Artmaking is a rather mundane and tedious (read: unsexy) practice on the whole.

What’s an art-lover to do then?

I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit tired of butting my head up against the wall of Hollywood. If you can’t convince ’em otherwise, I figure, you might as well pander to ’em. So, below is my working draft for all of my future artist profiles. I can only hope this offering will help make art more palatable in this age.

Profile of Artist X :Artist X is standing on the verge of a great (choose one) dilemma/chasm/turning point/hitch on the road to fame. It is _______ (list time of day) in the (choose one) noisy/stultifyingly hot/rather placid/dirty confines of ________ (list place). Artist X is (choose one) pensive/nervous/eager/ambivalent about the tasks that face him/her as we watch the (choose one) people/cars/wildlife/clouds pass by.
But this isn’t the first (choose one) obstacle/opportunity of this sort the ________(list age)-year-old artist has faced. In fact, Artist X is used to the (choose one) ambivalence/hostility/snide mockery/jeering of society at large. “I can’t count how often I was (choose one) misunderstood/mistreated/ underestimated/dismissed as I was learning to (choose one) sculpt/take photos/paint in the Telemark style of Norwegian rosemaling/be a performance artist,” he/she says, as we hear the distant and (choose one) plaintive/harsh and edgy/warbly/sonorous strains of (choose one) Eminem/Tori Amos/Jewel/Johnny Cash from someone’s (choose one) car radio/boom box/open window/bar mitzvah.
“There was only one person who ever believed in me, despite that I suffered from (choose one) dyslexia/a profound lack of self-confidence/ a horrible physical disfigurement/ rickets,” Artist X continued, looking once at a photo of his/her (choose one) cross-dressing roommate/dog/imaginary friend/great aunt Esther before (choose one) releasing it in the wind/tossing it into the river/setting fire to it/placing it on a ritual altar. “He/she always told me that my work would eventually reach (choose one) the Whitney Biennial/a Paris gallery/the White House front lawn/the Edina Galleria…. And now I have a chance to prove that he/she was right.” &c…Am I ready for Hollywood or what?

So I guess the Hollywood writers are coming back to work soon.

Yay.

I had been intending, for weeks and weeks, to write something about the plight of the writers, to compare their lot to the lot of all the everyday artists in the country who are slowly working their fingers to nubs for an occasional bone thrown by an uncaring public. Etc. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do so.

I mean, this is Hollywood we’re talking about, not art. And these are corporate workaday hacks–correction, well-paid corporate workaday hacks–who are fighting for a bigger share of the tons of money you and I stupidly throw at them year after year. This is not something of any sort of lasting cultural value…

All the stories I read about this strike went on and on and on about how “devastating” was the strike to the entertainment industry, and how “demoralizing” it was to the struggling writers. They cited the number like a running stock-ticker—$1 billion dollars lost and counting… $2 billion dollars lost and counting… And Bingo! $3.2 billion dollars lost (*according to Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp).

But you know what? The strike wasn’t really that devastating really, at least not to the people who matter— i.e., you and me. The world did not stop turning. People did not go into withdrawal. No one suffered any lasting effects. The juggernaut industry that is our modern bread-and-circus distraction was not really missed all that much.

Of course the bitter strikers and the even bitterer globocorporations that produce this tripe will trot out all the positive cliches, if only to get the river of money (our money) flowing back where they want (their pockets). “At the end of the day, everybody won. It was a fair deal and one that the companies can live with, and it recognizes the large contribution that writers have made to the industry,” said Leslie Moonves, chief executive officer of CBS Corp.”These advances now give us a foothold in the digital age,” said Patric Verrone, president of the guild’s West Coast chapter. “Rather than being shut out of the future of content creation and delivery, writers will lead the way as television migrates to the Internet.”

Fine fine sentiment. But we, who will be ponying up for all this bonhomie, know better.

Truth is, we’d be much better off without all the distraction and crap. Or at least we’d be just fine. And we’d certainly have more money and more time to focus on something more meaningful–the paintings made by the minor genius who lives at the end of the block, the song written by your cousin the burgeoning cafe-folksinger, the short one-act play written by that cute girl at work.

Art, people. Not mindlessly distracting entertainment. Art. (Or at least a better balance between the two…)

It’s become rather common, perhaps even boringly so, for critical writers to kvetch about their craft’s growing obsolescence and looming demise. (I myself am guilty of such an act.) Such a glut of self-obsessive hand-wringing by critics is easy to dismiss, since it is so self-serving at heart and since none of it really addresses the heart of the problem (which I humbly submit is that art itself is failing in America)…

Still, in all the critical hand-wringing you have to believe there is some cogent thought and valuable information. This piece, written by Terry Teachout in July, 2007, examines with cold-eyed objectivity the disappearance of quality regional critical writing (in press publications). The article starts by quoting a veteran NY drama critic: “We’re the last generation of newspaper critics, you know. After us, everybody will be online,” and then it enumerates the situation on the ground at that time–loss of book-review sections in papers across the country, loss of classical music critics in the Chicago and Minneapolis papers, loss of regional movie critics across the country…

Teachout goes on to give a simple explanation for the situation: “Newspaper circulation is declining, driven downward by the rise of the new Web-based media, and many papers are trimming their staffs to make ends meet. Whenever times get tough at an American newspaper, fine-arts coverage gets thrown off the back of the sled first.” He also mentions that a number of critics, as well as some arts advocates–both up in arms over the cutbacks—blame arts bloggers for this situation. Teachout somewhat disagrees with this last assessment about blog critics, saying that “some of them do it better than their print-media counterparts,” but he also laments the loss of real critical perspective about the fine arts in regional print publications.

One of the most important civic duties that a newspaper performs is to cover the activities of local arts groups — but it can’t do that effectively without also employing knowledgeable critics who are competent to evaluate the work of those groups. Mere reportage, while essential, is only the first step. It’s not enough to announce that the Hooterville Art Museum finally bought itself a Picasso. You also need a staffer who can tell you whether it’s worth hanging, just as you need someone who knows whether the Hooterville Repertory Company’s production of “Private Lives” was funny for the right reasons.

In the end, Teachout concludes with two points that I happen to agree with. One, though he is now prominent NY critic, widely read and widely admired, he still worries about the loss to the overall quality of criticism now that print publications are abandoning it. After all, he says, he got his “start reviewing second-string classical concerts for the Kansas City Star 30 years ago. Now that such entry-level jobs are drying up, I fear for the future of arts journalism in America.” Just this week I had lunch with a young arts writer in his mid-20s—who’s been writing short and pithy arts preview pieces for a side-publication of one of the Minnesota dailies—and he’s begun to seriously wonder after two years at his craft whether or not there are any options for him to have an eventual career doing this thing that he’s surprised he likes so much. “I don’t know what to do,” he says, putting his finger on a certain Gen-Y dilemma. “I’d love to keep writing, but I’m at my capacity between my day job and the freelance writing gig and all the shows I end up going to. I’d also like to have a job someday that allows me to make more than 12 dollars an hour…”

Finally, Teachout warns any artist who is prone to bid glib “good riddance” to the critic: “Any artist who’s been side-swiped by a lame-brained critic will doubtless be tempted to cheer this news. Before such aggrieved folk break out the Dom Perignon, though, they should pay heed to the warning of Virgil Thomson, who dominated American music criticism in the ’40s and ’50s: ‘Perhaps criticism is useless. Certainly it is often inefficient. But it is the only antidote we have to paid publicity.’ If you think you can do without that antidote, more power to you — but you’d better be prepared to buy a lot of ads.”

As a self-serving, Minnesota-Art-Failure-Tale (MAFT) aside: I’ve been attempting to address this issue (of the death of criticism) in Minnesota since early in 2002, after a downturn in critical writing staff at the metro’s weekly and one of its daily newspapers led me to start a local art critics’ association called VACUM. I have to admit that my efforts haven’t done much good, and today, six years later, Minnesota continues to be a shrinking market for arts critical writing.