HEART IN THE RIGHT PLACE

"What a stupid occupation, to spend all one's time stopping us enjoying things, or else making us blush for what we have enjoyed!...That is what the critic does." - Diderot, "On Criticism," in _Isolated Thoughts on Painting_.

Stanley Cavell, in his book of essays _Must We Mean What We Say_ traced aesthetics as the youngest of the principal branches of philosophy, only two hundred years old. In describing the project of aesthetics, he argues that "nothing further seems to be agreed about it, not even whether it has the right name, nor what the name should be taken to mean, nor given its problems, philosophers are particularly suited to venture them." Coincidentally, with the rise of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline, a new field of discourse emerged as well, namely art criticism, championed by Hagedorn, Diderot and Baudelaire. Cavell continues to try to place aesthetics as a problem that seems to be concerning all practitioners as well as critics of fine art. He then points out that there is a suggestion that there is something common to the arts and that they all "tolerate such an activity; and that itself may incite philosophical reflection." He goes on to say that it is not clear what the subject of aesthetics is or shall be, since the epistemological enterprise of aesthetics has only one conclusion, that artworks aim to appeal to the experience, the concepts, and the conflicts all people share. The project of aesthetics is closely tied to the project of art criticism, in so far as they both are at times unsure of their objects of focus, which range from the artist, the work artists produce, the discourse that surrounds a practice, or the audience response to that work and its discourse manifestations. Charles Harrison has skillfully described the levels which criticism can take in his exercise on writing criticism. They range from subjective one-line value judgments, to formal analyses, to anthropo-historical analysis, to structural analysis, to cultural studies. This exercise perfectly illustrates the crisis within the language of criticism and the language of aesthetics as well. Who is competent to write about artworks? What kind of writing encapsulates the formal, conceptual, and historical properties of an artwork without taking advantage of its discursive potential for purely academic narcissism? Is it possible to do that? If an artwork is supposed to incite a response that traverses its physical presence, its abstract, conceptual structure, and its sublime remainder, is there an art criticism to adequately transcribe it?
I would argue that the crisis in both canon-driven aesthetics and art criticism as a discourse have to do with the notion of historical and disciplinary project. The irreversibility of paradigmatic shifts within art points to a structural problem if we look at art criticism as discourse beyond mere indexing of contemporary art practices. With each paradigmatic shift the whole field of discourse recalibrates in the light of new development and this shift does not only effect the way we look at the subject of criticism, it renders the previous way of thought a matter of historiographical inquiry, it renders the past criticism as past itself. The critic of the past stays behind with his temporally frozen referentness within an outmoded set of values, within definitions that no longer stand. To conclude, the only claim of criticism remains its service to the present.
The absence of common vernacular and critical language intersect undermines the project of art criticism today. If criticism still holds as its mission the communication between a particular art practice and its audience and informing the legitimate viewpoints of both, there can be no doubt that criticism has lost its primary mission-to create a discursive plane between the artwork and the public. Unfortunately criticism has not lost its object, artwork is still being made. It has lost its public and public was all that made criticism a valid enterprise. This is why it seems almost logical that today's art magazines serve a purpose of a list, a document, a referent, since without a public criticism has no function. Raphael Rubinstein laments that even if there was a good critical practice (his) the critics no longer have an authority they had. This authority had to do with the imperative of making history by merely writing on the issues concerning the public for the public and the loss of critical currency is endemic to the dismantling of the coalitional social by the culture industries. The loss that criticism allowed by failing to adjust and preserve its only trope-its address to the audience.
Somehow I feel that this question of audience is in the end crucial for both the artist and the critic. There is a disjunction between the public, the critic and the artwork and the very phenomenon of artist writing about his or her own practice points to that disconnect. Practitioners write about the difficulty of making for the public that knows no difference between a piece of advertising and a work of art in the language they use to engage with both. In the absence of criticism practitioners no longer posit themselves within a cannon- they write about the structural difficulty of having one. The acanonicity of contemporary art is a component of every contemporary practice whether an artist wants it or not. And who in the public that criticism lost wants to read about difficulties of making art instead of looking at art? How are the critics supposed to reach these publics? After the advent of modernism who in the public including practitioners is willing to trust an art object long enough to stay with it until it reaches its full effect? So many times this trust has been betrayed. The loss of critical language is only a manifestation of this treason. The mass public ritualizes the visual elsewhere. They ritualize where they will understand only by looking. There are no voices strong enough to tell them why that is no longer enough.
The project of criticism might not be retrievable. As Art & Language puts it "Having your heart in the right place is not making history." It is clear that no matter how good the diagnostics of theoretical discourse and criticism are, mapping out the problem is no longer enough since it confines the inquiry outside of the class-conscious social . All one can do is hope the criticism will see an image of a feasible future and calibrate itself toward that future and if the end of such action does not bring about a practical outcome all the effort was idealistic ideologizing (or as Art & Language puts it "monkeying about").

P.S.
Diderot criticized his own portrait by Michel Van Loo in 1767 Salon as an idealization. The communication model was established in 1700's. Habermas defines it as an exemplary network of ideal speech situation. Habermas theorizes the rationalist project of enlightenment by using Diderot who was its poster child. Anyhow, that does not discredit Diderot in any way. I just think that it is important to acknowledge we no longer live in 1700's.
P.P.S.
In case it does not come out clear: I do not favor Habermas. I feel that he is like the Archbishop of Canterbury who verbalizes his faith without any content support (a comment made by Terry Eagleton). Habermas is liberal at best and a wolf in sheep's clothing since he was a product of the Frankfurt School. I appreciate his Frankfurt School colleague Marcuse much more, especially his article "Eros and Culture," I.E.: The Cambridge Review, 1, no. 3 (1955).