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| Who Should Be an Art Critic? |
| By Huang Zhuan |
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 hen the editors of Art and Design sent me a notice inviting contributions from "famous critics" I couldn’t help but think about what qualifies one as an art critic.
In my opinion, a true art critic cannot be:
One who serves or is ready to serve the interests of the established system;
One who writes and works for a gain;
One who lacks some sort of professional training such as language, writing, connoisseurship, logic and the like;
One who holds him/herself to be at once an artist and an art critic;
One who is the mentor, leader, or the prophet of revolutionary causes.
I realize that such an arbitrary ruling-out will offend many and perhaps reduce the number of so-called ‘famous critics,’ but I believe it is necessary to do so if we are to stand up for this profession. I used to joke with my friends saying that most of the current Chinese ‘famous critics’ should actually be dubbed "flatterers." As I see it, an art critic should first be a social identity that demands a higher degree of moral independence and strong social ability. As an "intellectual," he or she should acquire a heightened alert and sensitivity to powers of the established systems and the market. The duty of art critic lies not only in criticizing works of art, but also in criticizing the conditions and systems of art production. Both these kinds of criticism can only be accomplished in the complex interrelations between the social system, business logic and mass media. This sounds like a paradox: freedom of an art critic, unlike that of a scholar, cannot be won in the study or in the ivory tower, it can, on the contrary, be secured only through the interaction with the various social, business and mass media systems, which are intrinsically anti-freedom and anti-independence. Anyone who refuses to interact with and/or anyone who only collaborates with the established public systems (either centralized or democratic systems, political or business systems) is unlikely to undertake the true criticism. Apart from being a social identity, being an art critic should still be a profession, an occupation with knowledge. Dissemination of knowledge and criticism of social reality are two aspects indispensable to intellectuals, whose professional knowledge and skills form the actual content as well as the prerequisites for criticism. For art critics, the command of truly reliable knowledge comes before the truly effective criticism on systems and conditions for art production, as well as on artists, art works, art schools and art phenomena. Divinations, fancies, curses and flatteries cannot count as criticism, for they fare without truly reliable knowledge.
I am no art critic. I am not qualified because I deem the limited work I have done since the 1990s as some sort of ‘social test’ rather than as a criticism: the Guangzhou Biennale in 1992 was a test of the reaction of art to business systems; the "Academic Invitation Exhibition" in 1996 was a test of the relationship between art censorship and art legitimacy; the He Xiangning Art Gallery Academic Forum in 1997 was a test of the disciplinary relationship between art and humanities; the plot of layout change for “Gallery” from 1994 to 1996 was to test the relationship between mass media and art; and the "Yearly Sculpture Exhibition" in 1999 was to test the possibility between art and its popularization. Though most of these tests have failed, they may have contributed lessons to the free exchange and growth of modern art on native soil, or supplied some resources for genuine criticisms. Frankly, I am far more interested in the conditions for art initiation and production than in individual artists, art works or art schools—this may have doomed my prospect to become an art critic.
 Huang Zhuan, Independent Curator, Associate Professor at Art History Department
of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.
(Originally from Art an Design, No.1 issue in 2000)
translated by Huzhu
Related Links:
·Abstraction: An Expression Concerning Liberty
·Is there any other choice for Chinese Avant Garde art?---- Re-read “Free Communication”
·Reflections on the '80s Avant-Garde
·The Ghost of Collectivism in Our Art
·Xiang Jing vs. Huang Zhuan 
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