“Now there’s a whole lot more art being made, and a lot more bad art being made. If 90 percent of shows all agree are bad, why are 90 percent of the reviews good?“
-Jerry Saltz, via ArtBlog (if you haven’t read this post, do so right now)
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My answer to Saltz is that this is predominantly because most art reviewers are artists or connected to commercial galleries (which is partly due to the fact that art critics are badly paid). And these artist/critics don’t want to offend their fellow artists or become pariahs in the art community.
After a while, it becomes so fashionable to say Damien Hirst is a genius that if you question that, people brand you as a philistine. The art world really IS that petty, but many of us love it nonetheless.
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