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NOT ANOTHER ART BLOG!

Let me welcome a competitor—and in turn thank you for welcoming me. It’s a gamble for both of us. ArtBistro is inviting a critic like me, known mostly from my own Web site. It’s also entering a suddenly crowded field.

When I started my site back in 1994, I had no trouble claiming it as the most thorough and extensive set of art reviews anywhere online. It was like calling Bush the best president since, well, Al Gore. Today my search engine will take you to roughly 700 artists, critics, and art historians, from the early Renaissance to the twilight of Postmodernism, and the articles touch on many more. But even years ago it was getting hard to Google an artist without finding me. I was proud of that and a bit embarrassed by it, too.

No longer, and I count myself lucky you have found me. Now any respectable publication or school—along with plenty of artists—has a Web page, sites like Saatchi’s let more artists stake out a virtual exhibition, Artforum blogs, and ArtNet has grown into an active source of reviews. If you need help, ArtBistro or my art’s resource page will get you started.

What can ArtBistro possibly add? We shall see, but it hopes for an emerging artist’s perspective, partnering with job sites and career publications, and it will have artists as contributors along with me. What, then, can I add?

You have every right to ask. Most artists probably alternate between annoyance at not getting coverage and annoyance at how little writers “get it.” For an answer, let me properly introduce myself. Hey, artist and critics alike need friends. Because I’m new here, this once let me rely on links to some older articles of mine, so that you can get to know me.

First, I can help others keep up with exhibitions, now that this, too, is part of making a career. As the one here not trying to make it as an artist, I can hope to bring some detachment—and perhaps entertainment value. Can I admit that I am dreading the flood of Chelsea fall openings starting next Thursday? I am also looking forward to it again, like last year and the year before, as much as a sociological study as for the art.

In fact, I can contribute by asking along with you, why critics? It has been a theme of this site from the first, along with text as art and why art takes words.

I can also contribute by another theme of mine—defending artists from laments that they no longer care for anything but careers, that modern art has to be saved from contemporary art, that everything is politics, and that anything goes. The critics, whether conservative or Marxist, have a point here, too, because art really does have a new relationship these days to mass culture and to money. Critical theory is still struggling with it, badly, and I can help explore the implications of that.

Perhaps I can contribute simply because of why I turned to the Web in the first place. Yes, I do publish and go to press openings when I can, honest. However, I originally wanted a space outside all that. A Friday paper or glossy magazine may not have time (or inclination) to do more than knock someone down or puff someone up. A scholarly title may not translate theory into practice—or into English. I did not want the spontaneity and brevity of a blog, but quite the opposite, the time and space to work things out.

With luck readers of both ArtBistro and my work will discover new territory. I have other reasons, too, why I hope to contribute, but they will take telling you a little more about me, next time.

Read reviews by John Haber Summer Photography and Ron Muech, Dana Schutz and Neo Rauch

Read this article with more links on haberarts.com

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