Hi Everyone,
Happy (belated) new year. I hope your holidays, for those of you celebrating, were relaxing. And thank you for your continued readership.
My goal for this first post of 2023 was to review many, if not all, of the “The Best Art of 2022” lists and identify what the most valuable of them were. I felt like this was true to the aims of this newsletter—to help promote the most substantive art content out there. And I felt like this was useful content to share (amidst so much arriving in our mailboxes daily). I reviewed a lot of them, shared by Frieze, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and others.
My conclusion? I can’t recommend a single one.
What was I looking for? A list that might have been data-informed. A list that might have incorporated a group of judges. A list that might have foregrounded some criteria for its judgments. But of the lists I reviewed, I didn’t find any that had even one of these things. While all of the lists celebrate great artists and great works, almost all of them were not so different from any of the reviews that might run any other week. In short, none of these lists showed much in terms of rigorous processes nor did anything approaching trying to explain in-depth why their picks were the best of the year.
In many ways, it seems lists like this exist as they are because they’re thought to be better than nothing, and they get the traffic. Our culture celebrates immediate content and the right keywords, and the value (and social sharing) provided to the “winners” probably overshadows the criticisms of the “losers” or the lack of rigor. Yet in our current environment, which (rightfully so) demands transparency, equity, and inclusion, it’s surprising that these lists still exist in the art world without much, if any significant criticism.
How were artworks and shows defined as “the best” by these lists? By using the following vocabulary:
Interesting
Had increased traction
Exciting
Fascinating
A triumph
Favorite
Startler
The high point of the season
Strong
Compelling
Hasn’t been seen before
Hit me the hardest
Most innovative
Ambitious
Urgent
You might think I am wasting my time here, and being too idealistic. You might wonder why I care so much. You might argue this is the state of the Internet right now—where “best of” lists have to be written because they are (again) what get the eyeballs. You also might think I am asking too much of art journalism. My response here would be that I am happy to be idealistic; I am happy to question the status quo of the Internet right now; and I am happy to ask more of art writing. My feelings are probably also highly influenced by my last post here, which celebrated the work of The Burns Halperin Report, which is art journalism based on substantial research to present important conclusions about the art world.
I don’t want to level this criticism and just walk away. So I’d like to float a few ideas to the art media (and anyone else creating these lists right now):
If you’re going to stick with the current methodology, be honest about what these best-of lists actually are. You may call them “best” lists to get eyeballs, but then please explain to the reader (ideally in the first paragraph, so it’s clear from the outset) what these lists truly are: just critic’s picks of their yearlong picks, and not actually “the best” because shouldn’t that be substantiated more? (Again, maybe I am just kidding myself here asking for too much…)
Because of the importance given to these lists—they’re definitely celebrated by the artists and creators who get mentioned and probably influence what future opportunities they get—and in the interest of further substantiating art journalism, maybe take some time to generate what criteria you’re judging the work on and foreground this. (And if there is an issue generating such criteria, shouldn’t that say something, and be a subject of internal discussion itself?) Some example criteria might be attendance or sales figures, or the significance or amount of reviews. It could be social media embrace, future shows planned for the artist, or a gauge of originality (in terms of medium, content, place of origin, etc.). Inherently we all (hopefully) use criteria to make judgments, and with a belief in raising the bar for the quality of criticism as well as the explanation of quality, it seems there could be more work done in this area.
A final idea is to forget “best of” lists entirely and to spend more time and energy on something like annual awards. Such awards—like the Oscars—while by no means perfect, could be a different model (although these would probably be held on a much smaller scale than the Oscars :)). Such awards might incorporate transparent criteria. They could include as diverse and as big a set of judges as you would want (so as to incorporate a more democratic process). And they could happen in the first few months of the following year. Ideally, awards could serve as a more transparent (and hopefully, more weighty) means to celebrate the most significant art and artists of the year.
All of these proposed solutions circle back to the issue of criteria, and the issue of whether it’s art journalism’s place, in “best of” lists but also in general, to explain in detail (and with consistency) how it substantiates judgments of artistic quality. This is a much bigger subject to discuss than in this one post, but I do feel it is art journalism’s place. Maybe the ever-decreasing amount of financial support for the industry contributes to the hesitancy to engage with this subject, but it still seems important…
OK, that’s it for today. Thanks for entertaining this thought exercise and if you have feedback, please don’t hesitate to share it.