i mean, it's good that the voice has gotten rid of vivernos-faune, but remember the excellent days at the voice when gary indiana...god, it seems like modernism those days. oy.

two words:

Gary. Indiana.

fuck the village voice

It’s a real pity that Christian Viveros-Faune has been suspended from his lively biweekly column at the Village Voice. CVF’s arguments were always a pleasure to read, even if one did not always agree with his assessments. Every so often he would bravely go against the grain of the wearisome paeans that are routinely churned out by the artworld’s self-serving critical apparatus. CVF juggled with problematic issues that most of us acknowledge but shy away from addressing publicly; from widespread but shoddy curatorial practices to the reverence of icons become hacks.

The reason given for CVF’s ousting—that his job as promoter of two new artfairs creates a conflict of interest for his practice as an art critic—is quite debatable. The clients of an artfair promoter are galleries per se, and the currency that makes galleries and artfairs tick is dollars and cents (or better still euros or pounds whenever possible). On the other hand, the objects of criticism are artworks and their presentation, and the coin of criticism amounts to a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. There certainly is in the artworld, as there’s always been, money exchanged for legitimacy. But it is impossible to establish an exchange rate, or even sometimes for the parties to be sure that an exchange has taken place. In the case of CVF’s writing, I cannot discern any suggestion, let alone evidence, that Viveros the critic has skewed his published criticism in favor of one or another gallery in order to flatter either existing or potential clients of Viveros the artfair promoter. If anything, it has been the very oposite, since his reviews in the Voice have tended to focus on institutional exhibitions.

As CVF states in the interview he unwittingly fell pray to, the artworld is up to its neck in conflicts of interest: Patrons meddling with museum programs, collectors backing galleries, dealers in cahoots with auctioneers, artists marrying curators, critical journals taking gallery advertising. Perhaps such things seem normal to us because they are so utterly pervasive, but every one of them is way more troubling than CVF’s purported sin. For an art critic every artist friend, every gallery dinner attended, every penny received for a catalog essay, every paid consultancy service constitutes a conflict of interest. It is up to the critic, however, to gain the public trust not through saintly hood, but by the sheer force of good, solid, sensitive, intelligent and original writing.

The whole affair is ultimately a regrettable loss for the Village Voice. Those of us who have enjoyed CVF’s articles will be looking forward to finding them in a less parochial publication.

It’s a real pity that Christian Viveros-Faune has been suspended from his lively biweekly column at the Village Voice. CVF’s arguments were always a pleasure to read, even if one did not always agree with his assessments. Every so often he would bravely go against the grain of the wearisome paeans that are routinely churned out by the artworld’s self-serving critical apparatus. CVF juggled with problematic issues that most of us acknowledge but shy away from addressing publicly; from widespread but shoddy curatorial practices to the reverence of icons become hacks.

The reason given for CVF's ousting—that his job as promoter of two new artfairs creates a conflict of interest for his practice as an art critic—is quite debatable. The clients of an artfair promoter are galleries per se, and the currency that makes galleries and artfairs tick is dollars and cents (or better still euros or pounds whenever possible). On the other hand, the objects of criticism are artworks and their presentation, and the coin of criticism amounts to a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. There certainly is in the artworld, as there’s always been, money exchanged for legitimacy. But it is impossible to establish an exchange rate, or even sometimes for the parties to be sure that an exchange has taken place. In the case of CVF’s writing, I cannot discern any suggestion, let alone evidence, that Viveros the critic has skewed his published criticism in favor of one or another gallery in order to flatter either existing or potential clients of Viveros the artfair promoter. If anything, it has been the very oposite, since his reviews in the Voice have tended to focus on institutional exhibitions.

As CVF states in the interview he unwittingly fell pray to, the artworld is up to its neck in conflicts of interest: Patrons meddling with museum programs, collectors backing galleries, dealers in cahoots with auctioneers, artists marrying curators, critical journals taking gallery advertising. Perhaps such things seem normal to us because they are so utterly pervasive, but every one of them is way more troubling than Christian’s purported sin. For an art critic every artist friend, every gallery dinner attended, every penny received for a catalog essay, every paid consultancy service constitutes a conflict of interest. It is up to the critic, however, to gain the public trust not through saintly hood, but by the sheer force of good, solid, sensitive, intelligent and original writing.

The whole affair is ultimately a regrettable loss for the Village Voice. Those of us who have enjoyed CVF’s articles will be looking forward to finding them in a less parochial publication.

Your decision to sack Christian is considered a mistake in many circles. It has provoked discussion on http://www.artworldsalon.com/blog/2008/01/21/art-writing-reality-check-time-for-a-new-code-of-ethics /