HOW many numbers can you count? On my way to the vernissage of the recently concluded Art Fair Philippines, I tried my best not to be jealous that these fingers could only tally as much as my online visit counter. After all, you only know the numbers that you get. The fair’s pre-party will be more populated than the regular readers of this section. Should I weep? Perhaps, I should offer champagne against the mere wine of the preshow event.
To get more readers, I should give in to more intoxication. After all, you only know the numbers that you get. But like a vampire or art collector, I want more.
People love delirium. I love delirium when I see it in great art. But what more the final battle when the fair is finished. I cringe, how many visitors did they get? How can my art stories compete, what more the highfalutin art critiques, against that massive hype of a show called Art Fair Philippines? I’m only one node in the network against an army of exhibitors, PR men, god-knows-what and those pretty organizers, but at least I have your attention now. And with your undying love, I am complete.
The fair is over. As of the earliest hour during vernissage, there were 40 strangers on the two floors, the sixth and the seventh levels of The Link, that nasty carpark between Shangri-La Hotel Makati and The Landmark whose spiralling ramps are just too narrow for my taste. I wondered: How many people had navigated these cramped bowels before arriving here, like some mass regurgitated on the floor? (Of course, I parked in my free parking space somewhere secret and close by.) But back to that aforementioned building: The Link should be redone quickly, and it would be more profitable if they follow this counsel: Add more floors on top to house a fully-monetized and world-class convention center for this wee space called the Central Business District. That done, Art Fair Philippines will have a better home. But I get ahead of myself. I should damn them instead to hell. Aren’t they one of the enemies of art criticism?
As critical writing on art waned in readership and direction during the past two decades, the same period also saw the rise of the global art-fair industry, now estimated to turn over more than $10 billion per annum with the top 20 art fairs seeing attendance of 1,032,792 visitors for the year 2014, a 7.4-percent drop from the previous year. Arco Madrid, organized by Arte y Asociados, remained at the top spot as most attended fair with 92,000 visitors and 219 exhibiting galleries. But the Swiss MCH Group came out strongly as the leading global operator, having five of its trade shows clock over a third of a million visitors, with flagship Art Basel exhibiting the most number of galleries at 303. Art Fair Philippines has refused to release its numbers, perhaps aware that it falters in comparison to the best of the very best. But if done repetitively through the years, how do we track its growth, or compare it with rival ManilArt?
The numbers, though, are just a small part of the equation. The death of art criticism and the rise of the art fair can be attributed not only to the popularity of the public spectacle as preferred experience, but also to the limitations of art criticism itself, its reach and the expansion of this thing called networking.
Reading texts has always been a problem as compared to direct action, experience and social lubrication. In past decades, criticism was under heavy attack, first, from the increasing influence of curators who provided in shows direct experience to the best work
while actively participating in the social milieu.
But when art fairs came
into the scene, the work of curatorship within their scopes was multiplied and narrowed, losing most of its critical essence to art-as-asset window dressing while gaining momentum through the sheer numbers produced by social networking.
But the art fair seeks to replace the curator with someone better, the ultimate salesman.
Because of the drive for sales, most art critics have no place in art fairs because they do not buy art at all. The critic prefers solo shows, surveys, retrospectives and group shows because these things need the validation of a review.
My case is different, however, for I have chosen to follow certain artists no matter where they go, for I argue that their work is the very spirit of the age. But as the readership of art criticism wanes, the popularity of art fairs and other forms of writing increases.
Today, art criticism has been largely replaced by art news, art-market analysis and a spectacle of new writing forms, such as my essay in the underground art journal Diskuro.com, not to mention a barrage of new media or even for-collector-only web sites that forgo the need for third-party critical validation, like Independent-Collectors.com. As desires multiply, so do the channels of distribution of late capitalism. If art criticism cannot handle the exponential growth of the number of artistic works but only choses the most compelling, it also falters with producing the number of likes and shares that are said to be the defining status symbol of the age. Hence its demise.
However, popularity is not a contest when one is after quality, not quantity. The best art criticism is worded to stand the test of time, often in theoretical, conceptual and discreet language that seeks communion with like minds and higher constituencies, challenging the few and brave and foregoing logic for hunger.
Image credits: Rose Ferrer, Nicolas de Camaret