It is hard to talk about the relationship between art and criticism, artists and critics. As some philosopher said: «critical essays are read and judged by other critics and only rarely by the analyzed artist, who either does not subscribe to the publication or has been dead for two centuries.»
My aim is not to reach general truths, but to clear some provocative or creative field of thought.
SHORT trIP IN HISTORY
In ancient times the meaning of memory was different than it is today. People could not write and only memory contained information, how to collect food, how to pray to gods, how to communicate or act in this or the afterlife.
The situation changed when writing systems were invented - the possibility to reload human memory appeared. The crucial information - religious or temporar laws, financial and other documents were stored in written form. At the same time the meaning of human memory did not lose its place. Written information was a privilege of high society. The idea that using written information is a sign of poor or untrained memory appeared in Plato's works.
A great shift took place after the crush of the Roman empire. St.Augustine documented these changes in his Confessiones - the curiouse young saint notices that someone could read in silence, without moving his lips. There is no necessity to transform all written information into loud and sometimes theatrical speech as then when rhetoric was a part of standard education. By now people read in the silence of their mind.
Libraries usurped all the remaining information and the second step of the seemingly never-ending unloading of the human brain started. Although both personal and institutional libraries were an important feature of Greco-Roman culture, none survived the dissolution of the Western Roman empire. Between the late 6th century and mid-8th century A.D. European churches, especially monastic communities, possessed small collections of books, as did small number of individuals. Sizeable collections of books appear within the Frankish empire. The human memory lost its primary meaning and the stored information - mostly in writing form - took memory's place. The Holy Script dominated over the spoken word and written law dominated over truth.
FROM MEMORY TO ERASING
Already in the Middle Ages the meaning of erasing as a result of the Great Memory shift was increasing. Pages of old books were recyclal: to erase old information the parchment pages was simply washed. All documents were still on papyrus, but most books were on perchment. The original form of Christian books was the codex which had replaced the roll by the 400. A.D.
Erasing or forgetting was not a result of untrained memory: it was way to easily increase memory. The same method is in use today - in computers.
INCREASING OF ART
Johann Gutenberg (c.1396-1468), a trained goldsmith, invented and developed a typecasting machine and type cast individual copper letters. He produced the fully printed 42-line Gutenberg bible (1453-55).
The increase in mechanically stored information and growing human ability to get every information from anywhere in the world, changed the different fields of human activity.
In ancient times the number of artists and of artwork was small. If there was some genius, for example, in Greece or Florence that does not mean that his works and the artist himself was popular in other cities, countries and parts of the world. The artist and his work were objects of narrow interest - mostly by privileged social groups: church, aristocracy, etc. The largest part of society - peasants for example - did not know anything about these people and their creations of genius.
The phenomenon that we call criticism was the business of the same narrow social groups. Actually this was a relationship between the makers (artists) and the consumers. If someone bought your work and put it in some palace or church, you were a good, prominent artist.
The situation is apparently different today. Take a look at the world's greatest art magazines and you will see that today's world is full of good and recognizable artists and artworks. The question arises - is modern art and modern artists visible? There are so many artists - who knows how many they are? Who knows how many paintings, sculptures, installations we already have?
The opportunities of today’s information technologies allow us to take a look at a painting that is hanging on a wall somewhere at the other side of our planet. It is hard to choose. Why shall we heed or read someone's reflections on artwork that we do not want to buy or see? Everything is accessible and everything goes. If we do not want to agree with negative critique we can browse Internet and find peace of mind in some else’s, maybe some dilettante's positive judgments. Does it mean that we can not trust critics or that we do not need them anymore?
Every communication chain contains a Source that, through a Transmitter emits a Signal via a Channel. At the end of the Channel the Signal, through a Receiver, is transformed into a Message for the Addressee. The fundamental requirement of this chain is a Code which must be understandable for the Source and the Addressee.
If a painting shows the Virgin Mary and I am a catholic, the message included in the painting is clear. What happens if the person knows nothing about the Virgin Mary or the Bible? The code is unfamiliar and the person sees unknown signals, strange messages.
Something similar happens in modern art. There are lots of messages, lots of signals, but practically noone is able to understand them all. If critics try, they create new messages and new signals that are strange for artists and common people. The critics create art about art or meta-art.
Let's take a look at how these things relate to the topic of this MEDIA AND ETHICS symposium. Nowadays we are using the largest information system since the invention of books. Internet makes information in different countries accessible to us in our own room. Does it mean that artists and critics can move in new virtual space and traditional galleries will become empty?
The copyright laws prevent us from reading new books and publications on the Web and feeds us with small fragments and quotations from the newest printed matter. Visits to virtual galleries and museums become boring as the wait for the color pictures.
The question is not what to do in cyberspace, who can create art and who can criticize it. How to understand each other if the quantity and quality of information increases and there are so many messages without an addressee.
The time when art and other languages were a reflections of reality is gone. The artists is creating a new reality that rarely resembles «real reality,» new things that rarely resembles «real things.» And then, as French philosopher Michel Foucault said: things could in their silence and sleep compose a word.
The language of things or artworks is strange, unfamiliar, it is hard to understand. People need translation to understand it. There is need for a translator who is able to understand different codes of communication between artists and artwork, artwork and other humans, artist and other people.
Now a different question appears. Is it possible to translate the language of art into the language of common verbal communication? Does it mean that art has a general meaning in human life?
If it does, art could become an ideological tool - art must teach us, show the right way of living and dying and so on. If art is meaningless we can easily forget it. Both ways of thinking seem simplified. Anyway, they are both still in use today.
As I see it, the only way of living with art is like the relationship between memory and forgetting in human life. As some philosopher said, without regular sleeping humans could not stand life. Without memory it is impossible to forget and without forgetting - to recall. In the same way - I hope - without living there can be no art. How can there be life without art, I don't know.
The Middle Ages, A Concise Encyclopaedia, Thames and Hudson, 1989
Umberto Eco, How to Travel With Salmon & Other Essays, Minerva, 1995
Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyper reality, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1986
Michel Foucault, This is Not a Pipe, University of California Press, 1986