Fictitious criticism at the close of the 1960s: Parody, performativity, and the postmodern

• Main Author: White, Erin Starr
• Other Authors: Frances J Colpitt
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: Texas Christian University 2008
• Subjects: College of Fine Arts
• Online Access: http://etd.tcu.edu/etdfiles/available/etd-05082008-155001/

This essay evaluates fictitious criticism as a heretofore largely ignored phenomenon that existed in art writing of the late 1960s and early 1970s, examining three exemplary cases: First, a set of 1969 self-interviews conducted by conceptual artists Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry, Doug Huebler, and Lawrence Weiner. Entitled Four Interviews with Barry, Huebler, Kosuth, and Weiner, each artist drafted and responded to his own questions. In lieu of their own names the artists used a previous pseudonym of Kosuth, Arthur R. Rose, as an interviewer/critic. It is argued here that the self-interview functioned as the artists rebuff of critics claims upon their work. Second, the fictional critic Cheryl Bernstein created by art historian Carol Duncan. Bernsteins two essays, The Fake as More (1973), and Performance as News: Notes on an Intermedia Guerilla Art Group (1977), are read here not only parodies of real criticism, but as acting (both in the past and present) in a performative manner. The final case examined is artist Robert Morriss 1971 article, The Art of Existence: Three Extra-Visual Artists, Works in Process. Morriss essay, in which he reviewed of the work of three invented artists, was published in Artforum. This essay suggests that Morriss article has a dual function: it rejects the authority of the critic, as well as augments his carefully crafted artistic persona. Often relegated to the footnotes of art history, these three cases allows for a re-examination of expectations of veracity in criticism, the practice of institutional critique, and the value of fictitious criticism for art history. This essay proposes that fictitious criticism has an important position in the transition from a modern to a postmodern mode of discourse in art writing, and ends with the proposition that the complexity of fictitious criticism, coupled with art historys lack of attention to the genre, suggests a rich store of information for, and about, the discipline of art history itself.