“The adjective “critical,” which he uses here to define a condition, refers both to the medical sense of the term, as well as its philosophical sense, where “critical” comes by way of the Greek verb krino, meaning to discern, to separate things by means of the intellect.”
“The entire aesthetic field, as Foster describes it, found itself under enormous strain; it was, he writes, “already breached from without and eroded from within.” “As we know,” he continues,
the external enemy was called “kitsch,” “theatricality,” or simply “mass culture” (Pop was the open traitor here), while the internal enemy was the extended arena of artistic activities opened up by Happenings, Fluxus, and Minimalism. These activities were problematic for late-modernist critics not merely because they exceeded the proper media of painting and sculpture but because they threatened to push art into an arbitrary realm beyond aesthetic judgment.”
“The “arbitrary”: behold the name of the troublesome guest that was soon to invite itself into all art writing and every exhibition space around the world, with no plans to leave.”
“Speaking of the pairing (today obsolete) of art/criticism, he describes it as a means of accessing the past, which opens onto both the present and future:
Today this concept seems almost bizarre. We can call it what we like—naive, parochial, chimerical—and we can dismiss it as a petty expression of a will to power whereby art history is read forward into contemporary practice in such a way that an elect few are scripted in and everyone else is dropped out. Yet, forty years on, we should also acknowledge what was lost when this concept was junked.”
“But how can we judge something that deliberately abolishes its own limitations for good, all while remaining unhealthily attached to the need to be recognized as “art”? What other possibility could have presented itself?”
“If, in that moment of profound crisis, art had dissolved into life, or—which is much less likely—revolutionized life had transformed into a work of art, a radical transformation would have taken place, entailing a reorganization of labor, affect, economy; making—or not making—“work” would have become the true question of human life. Maternity, friendship, the labor of love, and care for each living thing would now be approached as works of art with a beauty as much ethical as aesthetic—approached as worthy sources of inspiration and imitation.”
“But the avant-garde provided no credible counterpoint, for it had not adequately resolved its relationship to politics as the governing of men, as administration, and as repressive apparatus.”
“The poignant lack of reference points, the feeling of being faced with both a virtually infinite field of possibilities and a fear of being unable to escape repeating, however unwittingly, something that has already been done—these are the consequences of this state of affairs; these are the demons with which every contemporary artist must converse, starting with their first experiments within school walls, up until the end of their days.”
“Unbeknownst to them, the arbitrary has multiplied singularities, but made them whatever singularities: every artist develops his or her own language and nurtures the impression of being the only one to speak it.”
“We no longer write or create in order to intensify life, for life is no longer something we all share, something in which we all accompany one another, but an individualized affair of accumulation, labor, and self-affirmation.”
“We live like this with no hope for political change (however necessary) in our lives, nor a common language capable of naming this need or allowing us to define together what is particular to our present. This condition is new, no doubt unique in Western history; it is so painful and engenders such a profound solitude and loss of dignity that we sometimes catch ourselves doubting the sincerity of artworks that are created under such conditions—for we know that their fate is uncertain, and will most likely disappoint.”
“Nevertheless, the field of art has never been so free, vast, and attractive to the general public—and this is perhaps precisely what makes our present condition a profoundly critical one.”