The number of professional critics dwindles in the face of the internet’s instantaneous, all-inclusive platform.  With amateurs’ impromptu reviews multiplying, the space for complex critical thought becomes smaller and smaller, melting into a wide and shallow sea of quick judgements and vacuous raves. Daniel Mendelsohn, a cultural critic for the New Yorker, and Anya Ventura, a cultural critic from Iowa City, explore the parameters of high quality criticism within the context of its deteriorating field.

In Mendelsohn’s article “A Critic’s Manifesto,” the quality of a critique parallels the quality of thinking. According to Mendelsohn, good criticism contains thorough analysis cultivated by a rich foundation of knowledge. In describing his cultural critic idols he writes, “Even when you disagreed with them, their judgments had authority, because they were grounded in something more concrete, more available to other people, than “feelings” or “impressions.” According to Mendelsohn, criticism must be based in the evidence of analysis and education. Ventura’s article, “Slow Criticism: Art in the Age of Post Judgement,” examines the cause of criticism’s current deficiency of complex thought and prose. “Too often we leapfrog over description in favor of judgement, dismiss it as pointless fluff, but description above all is the product of rapt attention. If you are not looking at something long and hard, you cannot describe it well.” 

Mendelsohn and Ventura both identify ‘judgement’ as criticism’s final step. While the two journalists’ focuses vary, both agree that judgement’s authority is only as good as its supporting material. According to Mendelsohn, intelligent judgement is grounded in “something more concrete.” It is grounded in the critic’s expertise. Thoughtful analysis derives from understanding the artist’s body of work contextualized within a larger, historical movement. Therefore, authoritative judgement must be based in educated analysis. To Ventura, “something more concrete,” is acute observation. The quality of analysis is determined by the quality of description. Therefore, attentive description and detailed analysis must precede supported judgement. Though Mendelsohn focuses on knowledge and Ventura on observation, I believe that both ultimately call for the same thing. Time. Whether it be studying an artist’s development or sitting with a painting for three hours, well-formed, analytical judgement does not happen over night, and it especially does not happen in an off-the-cuff Yelp review.

Time is the key ingredient to thorough observation and study, analysis, and finally, writing. In critiquing the internet’s growing platform for “vernacular criticism,” Ventura demands that the critic’s prose reflect the complex nature of experiencing art. Therefore, in order to build an original critique, the critic must put in the hours cultivating a literary voice. The numerous and brief social media reviews cannot do justice to the complexity of art, nor that of cultural criticism.  Mendelsohn compliments Ventura’s position in describing his cultural critic heroes; from Andrew Porter’s encyclopedic detail, to Whitney Balliett’s “quiet dissections,” to Pauline Kael’s “sustained, cantankerous, and searching critique,” Mendelsohn’s heroes are the exemplars to a less heralded, literary genre. To Ventura and Mendelsohn, advanced cultural criticism is an art form in its own right. Unfortunately, with the rise of corporate-controlled, social media platforms, anyone with ten seconds and username is a critic, assembly line judgments for all.