—

A cultural critic’s job is inherently more contentious and controversial than most; not only do they have the power to affect consumption of another’s work in a way that can earn critics high levels of resentment, but they also have certain leeway to design the frameworks within which they operate as critics. Some, like Barry Schwabsky, position themselves at the edge of the art world but not quite outside of it. Others seem to operate as within a work’s audience but intellectually above other laypeople who are exposed to the art, those who then become the critics’ readers. What these viewpoints share is a sense of superiority, though not always arrogant superiority, that grants critics (the good ones, at least) permission to share their honest, evidenced opinions with those who do not have such permission.

Critic Barry Schwabsky understands that a critic’s place in society has shifted in recent history. He seems to lament that “the critic seems to be in the art world but not of it—a guest at the party who is there on sufferance, contributing much less to the art world’s functioning than once was the case.” That degree of separation from those on the “inside” allows the critic to more accurately serve the general public as he or she has fewer debts to those he or she may need to criticize. At the same time, a level of inclusion is necessary for Schwabsky to educate the public as he would like to: “I work from within—within the particular artwork, within the history and conventions of art as a whole—to find the edges where art, as [Marcel] Duchamp said, comes ‘in contact with the external world.’” Living in that in-between space offers him the knowledge to speak with authority without being indebted to the artists themselves.

The same sense that knowledge is key to significant critique appears in Daniel Mendelsohn’s “A Critic’s Manifesto.” He insists, however, that just as important in the equation needed to produce critique is taste:

“For all criticism is based on that equation: KNOWLEDGE + TASTE = MEANINGFUL JUDGMENT. The key word here is meaningful. People who have strong reactions to a work—and most of us do—but don’t possess the wider erudition that can give an opinion heft, are not critics. (This is why a great deal of online reviewing by readers isn’t criticism proper.)”

One’s knowledge on a subject can be more readily judged than his or her taste, a requirement which one could even argue harkens back to a time when rulers’ power was justified by a divine being. Some intrinsically have what it takes to hold the high responsibility of critique in their hands; others do not. But nowadays, in the age of a 24-hour online news cycle, people have the power to chose whose divine taste deserves merit.

Those critics who are chosen and trusted, Dwight Garner writes, then have the responsibility to give their readers as accurate and fair a judgment on the art as possible. They must “[talk] about ideas, aesthetics and morality as if these things matter (and they do),” Garner says. “It’s at base an act of love. Our critical faculties are what make us human.” It’s this humanity that makes a cultural critic’s work so important and his or her job so unique.