UPDATED! Holland Cotter: “Art Critic, So What?” Lecture Audio Recording Available
Click here to listen to the Audio Recording. Audio recording courtesy of The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School
"Mask," 19th - 20th century, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, www.metmuseum.org.
Holland Cotter: “Art Critic, So What?” Lecture at the Vera List Center,
The New School University, November 11, 2010
Photo by Phyllis Tuchman.
The title of Holland Cotter’s lecture expressed a tone of equal humility and brazenness for the fourth in this AICA-USA Distinguished Critic Lectures at The New School. Cotter, a senior critic at The New York Times since 1998, approached the podium with an understated quietness, choosing to read from prepared written remarks rather than speaking spontaneously.
Art comes first for Cotter, the Vera List Center Director, Carin Kuoni, asserted in her introduction: When asked for a photograph to promote the lecture, Cotter supplied her with three different images of African masks. He related an autobiographic account through a narrative of his career in criticism. The lecture was organized more or less chronologically, highlighting several key experiences that influenced his brand of criticism: his studies of early Indian Buddhist art, working in an emergency room in Boston and watching close friends of his perish from AIDS in the 1980s.
Cotter described his process of art writing as one of many drafts and rewrites until he runs out of time. This approach has been known to frustrate his editors, relating the anecdote of an editor at the Times to take away his piece, exclaiming to stop fussing over details because “it all ends up at the bottom of a bird cage, anyway.” But, nevertheless, Cotter has shown a commitment to detail, perspective and an empathy for the outer fringes and often overlooked areas of activity in an art world he described as a “middle-class gated community.”
Despite his formal studies at Hunter College CUNY, and Columbia University, Cotter described learning the craft of criticism and his subjects “on the fly,” on a deadline-by-deadline basis. He gave young critics the advice to read and re-read art history, also expressing concern over blog-oriented criticism that is published without editing, unless it reaches a depth or breadth beyond the conversational tone of most blogs. He also thought that there are few good on-line only art journals for that matter.
Cotter encouraged young critics to look for art outside of the art world, pointing out that installation and performance art have happened for decades in Africa. He also mused that not much changed in painting since he came to New York in the late 1960s. Mentioning that genius was a term not applied to women artist enough in art criticism, he also quoted the late Audre Lorde, referring to a support for the 1970s feminist art movement.
In attendance were many New School undergraduate students, Cotter’s contemporaries from other art publications and young emerging critics. Because he seldom makes public appearances and prefers not to participate in panel discussions, it was rare pleasure to hear words from someone whose are widely read. A mid-career artist and critic confessed to me after the lecture that it was the first time she and many of her colleagues has ever seen him speak in person.
—Greg Lindquist
Above photographs of Holland Cotter ©by Jill Krementz
This text by one of our AICA-USA members inaugurates a series of online reports on various art activities related to art criticism organized by AICA-USA, or with the participation of our members.
For another voice about Holland Cotter’s lecture visit:
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/robinson/holland-cotter-aica11-12-10.asp (text by Walter Robinson).
The audio recording of Holland Cotter’s will be posted on this site in the near future.
To watch Roberta Smith's lecture from last year see click here