Ruth Kinna
Further reflections on PRAXIS 4 - Public Quality?

There is a difference between the democratisation of art and the democratisation of judgement.

It is open to all to judge or evaluate and there is potential significance in so doing. For example: when the work of an artist is assessed by elites to be good, whilst also marketed – if not deliberately created – to be beyond the financial reach of ordinary people and indeed beyond comprehension, the ability or confidence to publicly judge or assess is to be encouraged. Such encouragement hardly detracts from the position of the artist as being someone who has a particular desire, talent or both to develop their creativity. Nor does it oblige the artist to develop art in particular ways – e.g.. communicatively. However, if art is treated as a means of communication, then the judgement reasonably follows.

The idea that the apparently cynical manoeuvres of artists (who subvert the idea of an art market by nakedly exploiting it) cannot be criticised by the galleries involved in the original promotion of this work seems faintly bizarre. It sums up the position of the elite who reserve judgement for themselves and/ or purport to be the arbiters of excellence. In other words, they have been caught out by their complicity.

To the extent that judgements of quality have been linked to particular aesthetics or techniques should not lead us to throw out aesthetics or concepts of technique but only to be suspicious of monopolising logics and universal claims.

The motivation of an artist is not a necessary or sufficient basis to make judgements about the value or worth of the art. Surely, it’s still possible to appreciate work that was produced to satisfy the vanity of patrons, or the glory of God even if we don’t share these values. By the same token, is it not possible for an earnest artist (someone whose motivations we like) to produce work that utterly fails?

 

Dan Karlholm
Comment on the format of PRAXIS 4
(Translation from Swedish by Anders Jacobson)

One way to get the group-based discussion to be more focused and truly common might be that each group worked to deliver a contribution (rather than answers) on one or two basic questions about quality (ideally in smaller groups). Instead of the audience / participants selecting a group based on who sits in it and perhaps expecting to hear good things from these people, the whole group together could work on an issue, i.e.. all would be actively invited to add their experience-based contribution in the pot. That would be a more productive way, I think, but a bit more strict and directed.

The risk with a group talk without direction or moderator with both specifically invited and "uninvited guests" is that the invited participants tend to dominate a little too much and also feel pressure to be profiled. If everyone really wants to get anywhere with a question of fact, we are all, regardless of background, facing the same common task. Now there was no such task and the difficult quality issues - along with stating clear discrimination and the authoritarianism of specific institutions - did not come up in my group anyway.

Another way to work would be to not start from a few simple questions, but from a detailed case (real or fictional) who called for a "solution" by the group discussing all possible aspects. But that kind of arrangement would be more appropriate for full-or half-day exercises. In the former case, one starts from the simple question and lands in something a lot more complex, and in the latter one starts from the reality-like chaos that an individual case can be, to work through to the foundation, the basic or principle.