Saturday, November 03, 2007

All the Words Out There

I usually avoid blog memes like the plague but this one started by Peter Plagens at Grammar Police about art blogs was just too much to resist.

What's the purpose of your blog?
Pushing words around is a nice change from pushing pixels around.

What are the boundaries of your blog?
Boundaries? It's all grist for the mill.

Tyler has cited Joy Garnett's NewsGrist blog [hyperlink added —ed.] as doing a great job of "placing art within a sociocultural and political context." What I see on NewsGrist is a magazinelike interspersing of short profiles, exhibition reviews, op-ed pieces on how other people are covering things, and Village Voice–like political takes. But what does Tyler's comment mean to you, and why are blogs in general better positioned than print to do what he describes?
He’s sucking up? Dunno, never heard of NewsGrist until this thing came along, took a look and found it pretty boring really. Although blogs are better positioned to provide a voice that isn’t controlled by corporate interests unless self imposed.

Why can't blogs go further, to the point where there's hardly any discernible difference between artist and critic/commentator, blog and work of art?
Who says they can’t?


What scope and degree of editorial control do you exercise over your blog?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, read The Expat at your own risk.

What about posting comments from readers, and what about anonymity?
Comment away, if its spam I’ll delete it, but anything else goes.

What's "trolling," and why don't some of you allow it?
If trolling is dissenting or disagreeable comments, you post it; learn to live with the Flack.

Is trolling really so easily identified and universally bad? Is having posters register a solution?
Now who is getting anal?

What about liability coverage?
Sue me, I could use the publicity

What's the economic model of your blog?

A freebee, although it has jagged me some MSM writing gigs so I guess it could be considered an earner of sorts.

How do you see your blog's relation to the established print art media?
When I write for the established media, arts or otherwise, I must play by the publications rules on my bog I make the rules.

How do you attract readers/posters other than by word of mouth?
Any SEO strategy I understand enough to make work.

In general, is blog art criticism more open and liberal, and print criticism more closed and conservative?
Well this is a no brainer, of course they are if they are independent, with the caveat of the blogger’s personality. If they are the online version of the print organization they will be constrained by the vested interests that constrain the print version.

Some people say that there's a dearth of art criticism at length on blogs. Is this true? If so, does it have more to do with reading on a computer in general, or with art criticism in particular?
Why say in a 1000 words what can be said in 300, unless you are being paid by the word?

Art magazines come out once a month. Newspaper art reviews usually appear once a week. Blogs appear more or less daily, and sometimes have updates by the hour. Do you think that the faster pace of blogs will start to affect the pace of art-making.
Only if the art is made for critics with blogs.

Tyler just said that there's more good art being made by more artists in more places than at any time in history. Is this true? And if so, what's the reason?
The increase in the world’s population?


Do blogs help correct the geographical bias in print art criticism, i.e., the tendency to think that most of the important stuff happens in New York or Los Angeles, and the difficulty of art outside those places to get national attention?

Perhaps, although I suspect that population density and disposable income have a greater influence.

One index of a city's gravity as an art center is young artists—perhaps recent MFAs—from elsewhere coming to set up shop. Is that happening in Philadelphia and Portland?
Ask someone from Philadelphia or Portland not the Philippines. As to a city’s arts gravitas, young artists are just a part of the mix. I suspect that low rents are more important.

Is there any constructively negative edge to your blogging and, if so, what is it?
Occam’s razor

Let's throw something back into the mix: naked human ambition. Unknown bloggers want to be little bloggers; little bloggers want to be bigger bloggers; and bigger bloggers want to be called, as is Tyler's Modern Art Notes, "the most influential of all the visual-arts blogs" by the Wall Street Journal.
And the question is?

Where will your blog be in three to five years?

On the internet.

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