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Articles
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Reposte
// L’Officiel, Yelena Panteleyeva
5 october 2006
Daniel Birnbaum, Portikus gallery director, Frankfurt, has recently organized a Yoko Ono show. Today, opening a new display of Francis Alys, he is not afraid of any assessment and knows exactly what an ideal art critic looks like.
"Who cares if the article is positive, or negative! The most important fact is that the journalist has chosen precisely my project among the tremendous number of art shows in the world. The position of the critic is in this choice. If the text rises above the level of ‘this is interesting, and that is not’, it is really useful. Artists need an assessment of that sort. I head the St?delschule Art Academy in Frankfurt, I was a curator of the Venice Biennale projects, this winter I am going to produce projects at the Moscow Biennale in your country, and I need this kind of assessment too. When someone finds a professional fault in my work, I never get angry or distressed. It's quite stupid. Nothing can be worse than a positive but trivial article in the end. Who has the right to criticize? I believe that it is to be an educated, sophisticated person, not somebody from art circles. This person cannot be a curator, an artist, a gallerist, or a museum worker. This person does not produce art, he or she just looks and appreciates it. It is an adequate and impartial assessment that does not involve any PR for himself or herself. The critic always sides with the viewer. Theater looks strange without an audience. Art is the same. It is important to start a dialogue. The world is not perfect, as we know. If there is no criticism, the world turns into a dry market mechanism."
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