Modern Painters & Guardian Prize for Writing on Art

The Guardian and Modern Painters have teamed up to put on a contest for the best unpublished art criticism. In Saturday's Guardian, contest judge and art critic Charles Saumarez Smith discusses what he's looking for, "good writing in what might be described as the middle ground":

Scholars in art history are not encouraged to go into general practice and to speculate on subjects outside their specialist area of intellectual competence. Nor is there very much by way of general writing by academics in newspapers and magazines - apart, perhaps, from those intellectuals, such as Julian Stallabrass, who write about contemporary art…

…At the other end of the scale, there is a great deal of lively reviewing of art exhibitions by critics who write week after week for the national newspapers. The convention of newspaper reviewing in this country is well established and correspondingly restricted in terms of length and scope.

It is a medium that is not intended to encourage discursive reflection. There are reviewers I admire - thoughtful, intelligent and well-qualified practitioners of the genre who have the essential characteristic of not being entirely predictable in what they write. But the requirement of their work is to provide a highly contingent record of a particular exhibition, no more.

Is there is a paucity of good writing, then, in this middle ground? Am I the only person who recollects long and thoughtful articles by writers such as Kenneth Clark and Michael Ayrton, which were published in the Listener and which I was able to read in the school library?

They encouraged me to look at and think about art, not just as a medium of contemporary fashion, but as one that required careful critical judgment - the use of intelligent language to describe the thoughts and feelings inspired by a particular work.

I'm not sure the contest is open to Americans, but since the rules don't state otherwise, I plan to enter. Writing art criticism is, in my opinion, as satisfying as writing fiction. To the extent that art criticism has a more circumscribed subject, it better encourages exactness -- a more precise translation of experience into language -- and is wonderful training for any writer.
And, unlike more "middle ground" reviews of film and fiction, "middle ground" art criticism is less likely to reduce historical perspective to (only) facts and stylistic references, and more likely to use history as a vehicle for discussing ideas and dialectics. (Perhaps because middle-brow culture has more tolerance for abstract art than it does for "experimental" film and literature.)

The contest has no cash prize, but the winners will have their work published in the Guardian and Modern Painters. The deadline for entry is June 30, and, happily, entries can be sent in via email (prize@modernpainters.co.u).

Posted by nchicha at March 8, 2004 05:27 AM