Why Is It So Hard To Write About Art Right Now?

Four (okay, five) writers on how the importance of the written word in culture in times of turmoil

I have been thinking about it, and it’s been rumbling in my mind, fingers, soul, you name it, every time I sit down to write about art right now. It’s self-consciousness, in a way. I look around at the time we live in, and I can’t help to think what Isherwood would have written, what Hemingway would have said, what Baldwin’s wisdom would have responded to these moments of social turmoil. Political turmoil. The point is, I’m finding it hard to write about art because I am thinking about how the past wrote about art in times of upheaval and the rise of Fascism and it’s hard not to repeat what has already been said. The blueprint is there. But this is different. This is social media. This is full on 1984 meets Brave New World types of social decay and reformation of order (there I go, again, quoting the past). We have toys and tyranny at every inch of our grasp, literally 24 hours a day. So…, how do you write about art right now? If I find it difficult, surely some peers also find it hard?

I had a long conversation with veteran war reporter and journalist, Joanne Levine, from her home in Washington, DC, and asked her, in all her experience, if she ever found times where writing in the moment almost felt too small or not up to the task. I told her that I honestly didn’t think fascism would come so fast, as in you see it creep toward you but all of sudden it’s literally drowning the very fabric of society in a blink of an eye. I had always envisioned myself as writing Pulitzer Prize essays of resistance and critical theory when the foot soldiers eventually came to our city streets, and here I am finding it hard to even write about art. The vision of myself in an alternate universe was better than this parallel reality.

“Writing about art in this fraught moment is hard, if not impossible,” Levine wrote me after considering the question. “As citizens we have been watching our democracy hang in the balance and falter as ICE gunned down two Americans who exercised their constitutional right to protest. But however hard this is the moment to speak out. For big names in music like Bruce Springsteen that means writing and releasing a song about Minneapolis. For Lady Gaga it means a recrafted rendition of Mr Rogers quaint ditty ‘Won’t you be my neighbor.’

“Dissent has always found a safe harbor in art. The challenge is to keep writing, singing, and painting. Voices must not be silenced.”

I posed the question to my colleague and friend, writer Shaquille Heath, who has been featured across publications such as New York Magazine, Elephant and The Unibrow. She and I have had extensive conversations on this subject over the years we have known each other, sort of weighing how to use our voices but also being a channel for other voices to be heard.

“In one vein, talking (and writing) about art right now is one of the most purposeful things we can do,” Heath told me. “I know throughout every dark time, it is art – whether that is a painting, a play, or a book, that transcends and connects us. But I must admit, I find every moment of joy and laughter a huge pain point in the midst of the demise of our country and the horrors my neighbors are facing. What happened with ICE in LA was enough. To see what is going on in Minneapolis, my heart is broken. It feels like everyone forgets that George Floyd’s death was only a few years ago, where we connected to uplift human decency. And I really believe it is because we didn’t stay true to upholding those values, that we are in the place we are right now. It’s my job to both artists’ stories that both allow us to dive into the human condition, but to also forget about our suffering for one small moment, to allow us the energy to keep pushing forward.”

This was an encouraging angle, mostly in that I have always felt in times when I myself can’t quite reflect in the moment, it’s important to maintain a channel for others to fill in the gaps and tell their stories. Heath, the next day, continued with something quite poignant. “It’s my job to TELL artists stories that both allow us to dive into the human condition, but to also forget about our suffering for one small moment, to allow us the energy to keep pushing forward.”

I asked author, curator and friend Charles Moore, who just published his new book, Global Conversations: Mexico, in Mexico City a few weeks back. I’ve always seen Charles as someone who finds dialogue as the best form of resistance and, like myself, looks at how writing can slow time down and make things feel more concrete and less fleeting. He told me, when I asked him if he was finding it hard to write and curate right now, “Writing right now feels less like criticism, be it affirming or critical, and more like calibration. In a moment saturated with noise, an art writer’s role is to slow perception down. I hope that optimism exists within contemporary art but without the need for simply gaining attention. Someday.”

Charles brings up something that I come back to: Time.. slowing time. That is what writing is to me, what my intention is with writing and my overall thinking about art writing at the moment. In the moment. My self-consciousness that I noted earlier is my own weary mind worried that I’m slowing time in the ways that Isherwood did in Berlin in the 1930s. I’m not comparing myself, but I’m trying to understand how to better capture a moment when it feels like it’s moving too fast. Moore’s response was powerful.

The last person I asked was art critic and educator, David Pagel, because I was curious of his insight about working in theory and how that might give some insight into the history of art writing. His response surprised me, but was quite at the heart of the matter. How do you write in these times? “Writing has always been about leaving the world behind, temporarily,” Pagel wrote me, “and then coming back to it, more focused, charged, and inspired than I was when I left it behind, to write. For me, writing is a reality, however fragile and tenuous, where interesting things happen. I go there to find what I can’t find in everyday life. And then I come back, hopefully knowing more about the world in which I live most of the time, and even more driven to make it live up to the world I leave behind when I stop writing.”

So, I’m back to reality, this reality. Four different writers, four different angles. There isn’t a set answer but a blueprint as to how the art world and journalism can navigate such treacherous moments where language is being weaponized and the urge to respond in real time is at a height. There is urgency to our words but a desire for you to stop for a moment and let them be fully read. —Evan Pricco

the above image of Christopher Isherwood comes via Google Search of the name “Christopher Isherwood”. We claim no ownership of the image.