Marek Bartelik: “Contemporary art has become more burocratic”
By: Alejandra Valdivieso P.
La Segunda online
Santiago de Chile, Chile. January, 2015
The diagnosis of the International Art Critics Asociation’s president.
An open window to the world is what offers the International Art Critics Asociation’s president Marek Bartelik.
Polish-American, Bartelik, who recently came to our country regarding the Venezuelan artist Oswaldo Vigas’ exhibition: Oswaldo Vigas (1943 – 2013) inaugurated at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, is an art critic with a broad formation in art.
“Vigas was one of the greatest figures in contemporary art”, Bartelik comments. “For the people that went to Europe to see his pictures, and for many Europeans, he was not only a Venezuelan; like Matta or Wilfredo Lam, he portrayed Latin America and the whole American continent, so it is clear why he deserves international attention”.
Bartelik proposes an analytical vision of contemporary art because it has become “too conceptual”.
It all starts out with an overexploited heritage. “I am not a great admirer of Duchamp even though I recognize his contribution to modern and contemporary art, something that I do not argue and that happened in a particular time. For me the problem is that he shaped an idea of what art should be that I do not consider revolutionary and we have abused on how to deal with his legacy”.
In any case, what is revolutionary art for him?
“At the present time we are not in a revolutionary stage. Historically we had the Renascence, the Mannerism and the Baroque… I believe we are now in a postmodern hybridization with a new Baroque arriving, and still waiting for a new revolution in art to come.
He considers, on the other hand, that “contemporary art has become more bureaucratic”.
“The Curator, who is the middleman, the person that eases things between the audience and the artist, is gaining more and more power… When you go to an exhibition opening and say among many artists that you are a critic, most of them leave, whereas if you say that you are a curator or an art collector, they will surely stay.
“Art critics today have less power than before. Curators and even art collectors are the ones that say what is fashionable and what is not. This is a very good situation because it puts us at the same level with the artist… In the past, art critics had the power to make someone famous or to destroy him. I believe we do not have this power anymore, which is good because I do not need to create artists, they create themselves.
Jaar’s “art with a message”
On the other hand, Bartelik thinks that “a big part of Art made itself very conscious on a social level, creating a cartoonish type of art that I do not consider very attractive”.
In his opinion, Alfredo Jaar is an artist that in this sense accomplishes a good balance. “He has a humanist side that is just not politics for politics, it is beautiful and has a message that is not didactic, with a strong visual presence that makes it accessible and a poetical element that encompasses all the art components with a message”.
At the same time, he criticizes the lack of originality of a lot of artists and highlights that the concept of copy is different in each country, citing examples like the Chinese “who are not ashamed” to copy.
“I do not care for lazy ideas, I expect intelligent ideas from the artist, not just to put anything there and say «that is my world»; we all have a world, but I want yours to be special in any way and also to defy my world”.
“«I don’t like it», it is stupid”
He follows with interest all the art critics changes, whose media space is decreasing more and more every day.
“There were art critics working among art historians, writing for academic publications, and there were journalists writing artists’ profiles and very popular critics. The art critics never were art historians or journalists, they had a special function in which they had to be informed, had to know how to write and be spontaneous. That space has shrunken too much”.
“One of the problems was that the critic was slowly drifting away from the average reader, who was interested, but not necessarily informed about what contemporary art is … We have to find a way to communicate, so any average person who doesn’t know about art, can understand it”. Bartelik insists that “as long as art exists, the critic will be part of the conversation”, however, there are some challenges ahead.
“I tell my students that it is very easy to reject things. You have all the right to reject what you want, the important thing is that you have to be involved with it, it requires that you have the knowledge; because to reject things just for the sake of doing it, just for the «I don’t like it» mentality is dumb and childish”.
Art Critics of the world
Bartelik studied art at the Fine Arts School of Paris, has a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Columbia and a PhD in Art History from the University of New York.
The association he conducts gathers 4.500 art critics in 63 national sections throughout the world.