Art criticism in the networked age

Steyn Bergs, Masha van Vliet, Evelyn Austin, Samuel Vriezen

The crisis of criticism in the age of the Internet is two-sided. The more traditional complaint is that both the overwhelming amount of amateur art criticism that appears online, as well as the disdain for the traditional, 'elite' printed media, have stripped traditional art critics of their power and redistributed it among everyone with internet-access and a blog. A more recent, and increasingly ubiquitous complaint, is that 'proper' online art criticism more often than not takes on the guise of older, conventional forms of art criticism that recall the context of the art journal or the art magazine. Art criticism on the Internet hardly ever takes the shape of an art criticism that is properly online; it is usually art criticism that also happens to be online. The many medium-specific possibilities offered by the Internet are all too easily disregarded. Is it not time for an online...