Tell Us What You Really Think: A Survey on the Landscape of Canadian Art Criticism

“Do you think anyone will read it?”
“Okay, but did you actually like the show?”
“Have you gotten paid yet?”

Like any niche scene, art criticism and critics exist in tangled webs of camaraderie, competition and other contextual factors. Though we deeply value the role of peer-reviewed essays, journalistic exposés and first-person texts in exploring the stakes of art criticism, we also note the ways that the Canadian art world’s claustrophobia can sometimes restrict frank public conversations. As such, rather than pontificate ourselves, we wanted to hear from participants in the field: what are their (your!) gushes, gripes, inspirations and frustrations?

Inspired by the vulnerability and tongue-in-cheek tone of Seventeen magazine quizzes of yore, we hoped to create a space for honest, informal reflection via an online survey. Invitations were shared with C Magazine contributors from the past two years, who were in turn invited to circulate the survey among colleagues and friends. With their anonymity assured, respondents were encouraged to pick and choose questions with which to engage, as well as to note any oversights in the survey’s format or purview. The (lightly edited) answers below reflect a cross-section of selected responses.

Acknowledging the inevitable impact of potential biases derived from our own subject positions, as well as the limited network of respondents, we envision this survey only as a catalyst for further conversation rather than an exhaustive inventory. We are immensely grateful to all who shared their joys and trepidations, and posed additional questions, in response to the original survey. We hope that some of these conversations will continue, expand, mutate, self-destruct and evolve on and off the page to include a growing number of voices.

1 WHAT DO YOU SEE HAPPENING IN CANADIAN CRITICISM THAT EXCITES OR