Personal witness has a peculiar status in the criticism of painting and sculpture, a status which it seems not to have in the criticism of other arts. There's some feature of the visual arts that requires or favours the activity of the critic as witness. I'm not referring here to the supposed necessity for 'expertise' when it comes to the visual arts, or to the need evidently felt by its audience for authoritative/enthusiastic communicators (Kenneth Clark, Robert Hughes, Wendy Beckett) which no other artistic public feels - though these things are doubtless relevant. I mean the priority given to a mode of address: when the critic performs, not by talking to us about work to which we're both assumed to have access, but rather by experiencing the work on our behalf, for our benefit.

LRB 12 January 1995 | PDF Download