Citation
De Leon, Pristine, and Corrie Tan. “Eye to the Undercurrent: Criticism in Response to a Milieu.” Art Criticism Writing Workshop 2026, Online.
Quotes
- species:
- themes:
Collations
Literature notes
Eye to the Undercurrent: Criticism in Response to a Milieu
shifting from coverage to commentary, reportage to criticism
what to write
where to find what to write
how to write
Would you write about a work that you deeply dislike?
- questionable ethics, politically ideology, commercial success than engagement
- she doesn’t write about it
- market transactions rather than critical provocations
- don’t waste 900-1,000 words to write about it
- avoid negative reviews: (1) the artwork is bad and (2) the critic is right
- personal position: her negativity could lead to bad prose
If we don
exhibition review to the thinkpiece and cultural journalism
exhibition review
- describe, contextualize, interpret, evaluate
- usually attirbutes
there are concerns not covered by exhibtion review
think piece
- verdict is rechanneled into curiosity, inquiry
- talk about the times
- treats work as symptom of a broader tendency, issue, or sensibility
The Critic: Villain or vital cog?
Undercurrents
- What is underneath contemporary art?
- trends, tendencies, sensibilities
- infrastructure, issues
“If there is no conflict, there is no community.” — Pristine de Leon
How does our milieu differ from theirs?
She finds it difficult to differentiate what is coverage from commentary.
Reportage is primarily representation.
Thinkpiece has argument or a sharp question.
Boundaries are fluid.
Thinkpiece related to op-ed.
Thinkpiece is closely related to digital writing (e.g., FB posts that go viral).
Conservatives vs modernists
Victorio Edades vs. Guillermo Tolentino
Edades critiquing tradition and trends
- distortion and contrast
against
- academism
- academic art is Amorsolo school
- classical values
- representational
- perspective
- art as imitation of nature
1st half of the 20th century
academic = conventional but not original
critic as provocatuer, as disruptive force
artist manifesto
- brings theory into the streets
- similar to the newspaper essay, not as thorough as an essay in a literary journal
Edades’ writing served a pedagogic purpose
Q: Is there a dominant aesthetic shaping the visual arts today?
- art is more plural now
- no single dominant style but tendencies
- where do we find these tendencies?
School, training, group, collective
Market
Awards, competitions
Year
What makes a good critic?
Cesare A. X. Syjuco
- first recipient of the KLFI award
newspaper critic is gut feel and intuition not scholarly
He comments on institutional support.
The market is not an abstraction.
Mabini Art
- arose from
- Mabini St. line of galleries that cater to tourists
Honest
- candor
- tone of the work
Adversarial voice, candor
Sound of his writing
sweeping statements
What does this tone do?
- this tone is not a requirement
the tone is performance, signals distance from a work
the tone is what separates the thinkpiece from the academic essay
- it’s not as thorough
- focused on articulation, how it addresses affect
- in affect, we feel the community
Alice Guillermo
style is just one moment
a critic can be doubtful and skeptical
contemporary: our points of reference are plural
simultaneity rather than linearity
contemporary: about history
the modern, indigneous, and future share a discursive space
Contemporary is messy
How to write the contemporary? BEGIN WITH TENDENCIES.
Participatory work.
Emerging Islands residencies.
Communities are often outsiders to the art community.
- immediately regard participatory as ethical and ethical as good.
Claire Bishop
- critic of participatory practice
little info on how the engagement transpired
the site of engagement is itself the point of contention, that can be the object of critic
Relational Criticism
Navigating relations
Criticism is a relational act.
Essay as journey exploration of artist, critic, and reader.
Archipelagic approach to writing.
Critic = povoking companion (pengganggu pendamping)
- we’re here to journey alongside you
Critic as kapwa
- instead of parasite deriving nutrients
- how can be a critic who is symbiotic?
- the organism is unharmed by your existence
- these are multiple ways of relating to each other
Criticism as care work.
How am caring of this place?
Criticism as a durational project.
Critiquiness separates the critic from the ecology.
Slow journalism
- rebuke the new media landscape
Who do you write for?
- the artist
- The informed reader
How might we write for them?
- context
- corporeality
- connctedness
She keeps relationship warm with a writer.
sustained metaphor
How might the critic be kapwa?
Critic as not excluded but part of an ecology.
Synthesis
The opposite of clickbait is literary.
Instead of gatekeeping, we want porosity.
Smuggling literary pleasures into theory
When does being an insider become a burden or tricky?
- Theory is tactile. We feel it in our bodies.
- insider-outsider
- you can’t be super close to someone
- you can’t have just one vantage point
- practice: what is this constant practice of proximity? how far and how close am I?
- we can also realize, it is not our role to be a critic. If we are older and we know too much of the politics, we can’t write about it.
- part of relation is dealing with conflict
- she values her mobility
- critic as intermediary
- you don’t identify with a certain group, distance is more possible, critical distance
Do you still find yourself taking an adversarial stance?
- assert an interrogative stance
- nuance must be exercised by a critic
- it must play out in the level of the paragraph or sentence
How does the reader respond to you? How different from newspaper readership.
50 percent of online interactions are unrepaired
Critics don’t monopolize criticality.
Curators can also be critical.
Questioning art and questioning ourselves questioning art
Links
https://www.jom.media/in-solidarity-with-our-activists/
https://www.centre42.sg/residencies/co-lab-residency/9357/critical-ecologies-critical-anomalies/
^about our critical project
Questions
Can art criticism contend with its own undercurrents? Has this been done before?