Some readers may find this piece a little one sided. It certainly rose from an exhaustion a chorus of complaint from people who are demonstrably doing nothing to help themselves. Hopefully they will find themselves forcibly confronted with the solution to their problems. Don't read on if you don't need the pain.

The phone rang one hot sunny morning. "It’s a man – he's come from Berlin, for you." Not really for me. It was Boris Kremer curator of Elvis Has Left The Building - Urban Myths and Legends, then at PICA. Boris needed a critical review – not a piece of journalism. He'd had lots of that, courtesy of the fantasy promotion machines run by PICA and the Perth Festival. He wanted some credible, serious exposure and found no one could or would do it. He didn't mind if it was bad.

It happened again The Art Collector, somewhat embarrassed, needed a piece on an 'emerging' WA artist who had never had a commercial exhibition: In three days? I chose Chris Fitzallen, genial veteran of the much lamented Verge Gallery. His excuse for a no show that there was no audience for serious work, " the best painters like Brian Blanchflower don't show here.".

Such requests are frequent. I relish the irony, especially for PICA, whose management is rumoured to have made a specially vicious contribution to my critical demise. Competent criticism is in very short supply. Andrew Nicholls' recent column on the plight of emerging artists in WA cites "a dearth of arts criticism"(i) as one major reason for their difficulties, a common sentiment through the art community. I avoid openings because, even though its not my problem, someone always wants to tell me about it.

I hate this routine hypocritical whinging. Informed, analytical artwriting and advocacy is almost extinct in Perth. Yet no-one is doing anything about it, which is odd. Very well paid people, in universities and galleries, are employed, in part, to promote informed dialogue about the visual arts. Arts WA subsidises an Adelaide art magazine to print chummy journalism about Perth but few read it.

Then again who needs committed, confrontational criticism, certainly not the public who are quite happy to have their worst prejudices confirmed, in atrocious prose. There I said it! Yes! Confrontational!! Good criticism must confront its readers because good art is epiphanic. It confronts its audience with new ideas, revelations, new routes to ecstasy, presented with disciplined analysis that cannot be dismissed by slandering the analyst or intimidating him into silence. It is inherently liberating. As Baudelaire insisted, a work of criticism is a work of art and vice versa. Anything less is just a recycled press release, no brains needed.

If you think confrontation is always unacceptable, art has nothing for you. You should take up lawn bowls. If you think bad reviews are always motivated by personal vindictiveness, you are hopelessly prejudiced, incapable of reading anything beyond the sports pages - you might have a problem with them too. Yet these familiar attitudes have returned to dominate the WA art scene. Critical passion, exuberant energy, righteous anger, originality have proved equally unacceptable at PICA and at the most conservative commercial gallery. They are just too embarrassing.

Artists too have problems with analytical criticism, which often finds their ambition inadequate, their work boring. I asked Boris Kremer why none of his artists had taken a more robust, even angry, view of the abject stupidity of urban myth. I had in mind the cynical ease with which John Howard tapped its vindictive self-righteousness in his children overboard farce. Kremer speculated that they believed that being forthright would not help their careers. Without an active open critical dialogue to work through most artists will concentrate on fitting in, promoting what they do, however boring, rather than doing it, or something else, better. Art becomes fashion.

Artists and audiences resent committed criticism, the commercial media despise it. Good criticism wants to take your time not your money, it loathes fashion and consumer cliches and, worst of all, it is subtle, informative, well written and argued, unlike the rest of the paper, magazine or radio programme, which, these days, is all about selling. Good criticism is sustained over time. It is a dedicated advocate for good artists and sudden death to the pretentious, who, unfortunately, pay for the advertising.

Finally criticism has to be paid for, either by the publishers or by the writer. Usually its the writer. The Australian Writers Guild suggests that $656.00 per 1000 words and 66c /word after that is a reasonable rate. The West Australian, the most profitable paper in the country, paid me about a quarter of that. Magazines such as the Art Collector pay about a third. I have subsidised WA art and artists by $150,625.00 over the years.

If we were take the need for criticism seriously, about $20,000 per month would be needed to pay several writers, regularly. This is possible with an act of will. Twenty times this is already being spent on uncritical promotion of the visual arts here, most headed straight for the garbage. Its very unlikely though. Boris Kremer, [from Berlin], believed that criticism was essential to succesful art practice, that it made good art possible. Here we live in fear of any demand for dialogue, we'd rather be bored. This is cold comfort for critics. My solution has been to write for my own website < behindthe-8-ball.com > where you can find Generation Gap, my review of Kremer's show

Note

(i) Andrew Nicholls Thought on a West Australian Emerging Practice afwa newsletter autumn 2002 page 8. Nicholls deludes himself about some issues – for instance he believes the self-serving myth that art schools are under funded. To the contrary, the art schools are the most affluent and privileged section of the visual arts industry. On the whole though the article gives a good picture of the current dilemmas for artists.