Does art crticism matter?

The Guardian published an interesting article about the alleged demise of good art criticism and its influence if it ever had any called "Has big money replaced the pundit as the true authority in the art world?" by Adrian Searle.

Never has the art market been stronger. Never has money been so powerful. Never have so many artists got so rich, and never has there been such alarming stuff on sale. Never have critics felt so out of the loop.

People blame all the money sluicing round the art world. They blame the internet and the rise of the blogger. They blame the dumbing-down of newspapers and the replacement of criticism with the sparkling, if vapid, preview featurette, and the artist-as-celebrity photo opportunity profile. Who cares about the art or the concepts? They're just the MacGuffin. Tell us about the parties, the openings, the drugs and the dresses. Artists are creative, and creative is sexy and good. Critics are a comedown. Some have hair sprouting from their ears. They're always complaining; they're untrustworthy; they're full of hate and spite and they make everything all so complicated, when all we're really trying to do is sell a lifestyle. Fuck 'em.

Sure there's some bad art out there, but I wonder how much influence big dollars really have on the quality of art that is being produced. Probably about as much influence as art criticism wields. Just because some people spend a lot of money on art doesn't make it great art. It just means that a lot of people are buying into a lifestyle, and in our culture of celebrity and brand worship, that matters a lot and therefore garners the most media attention. We'll have to wait to see which of these high-priced artists stand the test of time to find out if these high prices were really worth it. In the meantime, there is plenty of great art out there that is plenty affordable and is more relevant to the emerging collector than a $100,000,000 diamond-encrusted skull. (Although I do think the skull is kinda cool.)

Anyway, I always advise emerging art collectors to seek out as much information as possible and one good way to do this is to read art criticism. Problem is that art critics often write using nonsensical language that is impossible to read and therefore it is impossible to learn anything by reading it. But when it's written well, it can be abundantly instructive and a fantastic way to guide emerging collectors through the art world labyrinth.

In a somewhat related piece, Brad Pitt threw around a few hundred thousand dollars at Basel last week on some art that some people didn't appreciate.