Art as thought or representation: On the responsibilities of critics

Comment published on New York Times blog in response to opinion article by Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Chi-hui Yang, “The Dominance of the White Male Critic",” July 5, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/opinion/we-need-more-critics-of-color.html#commentsContainer&permid=101319742:101319742:

As a critic, I am now writing a review of a classic film that fits my left politics and remains controversial. It seem anti-feminist; I show it does something else. Is my review necessary wrong from "a woman's" point of view? It only needs an artist's point of view.

This problem can quickly lead to the intersectional morass of needing a crew of critics who each have their own subculture as sole turf. And, far more controversially, do I get black people right? When I write about a "black" film I do not reference a cultural subtext, unless it's in the film. This is the right way, say I.

The problem here is with an expressive-representative idea of art and thought. Art and thought do not matter because they express the world of a certain group that they represent. They matter if they develop a thought, expressed essentially in the work's formal properties, that reveals something about the/a world that we should care about.

Otherwise, the critic is condemned to evaluating based on outside information not in the art work. Our ad hominem culture that condemns artworks when the artists are morally faulted is just another form of this. I do not evaluate (just interpret), certainly not for how true a work is to a life-world it must represent. Not the artist's job or mine.

Yes, we need more black artists and critics. But not to say, "You're black, so you can 'do black'." Just do art.