Art Jargon - when will it end?
Almost 30 years after graduating from art school, I felt the need to read the book How To Be An Artist. That’s partly because I have developed an awareness of Jerry Saltz, the Pulitzer Prize winning author and chief art critic for the New York magazine. That awareness began when I saw him being interviewed in the documentary “The Lost Leonardo”, where he did a wonderful send-up of a Christies auctioneer.
The book is full of practical advice on how to make it in the fiercely competitive, yet at the same time lonely (as far as I’m concerned), art world. English writer and artist Grayson Perry describes the book as being, among other things, bullshit-free, which brings me to the chapter “Learn To Write About Your Work.”
His basic advice is “keep it simple, stupid”. He suggests that we avoid humbug and that we write in our own voice when expressing our artistic goals. We should avoid post-modernist rhetoric which he believes has lost value in today’s art world. He is referring to art speak which has been described as a jargon heavy, overly academic and often obscure language often used by some curators, critics and galleries in press releases, exhibition catalogues and artist statements.
But has art speak really lost its hold on the contemporary art scene, as Saltz suggests? I’m not so sure. Recently I was listening to the podcast Waldy and Bendy’s Adventures in Art featuring the British art critics Waldemar Januszczak and Bendor Grosvenor. At one point they were discussing the 2026 Venice Biennale before the conversation spiraled off to issues of pretentious writing, and how people use it when they really don’t know what to say about something.
In another episode, they were bemoaning the sharp decline in the number of British students studying art history which they found deeply depressing. They believe young people are being put off studying art by the jargon heavy way that art is discussed in academic circles. Reference was made to a QAA (Quality Assurance Agency) document outlining how art should be taught in UK higher education which, according to Grosvenor, is so loaded in politics and theory that it is almost incomprehensible. He thinks the purpose of all this is to make art history more exclusive and be taken more seriously as a professional subject. He believes steps need to be taken to popularize the subject and thus make it more appealing to young students.
I can remember being bombarded with art jargon all those years ago when I was at art school in Melbourne, and it never occurred to me to respond by saying that I want to be an artist, not a wordsmith.
Januszczak resonded by saying that in his art programs he believes it’s important to communicate in a language that’s easily understood, because art is about life, death, love, sex, horror, it’s about the simple things in life that happens to us all the time. Besides, what do we know about past civilizations? Largely by the art that’s left behind.
I’m not even going to broach the issue of tertiary fees. That’s another story entirely.