Художествената критика в капан: кризата на субективизма през 20-те години на XXI век

Abstract

Art criticism has the privilege of being part of all the transformations in the history of Bulgarian art, with its role in the avant-garde situation in the 1990s being particularly significant, which left a lasting impression of its usefulness and necessity for the world of contemporary art. Over the past ten years, critical writing has progressively declined until the last dedicated portal for criticism has disappeared, and this circumstance has given rise to disturbing articles and questions in the public domain such as Where is criticism today?. Numerous attempts have been made to revive it, and the results have shown that not every generation is privileged to participate in a revolution, and not every decade gives rise to the writing of heroic criticism. For this reason, its temporary attenuation is not necessarily a cause for alarm—on the contrary. The self-serving writing and artificial motivation of criticism in recent years have left a more troubling sense of unprofessionalism, naivety, and illegitimate subjectivism in an age that rejects rigid norms and rules about good art. On the one hand, this ultra-democratic nature provoked dissatisfaction from connoisseurs of critical thought, but on the other hand, it placed the artist in the most liberal regional artistic situation of the last hundred years. The text analyzes the typology of contemporary art criticism, the factors contributing to its decline, and the possibilities for its legitimate emergence.