On *Art-Speak*

The language used by commercial galleries’ to describe their exhibits purpose is to imbue the art objects that they are selling with a faux-intellectual rigour to flatter the kind of, *more money than sense*, clients who tend to buy contemporary art. But in defence of *art-speak* much art IS intended to in someway be a critique of, or at least perform at a critical distance from, mainstream culture, i.e the (invisible) ideology of Late Capitalism, therefore it is understandable that its discourse adopts a language that is deliberately ‘distancing’ from that mainstream. Also many words that tend to crop up a lot in art-speak, often drawn form critical theory, are not used in everyday language but are appropriate and functional in the context, though such words are, of course often horribly, and liberally, misused.

users guide international art english
(pic by Zbigniew Tomasz Kotkiewicz)