One rainy day, sitting on a bus speeding down the highway, I found myself wondering what art criticism really is. Ever since leaving my full-time job to become an independent arts professional, criticism has become almost my sole means of making a living.

I could never confidently convince others that what I do is art criticism, yet I could at least prove that writing occasionally earned me an income and, albeit infrequently, introduced me to the broader arts community. Still, none of this guaranteed any continuity in my practice or offered much reason for optimism. I often hesitated when introducing myself.

So whenever people called me an artist, critic, curator, reviewer, researcher, or lecturer, I simply accepted that each title reflected the version of myself required by that particular moment. Those names were also the labels attached to the kind of person needed for someone else's project, badges of courtesy bestowed when I happened to meet another's expectations, or temporary titles exchanged in the spirit of collegiality.

When I was in elementary school, I once received an award in a "Best Reader" competition. Overnight, I became the school's "Best Reader." In truth, I do not remember reading particularly many books. But there was no reason to refuse a prize that was being offered. More importantly, I was not yet old enough to politely decline the award on the grounds that I doubted my own qualifications.

I accepted it somewhat bewilderedly and wondered why I had become the "Best Reader." Unlike other school awards—best diary, best book report, best illustrated poem, best science poster, best model airplane—the "Best Reader" involved neither an assignment nor a competition, so I never quite understood the criteria.

I eventually came to my own conclusion: perhaps my homeroom teacher, suddenly tasked by the principal or superintendent with selecting a school reading champion, had simply settled on me because I was quiet, compliant, and somehow looked like what a "good reader" ought to be. As time went on, I accumulated other distinctions—Good Conduct Award, Diligence Award, and the like—which only reinforced this private theory.

In reality, however, I merely appeared obedient and conscientious because I was shy, introverted, and lacked the courage to approach classmates first. It was only after entering middle school—talking during class, shortening my school uniform, bleaching my hair, climbing over the school wall, and skipping assemblies—that I finally escaped the relationship established between teacher and award recipient.

Watching raindrops cling to the bus window, gathering with neighboring drops until they became heavier and finally rolled downward, it suddenly occurred to me that the relationship between art and criticism might resemble that between water and glass—two things that never truly absorb one another.

Criticism, which translates the images and phenomena of art into language and interpretation, can only ever occupy the position of the other in relation to art. Yet it is not an outsider entirely. It is an other that observes the art world through a pane of glass. Their domains remain distinct, but transparent enough to see one another.

Still, criticism cannot remain content merely to observe. It must produce texts and wait for the chance to be read, discussed, and circulated within the art world. As Kim Chun-soo famously wrote, "When I called his name, he came to me and became a flower." The verse seems applicable everywhere.

The uncertainties over what form a text should take, what references it should cite, how long it should be; the traces of worrying over writing itself and choosing where to publish it; and the dampness of hope that the finished text might eventually find its place in the world—all of these emotions fail to pass through that pane of glass.

Perhaps this resembles an unspoken social rule: that we neither need nor ought to peer into one another's private vulnerabilities or hidden embarrassments.

I recently came across the same performance work by the Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader (1942–1975) in two recently published books on art criticism—Porous Art (Sumi Kang, Geulhangari, 2020) and When Attitudes Become Artwork (Bona Park, Badabooks, 2019).

Both authors reproduced I'm Too Sad to Tell You (1970), a black-and-white photograph showing the artist's tearful face alongside a handwritten note reading "I'm too sad to tell you," and each introduced Ader's work in order to discuss the immateriality of contemporary art and the existential dimensions of artistic practice.

Originally produced as a video, the work simply depicts a man silently shedding tears. Throughout his career, Ader repeatedly staged performances centered on the body, including the 'Fall' series, in which he is seen walking down a street, riding a bicycle, hanging aimlessly from a tree, or lying flat on a rooftop, only to fall suddenly into a canal or onto the ground.

Later, as part of his project In Search of the Miraculous (1975), Ader attempted to cross the Atlantic Ocean alone in a small sailboat and disappeared without a trace, leaving behind one of the enduring mysteries of modern art history. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that his performance practice offered even the artist's own life—its ultimate sacrifice—as material for criticism, becoming a permanent source of inspiration within art history.

Much as the self-inflicted deaths of artists such as Bahc Yiso (1957–2004), Kwon Jin-Kyu (1922–1973), Bernard Buffet (1928–1999), Mark Rothko (1903–1970), Jeanne Hébuterne (1898–1920), and Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) have shaped the rhetoric through which they are remembered and determined the emotional tone that runs through the narratives written about them, the final black-and-white photograph of Bas Jan Ader steering his small sailboat confidently toward the open sea seems to condense—and almost foretell—the very image upon which criticism of his work would come to rest.

Among the younger generation of artists receiving increasing attention in the global contemporary art world is the British media artist Ed Atkins (b. 1982), whose work became known to Korean audiences through Hisser (2015), presented in the exhibition 《Common Front, Affectively》 at the Nam June Paik Art Center in 2018. Atkins has established a distinctive visual language through computer-generated avatars and animated moving images.

First presented in his solo exhibition 《Old Food》 at Berlin's Gropius Bau in 2017 and later shown in the Arsenale at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, his sixteen-minute video Good Man (2017) alternates between the uncanny faces of a mysterious monk, a boy, and an infant. Each stares directly toward the viewer, silently shedding tears before breaking into audible sobs.

Set against an unknown space enveloped in darkness and rain, the boy's anguished cry—"Sir, who is all the dead?"—fails to clarify the video's elusive narrative. Are the tears shed by these digitally rendered human figures a cynical mockery of life, or an expression of profound compassion and admiration? To whom is the boy's accusation directed? Humanity? God?

In The Wretched of the Screen (2016), Hito Steyerl likens images to commodities, writing: "The bruises of digital images are their glitches and pixelated artifacts. They are broken apart, interrogated, and investigated. They are stolen, cropped, edited, and reappropriated. They are bought, sold, and rented. They are manipulated and altered. They are denounced and worshipped.

To participate in images is to participate in all of this." If this is the case, what does it mean to write criticism about such images? Within the mystery of an event whose subject can never be definitively identified—where we cannot know "who is all the dead?"—only images of fear and grief seem to pass effortlessly through the filter of empathy.

Such responses are involuntary, bodily reactions that occur in silence. “I'm Too Sad to Tell You.” Yet why do I feel compelled to append words to that statement—to appropriate, explain, and interpret it?

The final image of the young Bas Jan Ader aboard the four-meter pocket cruiser Guppy 13, embarking on what was unmistakably a reckless, if romantically conceived, attempt to cross the North Atlantic in two and a half months, continues to fuel the documentary fascination surrounding his life while simultaneously contributing to the romanticization of the artist's death.

Is it truly justifiable that even a human death can be interpreted and celebrated as successful art? In that sense, are the words of praise often found in artist monographs—particularly when they concern an artist whose work is inseparable from their own survival—not, perhaps, careless and even dangerous? Who transformed the artist's death into a success? The image? Or criticism?

Rather than offering an immediate answer, I choose to suspend judgment. In that spirit, I conclude by presenting, in sequence, paintings by Jisan Ahn, who has studied the work of Bas Jan Ader, alongside a passage written by Bona Park.

“Bas Jan Ader’s rejection of and challenge to existing institutional frameworks are ultimately completed through his disappearance. Ader departed at the age of thirty-three—the age at which Christ is believed to have been crucified—‘in search of the miraculous.’ (…) The project’s title, together with the artist’s disappearance without any knowledge of his fate, leaves its conclusion suspended like a riddle, playfully open-ended. If we regard all of this as part of the artist’s intended project, then his disappearance signifies not failure but the success of the work.”
— Bona Park, When Attitudes Become Artwork, pp. 19–20.

Meanwhile, sitting on the bus, I found myself absentmindedly watching the panoramic landscape unfold continuously beyond the window as the vehicle sped along. Unlike the horizontal flow of the passing scenery, however, my attention shifted to the raindrops moving vertically across the glass. Within the single frame of the window, these moving images—traveling in different directions and at different speeds—resembled overlapping channels in a multichannel video installation. It is precisely through watching such quietly shifting images that one naturally drifts into contemplation.

One work that left a lasting impression on me was Ham Hyekyung’s My First Love (2017), presented in the 2020 Seoul Photo Festival, 《UNPHOTOGRAPHICAL MOMENT》 (July 14–August 16, 2020, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul Museum of Art).

The approximately eleven-minute video consists of tranquil scenes of waves gently rolling across an empty sea, the tiled floor of a deserted swimming pool drying beneath the sun after the water has receded, and shimmering sandy beaches, accompanied by an English monologue.

Projected footage is overlaid with Korean subtitles rendered in a literary style. It is a rather obvious observation, perhaps, but images seem to have an affinity for narrative. The fabricated, nostalgic story that Ham layers onto these photographs merges with them like a handwritten postcard, becoming an integral part of the video's poetic visuality.

Nor is Ader’s impulse to accompany the photograph of his tearful face with the handwritten phrase “I’m Too Sad to Tell You” especially unusual in the history of art. Although his life ended with his sudden disappearance, what gave lasting significance to his final project, In Search of the Miraculous, was the narrative framework he had already established in advance.

Working between fiction and nonfiction through post-production, Ed Atkins constructs much denser and more irregular narrative layers, prompting viewers to experience confusion and hybridity simultaneously. This may well be one reason why critics such as Hans Ulrich Obrist have identified Atkins as one of the defining artists of our time (see “Power 100,” ArtReview, 2016).

As if demonstrating precisely this point, during a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist at the 2015 Manchester International Festival, Atkins used motion-capture technology to transform both himself and Obrist into three-dimensional avatar boys whose movements were rendered live before the audience. Throughout the discussion, their voices functioned as dubbed soundtracks for the floating digital avatars above them.

This performance remains memorable for fundamentally altering the conventional image of the artist–critic talk. Today, in the wake of a world transformed by the fear of the COVID-19 pandemic, it also appears remarkably prescient—anticipating one of the now-familiar modes through which we experience non-face-to-face communication.

As I bring this essay to a close, I find myself once again asking what art criticism truly is. Although art and criticism remain separated by something like a pane of glass, the two are bound to continue needing one another and coexisting, so long as images and texts—kindred forms of expression—continue to complement and converge.

I watch images imbued with iconography and allegory, metaphor and symbol, gather upon the window like raindrops. As they merge with neighboring images, they grow larger and heavier before finally slipping downward, disappearing with a quiet trail. After this has repeated itself several times, the window gradually fogs over with moisture.

Perhaps then I, too, will be able to write something upon its surface. Could those words become a form of criticism that sails toward art despite the risk of disappearing—or perhaps evolve into the very relationship between myself and art? Ah, but now, once again, I am simply too sad to tell you.

References

• [비평] 미술비평, 너무 슬퍼서 아무 말도 할 수 없어ㅠㅠ
  [Critique] Art Criticism: Too Sad to Say Anything