Art criticism in the networked age

The crisis of criticism in the age of the Internet is two-sided. The more traditional complaint is that both the overwhelming amount of amateur art criticism that appears online, as well as the disdain for the traditional, 'elite' printed media, have stripped traditional art critics of their power and redistributed it among everyone with internet-access and a blog. A more recent, and increasingly ubiquitous complaint, is that 'proper' online art criticism more often than not takes on the guise of older, conventional forms of art criticism that recall the context of the art journal or the art magazine. Art criticism on the Internet hardly ever takes the shape of an art criticism that is properly online; it is usually art criticism that also happens to be online. The many medium-specific possibilities offered by the Internet are all too easily disregarded. Is it not time for an online art criticism that is genuinely reflective of its medium? For its second issue of 2014, Kunstlicht invited writers and artists to simultaneously reflect on the history of art criticism and speculate on its future on the web.