Holding the line
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Art Criticism in Latvia
There is an undeniable nobility in futile things: doing what’s necessary without expectation of victory or hope to make a difference. Losing armies, marching to their doom with proud banners soon to fall in the dust. A desperate lover consuming himself for the one whose reciprocity will never come. A master gardener gently caring for flowers, knowing that the autumn is at the door and with it will come the coldness that they won’t survive. Art is also full of such noble acts, especially in the Baltics, where the whole industry is in a constant uphill battle. Among all the calls one might have in this little world of ours, art criticism is one of the most peculiar. This craft is, to a point, woven of paradoxes — everyone indulges in it, yet few choose to make it their job. It is both academic and journalistic, necessary and overlooked, and indeed, if not fully futile, then has the seeds of futility planted deep in its organism. Yet, it is still instrumental to the system's functioning, and it is still noble as it brings little gratitude, but is practised nevertheless, because art needs it, whether consciously or not.
A critic is a hierarchical figure in its own right, and by his mere existence, he refutes a notion that an art world is a horizontal space, free from the pyramidal structure of the lay society. Simultaneously, a critic, like a gallerist, is a middle-man, who can’t exist without an artist and whose fate is to digest what the artist produces. And when we say that artists have it rough in Latvia, we still have to admit that there is a whole plethora of the industry’s workers who have to face arguably even more challenges: art critics would be among the top ones on this list. In art criticism, Latvians don’t have figures of international or at least regional importance, but this is what makes it more selfless perhaps: one won’t get wide recognition for this, it most likely won’t be a steady career, even on the art world’s scale. Being an art critic in Latvia would mean peak precarity and odd writings, it will be combined with maybe a teaching gig, or research in art history that could land one a book deal. Ultimately, it won’t give a position of power or a high tribune — this is no place for John Bergers and David Sylvesters. What Latvian art critics have, on a positive note, is a perpetual chance for conversation, a community that speaks to each other, often disagreeing and arguing, but at its core, remaining a network of smart, observant and open-minded individuals brave enough to turn their thoughts on art a into a printed word.
Even though our art criticism may not be extensively influential, it continues to contribute to keeping our art world alive, giving it chances to self-reflect and grow. There was never a particular critical school or movement here in Latvia, it was and remains an individual venture — sometimes critics would gather under the banner of a newspaper or a website, but in the end the main commonality between all those lone souls remains their craft. In a world ruled by sectarianism, group divisions among Latvian art critics are hardly noticeable — everyone is alone, everyone is together.
Nevertheless, gathering under a banner had, of course, been most evident in the recent past, during the Soviet period. Back then, in the reign of censorship and state ideology, one of the most notable sources for the officially allowed art criticism was the periodic Literatūra un Māksla (Art and Literature), an influential joint literary-artistic and socio-political weekly newspaper. It was sort of a rallying point for Latvian intellectuals, and art criticism played a significant role in its content. Especially in the late years of the Communist regime, this newspaper made a significant contribution towards rekindling democratic thought, not only in the realm of art but also in social and ecological matters. It was achieved largely due to its editor Jānis Škapars, who constantly battled with Soviet censors and bureaucrats in an attempt to make the newspaper freer. Consequently, he was fired from his position in 1985. Today Škapars is remembered mostly as a politician, one of the Latvian Popular Front’s leaders, fighter for Latvia’s independence. However, his role in cultural life shall not be forgotten, too. Of course, the realities of the time still had to be taken into account, and the art criticism that appeared in Literatūra un Māksla although often very insightful and bold, still had to, to a certain degree, adapt to the framework of Socialist Realism.
Parallel to that, art criticism as a discipline also developed among Latvians living in the West — there it was unobstructed by the shackles of the communist ideology. Eleonora Šturma in the USA and Nikolajs Bulmanis in Canada were particularly active representatives of Latvian art criticism in exile.
When Latvia regained its independence, contemporary art, and art criticism with it, experienced an obvious rebirth — free from the boundaries, catching up with the lost decades of current art theory, establishing ties with the international community. The field is much more open today, of course. Year by year, contemporary art gained its foothold in the country, and with it the whole ecosystem around it. Later, with the increasing role of the Internet came the popularity of blogging and online press, and hence the doors to art criticism became wide open, like never before.
Still, for those looking to get into this career right from the start, there is no higher education establishment that would teach specifically art criticism. However, places like the Latvian Cultural Academy do hold critical seminars where it is possible to gain some knowledge of the craft. One of the few educational initiatives aimed particularly at art criticism is the Latvian Centre’s of Contemporary Art School of Art Criticism and Creative Writing, a sort of crash course in this discipline for all young aspiring critics. Such scarcity of educational programmes results in that most of those who come into the profession do it through other means: being initially journalists, writers, art historians, philosophers, and even artists themselves. This is, of course, a rather widespread case, not limited to Latvia, just perhaps it is more crystallised here. In the precarious and multitasked art world, a critic is never just a critic.
In the last decade, the also has been an important movement towards institutionalising art criticism in Latvia, creating a sort of rallying point for critics of all disciplines, from contemporary art to theatre, from cinema to poetry: the Normunds Naumanis Prize for Art Criticism, the highest Latvian award in this industry, established in 2015. It is named after Normunds Naumanis, a prominent theatre and cinema critic, journalist and researcher who passed away in 2014. The prize, which is awarded annually during the NN Nakts event in the New Riga Theatre, is itself a constant struggle to elevate the role of art criticism in the country. Recently, it has gotten official recognition as an award of national importance, and thus the support from the Ministry of Culture. The prize has, at the very least, succeeded in providing Latvian art criticism with some sort of point of reference, like a necessary annual medical check-up that allows to determine whether its communal organism is healthy enough. Through this award, it will be possible to study the history of Latvian art criticism post-2015 — as of today, it is almost ten years of contemporary chronicle. For better or worse, it is the same case as in all art-adjacent awards in the country: the pool of practitioners is so small that sooner or later, everyone even slightly deserving of recognition will be nominated or become a laureate — one has just to live long enough for their turn.
Speaking about particular art critics, it is worth mentioning a couple of more controversial ones, as these are the characters that usually stand out the most.
One such is the aforementioned Santa Hirša, an art historian and critic who has contributed a lot to the industry. In 2020, she was awarded the Normunds Naumanis Prize in recognition of her work. However, recently the attention she attracted was caused by more ambiguous accomplishments: one of the most notable things that were tied to her name just a year ago was the debate around the Riga International Biennial, RIBOCA. Arguably, Hirša ignited the campaign that eventually led to the indefinite postponement of RIBOCA, once the biggest contemporary art event in Latvia, if not the Baltics. The issues raised by her concerned financing, politics and heritage of the Biennial among Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and all those matters went quite in line with the zeitgeist and the public sentiment at that moment. Due to this campaign, Hirša became a unique example of an art world persona who actively worked towards making the landscape of her country’s art industry undeniably poorer, more provincial. It is not clear what exactly has she won for herself or the community — maybe it was done for sheer passion and guided by her honest personal convictions. Whichever the reasons, the consequences of her undertaking will be felt in the country for many years to come.
Latvian art criticism also knows stories of exceptional personal fall from grace: such was the case of a young prodigy Tomass Pārups. He got into the art world at 14, and in a few years already made a name for himself, being determined, smart and well-behaved, he had it all: curating exhibitions, giving out interviews, regularly publishing articles in print and web media, writing a book. All came to a rather abrupt end in 2021 when his girlfriend uncovered that Pārups was a domestic abuser, a violent character. The response was surprisingly quick and unanimous — he lost his reputation, his work, his merit. Even on the international scale, it is a rather rare case of a public figure actually being held accountable for their actions, answering with their career and reputation for violence they have committed. As a result, Pārups completely fell off the radar, disappearing from the Latvian art world.
Where to read Latvian art criticism? Of course, there is the Echo Gone Wrong portal, which covers Latvia among other Baltic countries, but there are also important local media — the downside is that the majority of them are, unsurprisingly, in Latvian, thus not so accessible to a foreigner.
Currently, academic art history and criticism are published in the annual Māksals Vēsture un Teorija (Art History and Theory) journal, a respectable outlet which sometimes publishes articles in English, usually written by international authors. There are also several more popular print publications, such as Māxlas Žurnāls (Art Magazine) and Rīgas Laiks (Riga Time). While the latter is rather well known — an established and respectable magazine covering culture, art and philosophy, Māxslas Žurnāls is a newcomer: not even a year old yet, but already a unique phenomenon in the industry, the only weekly art magazine in the country, passionately made by artists, critics, curators and other professionals, full of thought-provoking writing and heartfelt art. Everything is fleeting in Latvia, and recently things started to close down and die out even faster than before, but for Māxlas Žurnāls I hope the fate of all things will make an exception.
On the web, Arterritory and Satori are the two leading sources of quality art criticism, covering different creative industries and giving a platform to many local intellectuals and experts. In contrast to other Latvian media, the Arterritory publishes some of their art criticism articles in English, making it the most accessible getaway to Latvian art for anyone outside the country. Satori’s materials, on the other hand, are solely in Latvian, but it is perhaps our most important web media for art criticism — in more than 20 years of its existence, it has gathered a remarkable pool of authors from all spheres of Latvian culture.
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Such is the overview of how things are today — our personalities, our media, challenges and achievements. What path lies in front of us? The future of Latvian art criticism is inseparable from the future of Latvian art as a whole: therefore, of course, it will persist in one way or another. Surely it will evolve: it's no secret that a critic of today and tomorrow has much less influence over the discourse than he could have had in the 20th century. However, one could also look at it as a burden from which a critic is liberated. But since we’ve already established that art criticism is so tightly knit into the art ecosystem, it will inevitably remain poisoned and haunted by the same evils that our whole industry is constantly facing: provinciality, underfunding, above all — inertia that for now still spins our wheels. Things are done not because they have to be done, but because it is only natural to do them.
Peteris Bankovskis had it harsh, though somewhat right in his “Unnecessary reflections on art criticism”: “Do Latvian artists benefit in any way from Latvian art critics? Hardly. Is there any benefit to the people of Latvia in general from Latvian art criticism? Certainly not”. Who needs exhibition reviews, if most of the exhibitions can be seen by yourself in one evening? Who needs analytical insights into the trendiest artists if the market doesn’t exist? Why all these written words, if they rarely leave a small community that could have easily discussed everything at some cocktail party? Art criticism gets out of its bubble and becomes noticed by the wider public either when the Normunds Naumanis Prize is awarded, or when there is some sort of scandal that involves contemporary art — and then critics are invited to join the discussion, explaining the intricacies of the art world. It is sort of performative, yes, but it does somehow justify the role of a critic in the wider picture of Latvian society. Recently such scandals included the aforementioned case of RIBOCA, which sort of introduced the general population to the issue of institutional criticism in contemporary art. Other cases involve the problem of art in public spaces — for instance, a few years ago everyone was arguing about Kristians Brekte’s mural in honour of Latvian art legend Džemma Skulme, painted on the side of a school in central Riga. People were fiercely discussing its harmful effect on children and all those things, so painfully usual to anyone in the world of contemporary art — in such a situation, critics were voices of reason.
However, the seeming case of art criticism being mostly overlooked by the general Latvian public is only one side of the coin — the other being art criticism’s innateness to the art world’s system, the way it occurs as if by itself but becomes an indispensable part of the industry. If not for the funding, art criticism now is in the right conditions to grow and develop: it has institutionalised structure, with an annual prize that gets together all notable personalities, and freedom of expression, especially with the widespread of digital media. Therefore, there are almost no boundaries for emerging talents right now — and who knows, maybe someday there will come those from our ranks who will proudly raise Latvian art criticism to new heights. Until then, it is sufficient to survive, to do the routine work of words, trying to get some enjoyment out of it. After all, why would anyone indulge in this craft, if not for love and duty?