Plagiarism, Art Criticism, and the Web

My compulsion to write about the absolutely contemporary in art has driven my life beyond disciplinary boundaries and institutional forms. This includes the prestigious magazines and newspapers I have written for, which by my own choice I have slowed down. When I made the choice to post online, concerns about managing intellectual property fell away for the opportunity for my own thought to be publicly accountable in its claims. Intellectual property is here less a matter of real estate and closer to being open to what is earned in the vulnerability of one’s own claims. It is a democracy, and it is no free-for-all.

I do not have a rigid view of what a blog is or does - it can be a savvy pile of links or a conversation that goes on for days. What I do know, however, is that as a media form, the blog is subject to exploitation through information technology as it appears in capitalism. This appears most drastically in the form of the splog, a vehicle by which an ad-free blog with strong content is lifted in its entirety, stealing hits for another’s earnings in Google ads.

People who have been reading this blog know that I recently discovered my writing was plagiarized. I do not distinguish this event fully from the splogging I describe above. Immediately apparent to me is that the plagiarist, Thomas Hollingworth, sapped my writing of all its critical bite in order to provide comparatively glowing fodder, the kind of writing that “member-supported” blogs would support, for example, or the kind of writing of someone who aspires to make his living freelancing to artists and galleries.

Despite any forgiveness that can be offered, this event of plagiarism is beyond the scope of two individual lives. Art criticism is vulnerable to market forces, and we have known this since the early days of Artforum. Here is John Coplans speaking as the former editor of Artforum in a 1977 interview:

“I'm not saying that Artforum played a major role, powerful role, all-embracing role in the marketing. Nevertheless, a bad review sometimes would cause a lack of confidence. Let's put it that way. Maybe it did not even necessarily affect the market, but it made the dealers work harder and think twice and made the clients think twice. They felt that they were operating under a severe handicap. After all, they were advertising in this magazine and this magazine was panning their artists. Time Magazine or any magazine you care to name, the New York Magazine, if somebody advertised it, there was no commitment, far from it, on the part of the Ford Motor Company advertising in Time for Time to describe or write or yell about the products for Time to be skeptical about the products, and there is no problem. They are buying advertising space. Unfortunately, because of the nature of French criticism as it was and certain other magazines that exist now such as Arts and Arts International where you can literally buy space, the feeling is that if a dealer advertises in a magazine, he expects some results from it. There was a time when it was important to advertise in Artforum at the insistence of the artist or it was the artist paying the money indirectly through commissions who was really buying the ad. Later this began to change. Advertising became very regular. It was part of contracts. They should advertise. This feeling was less and less that and the galleries felt that they were buying the space.”

The web has exponentially exaggerated this problem. As much as a few small bloggers such as myself wish to write outside of market interest, the danger of plagiarism in the contemporary art world is that strong critical writing holds no ground of its own outside of the press release.

In researching what one should do when plagiarized, the dominant Google search consideration seems to be that it should all occur behind closed doors, in discrete contact with editors, so that they can deal with the issue in privacy. But recently, critics have been reacting more strongly against their plagiarists, such as Jody Rosen this past August in Slate magazine, and more recently Lane Brown for New York magazine. My own reaction was brutal by comparison, using the violence of an image in the expression of my seething rage.

I have also been teaching art history in the academy for over ten years now, where plagiarism will get you expelled or fired from your tenure track position. Beyond learning disabilities and novice ignorance, in American culture a plagiarist is a wily character who knowingly takes a risk with consideration for his own benefit against all costs. In the case of Thomas Hollingworth, this is someone who lied several times over in signing his name.

Because it undermines the entire purpose of education to inspire thought, the academy requires a clear and final sentence in order to preserve the system. This is no less true for art criticism on the web. But without an institution as its vehicle, what is needed is a form of peer review and activism in blogger culture. This is what occurred in Karen Justl’s discovery. It needs to be extended to those magazines that have failed to live up to their insider credibility in hiring inexperienced and unethical writers (Update and qualification: M: The New York Artworld, which advertises itself as an "insider's" magazine, has still not taken down the plagiarized article. I am also surprised to see that in the midst of all this controversy, Hollingworth has posted on his site an interview for Whitehot Magazine. I did however, advise him to stick with interviews and am happy to see he has taken the suggestion), to those advertisers who wish to protect the status and quality of the work they advertise (CulturePundits has been contacted but as of this posting Hollingworth remains in their network. Update: Thank you, CulturePundits, for withdrawing from your network a site that knowingly published a plagiarized article!), to those web hosts who care about the integrity of their product (WordPress has cultivated a good reputation for this), to those critics who otherwise endorse criminal behavior by granting permission to post their words (in this case Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times), and above all, to those critics who are looking for a reputable place to write.

Catherine Spaeth

* John Coplans interview, 1975 Apr. 4 - 1977 Aug. 4, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.