In 1910, the Salon des Indépendants in Paris exhibited a painting by a mysterious young Italian painter named Joachim-Raphael Boronali. Nobody had ever seen him or heard of him before. The painting, entitled Et le soleil s’endormit sur l’Adriatique, was a brightly coloured and abstract work. In an accompanying manifesto, Boronali named his new style ‘excessivism’. Critics debated the quality of this new work, and discussed whether it could indeed be the next step in painting. In the meantime, newspaper reporters went looking for the ‘man behind the work’. When they eventually found him, however, the man behind the work turned out to be a donkey, who went by the name of Lolo. Its owner, the novelist Roland Dorgelès, had attached a brush to the donkey's tail in order for it to create its masterpiece. In this way, Dorgelès wanted to unmask the empty rhetoric of art criticism.

Art critics traditionally enjoy a bad reputation. The critic is considered an elitist, a mandarin and a know-it-all. He is the sour-puss who spoils the festive premiere or exhibition. Especially among artists, the critic stands in low esteem. Their opinion of critics, expressed in Dorgelès’ practical joke, is perhaps most waspishly formulated by the Irish playwright Brendan Behan: ‘Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it is done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves.’ Consequently, artists usually ignore critics, or, at times, fear them.

Who will mourn the extinction of these armchair experts? This is, after all, what we increasingly hear: that the critic is moribund. Academic and magazine critics, and critics from both of the visual arts, the performing arts, and literature, have it that there is a crisis.