Ask the Critic: Christopher Knight

Question: How do you prepare for an art review? Do you do much research beforehand, or do you prefer to walk in relatively cold and wait to be moved?

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Knight: I prepare for shows with two martinis and a good night’s sleep. Beyond that, it depends on the exhibition.

Gallery shows I typically see cold, since art galleries usually present new work not shown before. Museum exhibitions are different. Most often they reinterpret and re-contextualize known quantities, so if it’s possible I usually read the exhibition catalog or, in the case of a single-artist retrospective, some biographical material before my visit.

In the end, however, the show is the thing -- the art objects themselves, their display and their relationships to one another and to me. (One great thing about art is that, even if an object is 1,000 years old, it lives in the present.) My aim in writing is not simply to report my experience of an exhibition. Instead I write with two things in mind: first, to find out what I think; and second, to find a way to invite a reader into that process of discovery.