When Tyler Green takes on ethics, he consistently blows me away.
Upon hearing that Viveros-Faune is planning on keeping his incredibly influential role as Village Voice critic even as he remains a key player in two art fairs, Modern Art Notes threw down the gauntlet. Green suggested that the Voice fire Viveros-Faune if this little conflict-of-interest issue isn't straightened out.
It would have been easier for Tyler to just throw up his hands and exclaim that the artworld is like the Wild West, and that bad behavior could just as easily be called creative or passionate or connected. Or he could have just said, "Oh, well! Just because I have a problem with this doesn't mean that everyone in this circle isn't running around sticking their fingers in one another's pies! I should just get over it!"
There is Quixotic beauty in the way Green consistently insists on ethical behavior in the art world, and in this instance, he's completely right. While any asshole can write art criticism (present company included), not everyone is a published art journalist for a major print publication. If all art journalists lived by Viveros-Faune's everybody's doing it defense, there would be no such thing as an independent reporter of art news. Everyone would be a newsmaker and a newsreporter at the same time. There would be echo chambers on your echo chambers!
That's fine for bloggers and it may even be okay for the occasional freelancer. But the Voice position, on the other hand, is...
...well, it's a position. There are so few of those. And as a regular gig that ostensibly removes the holder's need to make money, it's entirely too influential be held by someone with such a direct conflict of interest.
The bottom line is that someone needs to be watching and reporting on the Machine who is not being fed by the Machine. I applaud this Modern Art Notes tough call.
