I was impressed by Jonathan Jones's ability to make such an implacable division between "friends" and 'artists" since my own experience as a critic is to find myself teetering on a constantly sliding scale of intimacy.
The dance world is both small and loyal, with performers and choreographers routinely attending each other's shows, and as a result I am, at the very least, on nodding terms with most of those I write about. It's hard for me to think of myself as an anonymous, detached observer of the scene when I am routinely confronted with the real people behind my reviews. Going out to work of an evening comes with the personal complication of bumping into someone to whom I may have given a stinking notice, or even more distractingly, a rave. But as Michael Billington points out, the complicated trade description that comes with today's job means that critics can never hope to retain an objective distance.
Writing features and news stories means having to interview/hang out with most of the leading practitioners of the art form, and all these muddle a critical relationship. To spend an hour and a half in someone's company (and in the relatively non ego bound dance world, there are no minders or PR people intervening between you and them) is to engage on a different level. It's not just that you hope to get something personal from your subject (a life story, emotional insight, even some insider gossip) but that you are hearing their version of the dance they have created, the performance they are about to give. It is very different judging a work about which you have heard all the creator's hopes and intentions, than it is seeing it cold.
But just because it is complicated does not make it a bad thing. Dance is created live on bodies, it's a communal art form, and no critic can really understand what they are writing about if they simply view it from the safe distance of the stage. Methods of production, rehearsal and creation vary extravagantly between a kabuki company, a small modern dance troupe and a large ballet institution. A critic needs behind-the-scenes information - and inevitably that comes with some added relationship with the artists themselves.
And for those who suggest that this compromises judgement, I would argue that as soon as we develop strong tastes and preferences we are already compromised. Like Billington, I always hope to be surprised, converted and informed by any new work, regardless of my past knowledge of its creator. But if I see a bad piece by a choreographer I admire, or a bad performance by a talented dancer, I can't deny that I'm likely to be more interested in why the result was bad, than I would be with someone whose work I hadn't rated highly in the past.
We play a double game as critics. We do our best to erase personal loyalties from our writing, yet we are hired for our personal opinions and our personal knowledge. We aspire to being objective, yet it's our involvement with the art form and the practitioners that makes us do the job.
Some artists make it easier than others to walk the tightrope. I once gave a very muted review to a choreographer whom I admired. I knew her socially, we had friends in common, we had always got on very well. It didn't stop me criticising her work, but after the review had been published, she rang me up and asked if we could talk in greater depth about what I'd written..
This seemed to me an amazingly modest, and amazingly grown up, approach. But therein lies another Catch 22. Being critics requires us to become acquainted with talented, and often rather wonderful, human beings, yet there is a line that can't be crossed in the relationship, even if for me it is more blurred than it is for Jones. Real intimacy, dropping round to supper intimacy, sharing problems, knowing each other's children/lovers/parents - that isn't going to work. And it is a shame because the people we write about as critics are often those with whom we have most in common. In another life, they might be the people with whom we would be very good friends.
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