The mode of review of visual art exhibitions as normally carried out by most press agents for publication or broadcasting in media Organization is not encouraging and sometimes misleading. For example, Oloidi (2001) while writing on “The Development of Professionalism in the Media and the Academic Art Criticism in Nigeria (1920-1996)”, observes that, it was common to read a newspaper and found an art reporter, reporting about an exhibition with the direct lifting of the words from exhibiting catalogue. He further stated that “many journalists who had been fevered by mediocrity and were therefore lazy in their writings were able to use the catalogues to address traces of their professional shortfalls if not outright incompetence”.
The media reports about visual art exhibitions are not supposed to be presented in a hasty and unwholesome manner the way Oloidi has mentioned, yet reverse seems to be the case. However, since the public (the audience of visual art) depends on such media comments, for an objective report which will go a long way in helping to promote the exhibiting artists, there is a need to educate those who are directly concerned with review of exhibitions. Through this, objective press comments will contribute to analyzing such exhibitions for the artist to see his/her shortcomings in the practice of his/her profession. This can be well achieved if media art reporters did not only stop receiving exhibition catalogues through the windows but also visit exhibitions as well as artists in their studios and see things for themselves.
Another kind of reviews observed to be carried out in the mass media especially the printing media is using the overwhelming flattery vocabularies which are meant to exalt the artist’s creative talent/ capabilities beyond the normal. Jegede described this as “perfunctionary and flattering distasteful”. Such reviews can hardly give an objective picture of the artist and the nature of the works as genuinely and professionally required. The consequence of this is the filtering of substandard reference materials in the main stream of contemporary art literary materials. When researches on contemporary art are to be carried out, such materials are bound to find their way in the final analysis of researchers.
The problems associated with visual art criticism in the media are similar to those of exhibition reviews by press agents who claim to be professional art writers/ reporters. However, the damage done to art criticism by the publication of unprofessional write-ups by some media organizations especially in print media, is part of the reason that contemporary Nigerian art is grossly misinterpreted in most of the western literatures.
According to Abayomi, (1990), most art critics including the ones working as agents of media are ignorant of what art criticism is all about. He stated that,
To be an art critic, you need to read a lot on that area. It is not the same as writing on social events. Art apart from being a means of expression also satisfies some technical requirements. You have to know the difference between gouache and wash, between pastel, poster colour and water colour. Or what are the basic differences between acrylic and oil (National Concord, June 7th, 1990, p.5).
Abayomi’s position on this issue is that, an art writer must know a few things about tonal effect and composition, not only going to exhibitions and saying that the artist had ‘procession in the desert’ or waterside’. You must be technically adequate”. His arguments were that, sometimes an artist would do a work which is technically deficient but art writers would be praising them unnecessary.
To review a work of art goes beyond just writing about it, because it involves a whole lot of things in the field of art history. For example, the writer must consider form- colour, line, texture and shape of the work; the background of the individual artist, the iconographical signs/symbols on the body of the work and sometime considers/links the work to some critical theories which help in explaining the socio-political background in which the work was made as well as the particular audience of the work. This because different kinds of works serves different audiences. All these are done with the view to establishing contextual meaning as well as the socio-political, religious or cultural relevance of the work to the general public. Aside from these, the work is just a fine piece of art that contributes little or nothing in the society which it is created. Some people rather builds their review more on aesthetics, forgetting the fact that something ignites then artist's feelings which eventually give rise the creation of such work.
A good review of any art piece does not only promote the artist but also educate the public on the message the art work is sending. This makes people find the relevance of art in the society as well as patronize it.
