Contemporary art is a lot like the contemporary economy: while the specialists explain, ordinary people feel sick. That is, if those people understand anything at all. Usually they don't. The conversation goes on in bird language.

I have never written about the visual arts (and I am colour-blind besides); I wrote about music. Rock, pop, jazz. That, too, is a non-trivial task, take my word for it. All my life I have heard the same thing: hooow can you write about music when it is indescribable… with art it is much the same.

How does one write about art? A good question. The answer: simply. I am not joking.

I spent a decade and a half working at various magazines. Editing sections on concerts, lifestyle, leisure in Moscow and culture of every other kind. In other words, I went to exhibitions, published announcements about them, conducted interviews, and so on and so forth. Yet I could almost never read the press releases. And even stealing something from them was hellishly hard.

What stops you dead in them at once is the inhuman language, written for no one can tell whom. Any good text is individual, while all the bad ones seem written from the same carbon copy. Repetitions. Verbosity. A glut of professional terms, and yet at the same time sharp value judgements and banalities. «The painting captivates with its soulfulness» — what the hell does that mean? Or something about «discourse». It is like that joke — dad, who were you just talking to? No, I can figure it out myself, I have held Baudrillard's books in my hands, but the reader en masse will simply skip past it.

«Simply» was not a slip of the tongue. Art is a complicated subject, and for description it is the most difficult of all. And that does not mean one must write about it with flourishes. Quite the opposite — since the subject is ambiguous, the description must be extremely clear. A clear text comes only when you yourself feel some special attitude toward the artist or the work, love or hate. In our journalism they tell young writers the same: write, they say, about what you either love intensely or hate fiercely. The second is preferable, but, alas, that is not our case.

Of course we have to write good things about our projects, only good things and nothing but good things. We have the best exhibition in Moscow, in Russia, in the world. That is understood, that is not up for discussion. But without a real emotion no one will believe you anyway, and clichés about «genuine mastery» and all that «spirituality» kill living speech at once.

In truth, readers could not care less about that genuine mastery; it is not what they go to exhibitions for. Just as they go to concerts not to hear «true virtuosos with academic training», but — the music.

So, first of all we need to write what exactly is special about our project. Say, the artist has never exhibited in Moscow. Or it was a very long time ago. Or for the first time — in such completeness. You know that better than anyone. You already know it — otherwise there would be no exhibition. So write it that way! Without any «as the brightest representative of such-and-such a school, he managed to exert a significant influence on subsequent generations». Those are clichés, and that is filler. One must write to the point. If there is a school — what is special about it. If he exerted influence — how it shows itself now, that is interesting. Roughly speaking, what the proverbial Damien Hirst owes to some Malevich, Duchamp, or whoever it is you are exhibiting… That is what is fine about art — that there is continuity in it.

On vocabulary. Do not think I am calling for professional terminology to be replaced with everyday words. That is impossible and that is wrong. Terms must be there, of course. But, first, it is better to explain them; second, to use them where they are truly necessary for understanding your idea. And, third, professional jargon is usually taken by everyone as a licence to write muddily and thickly. That is wrong. A sentence should be built simply. Best of all — short sentences with «direct» syntax.

We journalists have a principle: one idea — one article (I first heard it from my father some twenty years ago). In a press release and an announcement, of course, there may not be one idea but, say, three. For example, what the exhibits are (see above), what the artist is famous for, and some «meat» (biographical, the history of his works, and so on). So that in the end both the editor and an ordinary person understand why it is worth seeing all this at all. So that readers take an interest, and journalists have something to work with. I repeat: one should not repeat (forgive the tautology) the same thing. One idea — one paragraph.

On form and layout. At the beginning: the exhibition title, dates and periods. Then — the description. At the end one may put a brief bio of the artist, with his quotations. The last is for journalists as «meat». But avoid empty phrases of the kind «I create for God» or «my art is for the good of the Motherland». Perhaps he really did say that, but journalists have nothing to do with banalities, and ordinary people simply take no interest in them.

Yes, of course, the brighter the exhibition (concert, film) — the easier it is to describe what the «hook» actually is. As for the style of the text, we shall talk separately.