Hamilton[4] writes to distinguish this genre:...criticism that appears in newspapers is written for a general audience, and the real substance of newspaper art criticism can best be summed up as providing an antidote for the 'vernacular glance'.
This term, coined by art historian Brian O'Doherty in 1974,[5] refers to the modern phenomenon of viewing an exhibition casually, with eyes darting indiscriminately from object to object in an ineffectual effort to take in the entire exhibition at once.
The work of the critic is effectively to map an exhibition for an audience, and thereby transform the vernacular glance into an informed glance that is capable of discerning either meaning or emptiness in the work on show.Barker and Green, noting the number of art critics writing for newspapers in the 1970s, consider that 'this writing was essentially ephemeral, based on the assessment of the wide spectrum of ... exclusively local, art exhibitions.
[6] In 2012 Osborne noticed a general devaluing and disparagement of the newspaper critic and warned that: ... the progressively weakened position of newspaper art criticism and the threat of it disappearing altogether from mass market newspapers ... could have far-reaching repercussions ... a nodal rupture in the network of relationships between the art world and the wider public.
The complex ecology of the art world needs this link with the wider public.