By Uma Nair

The Internet has become the hotbed for voracious appetites and discussions and a busy marketplace of "Da Vinci" debunkers.

Negative publicity presents marketing opportunity. Despite critics all over the world shouting hoarse, "The Da Vinci Code" is on way to becoming a market miracle. The Louvre Museum too, it seems, has made modest earnings, and is well on the way to long dreamt renovations.

In cinema as in art, has criticism lost its clout?

"Today modern day criticism has moved far beyond the 'single-cell' view of criticism," says an abstractionist in Washington.

"A critic today must describe as well as judge. I also think criticism has become more common placed and the verbal ability is more commonplace so that everyone understands. But I don't think the auction market or the people have anything to do with critics. It is a market that functions on free wheeling possibilities that are being dictated by dealers and auction houses," she adds.

Critics in the West have written that British artist Damien Hirst's works are generic or mundane.

Critic Jerry Saltz says Hirst is an artist who chose to render such run-of-the-mill sensationalist subjects in such run-of-the-mill ways. This truculent pumpkin, once so adept at failing in flamboyant ways, has gone from beery bluster to blowsy bathos!

But Hirst sells anything and everything and his much-boasted patron is Charles Saatchi, former advertising mogul and now a well-known collector who bought his "Pickled Shark!"

"From huge glass vitrines (cabinets) holding maggots, flies, cows heads and insectocuters-life cycle and fly holocaust enacted before our very eyes nothing has stopped Damien Hirst, not even his most articulating critics. Since then, he's famously immersed sharks and bisected cattle in formaldehyde, and become Britain's most famous artist since David Hockney."

Has respect for critical passion leaked out as the industry seeps in?

A look at Indian criticism shows that the quality of criticism, that is, the criteria it applies, are a yardstick for a certain community's cultural maturity. "There is no cultural maturity today; there is only a money conscious market, art has become a commodity," said Tyeb Mehta in an interview with me last year.

"During the years of independence, art criticism seems to have remained more independent from public funds and less involved in lobbying," says abstract artist Ram Kumar. "Critics like Richard Bartholomew and Charles Fabri were both revered and respected."

"I think the critic who has the power of expression and authority will always be respected and admired," says Jyotindra Jain. "In fact, when I curated a show at the National Gallery of Modern Art, I was amused to find that there was only one critical review that appeared, everything else was about who came, who was there, who was wearing what! I think the people who believe in serious art will look for good criticism. That is why Bodhi Art has created its own niche. The people, even collectors, have respect for qualitative in-depth insights that is rare!"

"Critics have to be independent of the market," says Tyeb. "This provides for more variety in art criticism, attempts to analyse and interpret works of art and also be obviously objective.

"But in today's world, a critic like me cannot write about a market unless I have been a part of it and tasted bouquets as well as brickbats as well as people proclaiming you to be either super or snooty!"

What should a modern day critic have?

"A modern day critic must have special gifts of intellectual penetration or access to deeper wisdom, but gravitas, worldly sophistication, armour-plated apprehension of his own intellectual superiority -- and wit (never underestimate that)," says New York Times critic Roberta Smith.

Says a financial economist in Chicago, "Art has become fashionable, it's a fad, a trend, new artists emerge, new bodies of work are shown, countless group exhibitions are touted as revelatory, to strangely little consequence...

"Indian writing is only talking money. Where is the art? Where is the insight? No one articulates the grounds on which certain artists become famous and others are marginalized. How did Damien Hirst become famous? Was it Charles Saatchi or his curation when he was 18 years old? How did Husain become famous? This gap is not only there in India, it is also in the West."

Looking at the art mart, there are lots of trends but everything seems to happen without explanation, as if the realm of contemporary art were simply following the rule of some natural order. I think a good critic is an icy genius who masters order in words like the legendary John Cannaday (New York Times) or Krishna Chaitanya of India who died years ago.

"Criticism today is an exercise in giving dignity to an artistic sentiment, dressing it in professorial robes, and expressing it with wonderful depth and elegance is an individual's ability," says P. Daroz, Delhi's premier ceramic artist with 35 years of work behind him. "I would look for criticism about my work because I want a serious documentation."

(Uma Nair is an English teacher at Don Bosco School, Delhi. She can be reached at umatnair@gmail.com)