Recently a promising young artist was confronted by the following dilemma. After years of working hard to produce and promote her work to critics and dealers, she encountered a critic whose response to her work was enthusiastic and fervent. He proposed a major, comprehensive article on her work to appear in a major art magazine. Of course, the artist was delighted. Unfortunately, she felt that he had completely misunderstood her work. At the same time, she was offered the opportunity to write an article on her work in a much lesser-known, artists-run publication. Of course, she could not do both. She would lose the critic’s support, and all the recognition and financial support that would bring, if she made clear her rejection of his reading of her work. If she allowed him to write the article, on the other hand, she would lose control over the public meaning of her work. She decided that economic support for her work was more important, declined the offer to write about her own work, and let him write the article instead.
Adrian Piper, “Power Relations within Existing Art Institutions,” 1983 (via kamface)
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