Hanno Soans: An art critic must constantly read literature

Art critic and Estonian Academy of Arts lecturer Hanno Soans has published a collection that brings together texts on contemporary art written over his 30-year career. In an interview on Klassikaraadio, he discussed the nature of art criticism and why reading literature is indispensable in a critic's work. Soans called for creating institutional support for valuing art criticism in Estonia.

Art critic and longtime lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts Hanno Soans has published a substantial collection, "Egotrip as Someone Else. Excerpts on Contemporary Art from 1994-2024", which brings together the most significant texts from the past three decades of his work.

In an interview on the Klassikaraadio programme "Art Ministry", Soans admitted that he had hoped to publish the book around his 50th birthday, which was roughly eighteen months ago. "This process has been long, and when I was scraping together my own output, there were over 250 articles in the selection," he explained, adding that he ultimately selected 69 texts. He found the title himself, but his good friend Anders Härm helped with the selection process.

Literature as a critic's tool

Soans emphasises that an art critic's reading should not be limited to theory books alone. "What is very important for being able to bring an artwork to life in writing is also constant reading of literature," he said. According to him, the critic's task is to weave the artistic text together with broader theoretical arguments, but it is literary experience that gives vitality to the text.

Soans says that developments as a writer come as unexpected leaps. "In a sense, art still provides this, and the art critic must gather those threads from current art practice to start producing broader conversational material," he noted. He has always been captivated by art's role in the author's identity politics. "The dimension of self-creation has always interested me," Soans added.

Criticism needs institutional support

Soans noted that there are places in Estonia where art critics can write, and highlighted editor Juhan Raud as a positive example, who has worked at both Postimees and Sirp. "Over the years there came a moment when an editor could send something back to you and ask whether you had expressed yourself very clearly in that sentence; that had been missing for a long time," he said.

Soans sees the lack of institutional support for the future of art criticism as the greatest problem. "The biggest gap is the lack of some institution that would take on the legacy of art criticism and value it; this could be done by Kumu, the Contemporary Art Centre of Estonia, or Kunst.ee," he noted. Soans proposed creating an annual award for current art criticism and compiling an anthology that would represent different formats of contemporary art criticism.