Try as I might to ignore the Sydney Morning Herald, I am regularly struck by the transparently partisan, sensational and negligent quality of much of its visual arts reportage and criticism. It has been a depressing sight to observe the Sydney broadsheet's relegation of the field to the back blocks of newsprint real estate, increasingly resembling an afterthought, a once or twice a week aside, save the odd scandal or uproar. In timely coincidence with the apparent demise of visual art review/criticism in the Herald's weekend arts liftout 'Spectrum', a lead title on this section's cover read 'Confessions of an Art Critic'. The article proper, 'Just don't think of it as Art', offered godawful insight on the forces at play channeled through writer Bernard Zuel. Last time I noticed Zuel was a CD reviewer, but something had clearly flipped and here we were presented with a thesis that basically people do not want art in their lives, never have, never will. He offers that 'Much of the art being made today is being made for people who don't care and aren't going to care. Those publishers, producers and artists who are failing are the ones who haven't recognised this yet. There is no inherent market for the arts, there is no untapped source of support. It's not going to get any better'.2 The piece cites the restless proletariat's overall preference for popular over creative forms of culture, giving examples in the fields of music, television, film and theatre, conceding only that the reception of 'high art' is by 'a small audience, almost by definition an elite audience...quality art always has been for an elite audience. It is self-serving to... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline