In 1961, Clement Greenberg walked through a warehouse of canvases and selected which works would define Post-Painterly Abstraction. His choices became canon. Artists he championed entered major collections; those he ignored often vanished from institutional memory. The critic's word functioned as prophecy—not predicting value, but creating it.

That world no longer exists. Today, a scathing review in Artforum rarely dents an artist's auction trajectory, while a single Instagram post from a mega-collector can redirect market attention overnight. The legitimation function that critics once monopolized has migrated elsewhere, distributed across auction houses, algorithm-driven platforms, and curator-collector networks that operate with different logics entirely.

This shift represents more than a change in media landscape—it reflects a fundamental restructuring of how artistic value gets constructed and communicated. Understanding what replaced critical authority matters for anyone navigating contemporary art institutions, whether as practitioner, collector, or policy maker. The mechanisms that now perform legitimation work differently than criticism did, with consequences for which art survives and what cultural narratives get written.

Mid-twentieth-century art criticism operated as a genuine power structure. Critics didn't merely describe or evaluate—they functioned as institutional gatekeepers whose judgments directly shaped museum acquisitions, gallery representation, and collector confidence. Clement Greenberg's championing of Abstract Expressionism didn't reflect market consensus; it manufactured it.

The mechanism worked through concentrated media authority. A handful of publications—Art in America, Artforum, October—commanded the attention of everyone who mattered in the art ecosystem. Collectors read critics to understand what to buy. Curators cited critical frameworks to justify acquisitions. Gallery dealers positioned artists in relation to critical discourse. This created feedback loops where critical attention generated institutional attention, which generated market attention.

Harold Rosenberg and Greenberg famously battled over Abstract Expressionism's meaning—Action Painting versus formalist opticality—and their disagreement structured how an entire movement was understood and valued. Rosenberg's emphasis on existential gesture versus Greenberg's focus on flatness and medium-specificity weren't just interpretive differences; they determined which artists fit the narrative and which didn't.

This system had obvious problems. Critical gatekeeping was overwhelmingly white, male, and concentrated in New York. The careers it elevated reflected those biases systematically. Yet the system's legibility gave it a certain accountability. Critics published arguments that could be examined, debated, and contested. When Michael Fried declared minimalism 'theatrical' and therefore failed, readers could engage his reasoning and decide whether his framework held.

The critic-as-gatekeeper model required specific conditions: scarce media space, concentrated institutional attention, and a collector class that sought cultural legitimation through alignment with critical consensus. Each of these conditions has since eroded, but the legitimation function they served hasn't disappeared—it's migrated to mechanisms that operate by different rules.

Takeaway

Critical power depended on media scarcity and institutional concentration—when everyone who mattered read the same publications, critical opinion could function as a coordinating mechanism for collective judgment.

The auction house emerged as criticism's primary replacement in the legitimation hierarchy. When Christie's reports a record sale, the price is the verdict—requiring no argument, no defense, no engagement with aesthetic questions. Market performance offers a clarity that critical discourse never could: indisputable, comparable, numerical.

This shift accelerated dramatically in the 1990s as contemporary art became an established asset class. Auction houses began offering evening sales dedicated to living artists, creating regular public benchmarks for market standing. The secondary market, once a lagging indicator of reputation, became a leading indicator that primary galleries and institutions couldn't ignore.

Collector networks now perform evaluation functions that critics once held. When major collectors—François Pinault, Eli Broad, the Rubells—acquire an artist's work, their choice signals quality to other market participants more effectively than any review. These collectors often sit on museum boards, donate to exhibitions, and fund publications, creating integrated systems where their preferences shape institutional programming.

The implications are profound. Market legitimation doesn't require articulated criteria—it operates through revealed preference and financial commitment. A collector spending $2 million on a painting has demonstrated conviction more compellingly than any critic praising the same work. This shifts authority from those who can argue persuasively to those who can spend decisively.

Art advisors have emerged as intermediary figures in this landscape, combining market knowledge with aesthetic judgment to guide collector decisions. Unlike critics writing for public audiences, advisors work confidentially for paying clients. Their influence is real but invisible—you can't read an advisor's assessment in any publication, yet their recommendations shape acquisition patterns across major collections.

Takeaway

When price becomes the primary quality signal, the burden of justification shifts from critics who must argue to collectors who must only pay—making legitimation simultaneously more efficient and less accountable.

Instagram has become the contemporary art world's most consequential legitimation platform, though its mechanisms differ fundamentally from both critical and market models. Visibility on the platform functions as a form of endorsement—artists who gain followers gain institutional attention, regardless of what any critic writes about their work.

The algorithm rewards specific visual characteristics: high contrast, saturated color, immediate legibility at small scale, distinctiveness amid endless scroll. Work that photographs well outperforms work that requires physical encounter. This creates selection pressure toward certain aesthetics—not through explicit judgment but through differential amplification.

Art fair booth placement has emerged as another form of de facto critical positioning. Where a gallery places an artist within Frieze or Art Basel communicates institutional commitment more clearly than catalog essays. Prime booth positioning signals belief in market viability; project space placement signals developmental potential. Collectors read these signals expertly, often making acquisition decisions based on fair presentation before engaging with the work itself.

Museum exhibition announcements now function as legitimation events independent of critical response. When MoMA or Tate announces a solo show, the selection itself confers status—reviews of the resulting exhibition matter less than the institutional choice to mount it. This transfers legitimation authority from critics to curators, who operate with different criteria and accountability structures.

The distributed nature of contemporary legitimation makes it simultaneously more democratic and less transparent. More pathways exist to visibility than when three critics controlled discourse. But the mechanisms that now amplify or suppress artistic careers—algorithms, advisor networks, fair committees—operate with little public articulation of their criteria. Power hasn't diminished; it's become harder to locate and contest.

Takeaway

Contemporary legitimation operates through visibility metrics and institutional inclusion rather than critical argument—making the mechanisms that shape artistic careers powerful but largely invisible and unaccountable.

The legitimation function hasn't disappeared—it's been unbundled and distributed across mechanisms that operate without critical reasoning's demands. Auction results, Instagram metrics, fair placements, and collector networks all perform evaluation work, but none requires the articulated criteria that criticism once provided.

This creates strategic imperatives for anyone navigating contemporary art institutions. Success now requires fluency in multiple legitimation systems simultaneously: critical discourse still matters in academic and some curatorial contexts, while market performance dominates collector attention and algorithmic visibility shapes public recognition.

Whether this represents progress or loss depends on what you valued in the old system. The concentration of critical authority enabled bias and gatekeeping; its dispersal has opened pathways. But distributed legitimation also obscures accountability—when no one must justify their judgments publicly, power becomes harder to contest and change becomes harder to direct.