Bringing Back the Nerdocracy

by Paddy Johnson and Corinna Kirsch on January 9, 2015 · 21 comments Resources

love-blogroll Yesterday, we wrote a post about how we miss the blogging days of yore. Those were the days when the nerdocracy ruled the web, comment wars flared up on imageless posts, and the social currency of any blogger was found in the number of links that directed traffic to their site. That occurred not just in daily posting, but in the link lists in the margins of a blog’s front page. These lists were referred to as blogrolls.

So, who were these bloggers and where have they gone? We’re not going to be able to answer all those questions in this post, but we’ve started by creating a good ol’ fashioned blogroll. The list is separated into sections, as many blogrolls were. (Soon, we plan on adding our blogroll to a dropdown page at the top of our menu.)

There will, however, be a significant difference to our blogroll; unlike bloggers 10 years ago, who would occasionally go through their blogroll and edit out the links to inactive blogs, ours contains a section specifically dedicated to those bloggers who are no longer with us. They are an important part of art history on the web, and they should be remembered for that.

If we’ve missed any art blogs, feel free to add a mention in the comments section. We’ll add them to the blogroll.

MAGAZINE-STYLE AND GROUP ART BLOGS

Adult Magazine
Animal
The Art Blog
Art City, Mary Louise Schumacher for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Art Critical
Artforum
Artnet News
ArtInfo
Art in America
The Art Market Monitor
The Art Newspaper
Artnews
Art Observed (now primarily a reblog)
Art Practical
Bad at Sports
Big Red and Shiny
BMore Art
Colossal
Conscientious Photography Magazine
Contemporary Art Daily
Daily Serving
DIS Magazine
The Fox Is Black
Hyperallergic
Make Space
Newcity Art
The Performance Club
Portland Art
Printersting, John Pyper
Spoon and Tamago
Two Coats of Paint
Vandalog
We Make Money Not Art
White Hot Magazine

ACTIVE SINGLE-AUTHOR BLOGS

About Last Night, Terry Teachout
Art Blog Art Blog, Joshua Abelow
The Art Law Blog, Donn Zaretsky
Art Law Office, Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento
Art Sucks, Coco Art Juggernaut
Blake Gopnik (Content also published on artnet News)
Chris Rusak
Culture Grrl (Began on Blogspot, but quickly moved to Arts Journal)
Dennis Hollingworth
Ed Winkleman
Fette, Sans
Greg.org, Greg Allen
HaberArts, John Haber
I Like This Art, Jordan Tate
In Terms Of, Christopher Howard
Jerry Magoo (Group blog run by artists)
Joanie Gagnon San Chirico
Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
Latent Image, Max Marshall
Let My People Show,Robin Cembalest
The Modern Art Notes Podcast, Tyler Green
Newgrist, Joy Garnett
A New Nothing, Brian Ulrich
Prosthetic Knowledge, Rich Olegsby
Real Clear Arts, Judith Dobrzynski
Schwartz
Tom Moody (plus archives)
Uhutrust, Michaela Eichwald

DEFUNCT, DELETED, OR PRIVATE

Anonymous Female Artist – Militant Art Bitch, Edna
Art.Blogging.La (URL now redirects to Art.com)
Christopher Reiger, (Now a personal website)
Geoff Edgers (redirects to his personal blog)
Iheartphotograph, Laurel Ptak (some archives at iheartphotograph.blogspot.com)
Personism, Jen Bekman
Philagrafika
Post Internet, Gene McHugh (now a book)

Tagged as: art, art blog, blog, blogs

{ 21 comments }

Paul Germanos January 9, 2015 at 9:23 pm

RE:Chicago – Whether it’s of interest, while I did contribute to Bad at Sports and Newcity Art which you’ve linked above, I was, to the best of my knowledge, the first person in Chicago to use digital photography and the internet to rapidly archive, and distribute, an overview of the city’s art scene.

I independently produced and maintained the best visual record of artwork shown in Chicago, from 2008-2013, by means of a photoblog hosted on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73059802@N00/

From 2010-2013 I struggled with text at Chicago Critical:

http://paulgermanos.blogspot.com/

In 2014 I began to bring together my 5000 image archive (shot 2002-2015) with criticism, in Chicago Art World:

http://chicagoartworld.blogspot.com/

Paddy Johnson January 9, 2015 at 11:08 pm

We were just talking about your photos too! Sorry about that! We’ll add!

Paul Germanos January 10, 2015 at 12:54 am: Thank you for your consideration, Paddy.

RobertWBoyd January 9, 2015 at 11:47 pm

http://www.thegreatgodpanisdead.com/

The Great God Pan Is Dead, a Houston-centric art blog.

tom moody January 10, 2015 at 10:59 am

I know you’re trying to be helpful, and I appreciate the mention, but constructing an “online art media mafia” that includes yourselves and then banishing others to the list of mere “active blogs” is fairly damaging to certain people you are trying to assist. I urge you to rethink these categories. For example, why in the world is Two Coats of Paint in the mafia but not Greg.org (isn’t the latter someone you were concerned students hadn’t heard of)?

Paddy Johnson January 10, 2015 at 11:18 am: Yeah, I see your point. Any suggestions for different names? Two Coats was added in the mafia section because she has multiple contributors now, but it’s an imperfect list.
Paddy Johnson January 10, 2015 at 11:39 am: Updating some names and moving some stuff around now. Category names haven’t changed, because I haven’t thought of a better header yet.
Paddy Johnson January 10, 2015 at 11:44 am: Changed “Active blogs” to “Active Single Author Blogs”. I think that should make a difference. Moved some people around.

tom moody January 10, 2015 at 12:10 pm

I appreciate the changes so far. Instead of “online art media mafia” how about “Magazine Style and Group Blogs”? You have the problem of distinguishing between a magazine and a journal but I think people get the difference between People and Paris Review. I could make a joke and say that having Artnews and Hyperallergic in the same bin inspires the title “Legacy and Wannabe Art Mafia Online.”
Since you have The Jogging under “Image-Only, Active, Influential” I would remove it from the “Mafia” category — enough is enough.

Paddy Johnson January 10, 2015 at 12:51 pm: Well, Magazine Style and Group Blogs is a whole lot less fun. BUT, I’ve changed it because I agree that it’s a much clearer description of what it is. Thanks for the suggestion! Also move The Jogging. It was an accident that the blog was listed twice.
Hrag Vartanian January 11, 2015 at 12:09 pm: I’m so glad this post has many sourpuss Tom comments, since that was always part of the culture of old skool art blogs.

Christopher Howard January 10, 2015 at 12:52 pm

Global Warming Your Cold Heart, active from 2006 to 2009, was a two-person blog written by de Selby and Christopher Howard: http://www.globalwarmingyourcoldheart.com/

The Professor January 10, 2015 at 1:13 pm

Infinite Mile http://infinitemiledetroit.com
WAGMAG http://wagmag.org
ART HAPS http://www.arthaps.com
Anne Russinof’s Gallery Travels http://gallerytravels.blogspot.com
Painter’s Table http://painters-table.com

salvador castillo January 10, 2015 at 10:54 pm

Great God Pan Is Dead
http://www.thegreatgodpanisdead.com
@rwboyd

MW Capacity
https://mwcapacity.wordpress.com

tom moody January 11, 2015 at 2:22 pm

Hrag Vartanian doesn’t know about criticism, so he uses the term “sourpuss.” “Grump” and “cranky” are also favorites of mine.

strunken white January 11, 2015 at 11:15 pm

adding suggestions:
http://portalenportalen.blogspot.com and http://pietmondriaan.com are favorite image-only multi-author blogs and http://art-damaged.tumblr.com is a nice infrequently updated project-based blog by Christopher Schreck of instances in which art works have been defaced

Adam Zucker January 12, 2015 at 4:50 pm

Hi ArtFCity team! I’m adding two suggestions of art blogs. The first is my art historical blog which focuses on Figurative Expressionsim and socially engaged art among other critical topics: http://rhinohornartists.wordpress.com/ and here is the blog for the non-profit arts organization More Art which is committed to bringing socially engaged public art to the NY community in under-served areas: http://moreart.org/blog/

Hungry Hyaena January 12, 2015 at 7:10 pm

Wow…quite a trip down blogger memory lane. Thanks for this, Paddy.

One note: Hungry Hyaena is still alive, albeit at a new URL (http://www.christopherreiger.com/blog/), which is within my personal portfolio site. The older HH posts are still archived at the original Blogger URL.

jonbeer January 16, 2015 at 3:21 pm

I’m adding http://www.Art-Rated.com – Artist interviews, art news and exhibition reviews from a small team of contemporary artists.

Nicole Casamento January 16, 2015 at 4:49 pm

Hello Art F City,

The Art Dealers Association has a relatively new blog on Tumblr ‘Inside Stories,’ featuring interviews with art dealers, thematic lists of current member shows and occasional spotlights on special catalogues: http://the-adaa.tumblr.com/

Franklin Einspruch January 20, 2015 at 3:17 pm

Artblog.net is an active (since 2003!), single-author blog. I’d appreciate an add if it’s no trouble.

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Bringing Back the Nerdocracy

MAGAZINE-STYLE AND GROUP ART BLOGS

ACTIVE SINGLE-AUTHOR BLOGS

ONLINE ART JOURNALS and NON-PROFITS

IMAGE-ONLY BLOGS, MULTI-AUTHOR, INFLUENTIAL

SURF CLUBS, ACTIVE

SURF CLUBS, DEFUNCT

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DEFUNCT, ARCHIVED

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