Tommaso Trini's 1971 essay on the identity crisis of art criticism

In a 1971 essay republished in his 2016 anthology "Mezzo secolo di arte intera. Scritti 1964-2014" (Johan & Levi, Milan), critic Tommaso Trini diagnoses a fundamental identity crisis in art criticism. He argues that critics lack a distinct identity, oscillating between serving as mere assistants to artists and seeking protagonism. Trini contends that critics rarely ask "and I, Lord God?" while artists freely say "I." He critiques the critic's role as a mediator—a cultural pimp—whose work is subordinated to the market and to creative activity. Trini calls for criticism to assert its own autonomous and necessary dimension, separate from art. He references Susan Sontag's warning that critics create a spectral world of "meanings," and quotes Vittorini's 1964 question "Shall we stop writing?" answered with "No, we write because we cannot do without it." The essay was originally published in nac #1, January 1971, page 4.