Waldemar Januzczak

Art is a tricky subject for a newspaper critic. In the

wrong hands, it can appear distant and exquisite.

Even irrelevant. One way to misunderstand it is to see it as a plaything of the privileged: an expensively acquired taste like oysters or cavolo nero. But to see it that way is to assume too much and observe too little.

In fact, more people go to art galleries in Britain than go to football matches. Visitor numbers at institutions such as Tate Modern or the British

Museum are counted in the multiplied millions and constantly rising. Whatever it is that art gives us is increasingly popular.

So although art can be mistaken for a detached and exclusive subject, it can also be recognised as an alternative. In the hands of the right critic, it offers insights and viewpoints that are fresh, inventive, strikingly different from other critical fields. Which brings us to Waldemar Januszczak.

Driven by a passion to communicate the joys of art and a determination to prove its increasing relevance to the world outside the gallery,

Waldemar always writes with spirit, knowledge, invention and flair. His qualities have been especially valuable in a year in which the global news round appeared to pick up speed and grow darker.

His review of the unexpected arrival at Blenheim

Palace of the Iraqi artist Mohammed Sami bristled with uneasy observations. In Waldemar’s edgy account, Blenheim Palace stopped being a nostalgic location for Bridgerton and turned into the perfect site for nervy Middle Eastern histories and anxious premonitions of war.

Again and again in his writing, Waldemar found ways to notice art’s relevance to the world outside the gallery. His review of the 2024 Venice

Biennale, the Olympic Games of contemporary art, lifted two rude fingers at the cult of identity politics and its greedy international spread.

Something else he does fearlessly in his writing is make jokes about art and aim, occasionally, for belly laughs. It’s a tough ask. There are critical fields in which humour and wit are easy to weaponize - art is most certainly not one of them.

But because Waldemar’s mission is to open up the world of art, not close it down, he likes a gag.

Thus Alvaro Barrington’s misfiring installation at the Duveen Galleries in Tate Britain ‘makes the gallery look like a furniture saleroom on the North

Circular’, while his review of the belated tribute to pop artist Pauline Boty manages to involve David

Frost in the ignoral by recalling his choice of Boty as his ideal woman: “I’ve seen her on television a couple of times and she looks like a super bird.”

The difficulty of writing about art in a manner that is welcoming and witty as well as insightful should not be underestimated. To write compellingly about art requires rare knowledge and a powerful desire to communicate. All of which is abundantly true of Waldemar.