Martin Herbert is a writer and critic based in Berlin.

“Perhaps – in the case of well-paid gigs for foreign galleries, near-criminal dealers, in-flight magazines, painters paying for their own vanity publications – a slithery voice says hardly anyone will see it. That statement can also flip, with differently negative results. Because, on dark days, one might ask who is reading art writing now? Being an art critic today, pouring energy and worry into crafting sentences that do justice to complexity, can feel like being a medieval guild-member. (This is something I like about it.) If, conversely, you tell yourself it is being read, to what extent is what you write tipping scales you don’t want tipped?”