Inside the Art World: Conversations with Barbaralee Diamonstein.

Q: We engaged you, for a small fee, to pass judgment on Barbaralee Diamonstein's new book. What did you think of it?

A: Physically it's pretty impressive for a book of interviews: wide format, elegant jacket design (albeit a little too reminiscent of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's inaugural "Individuals" catalogue in 1986), slick paper throughout, two-color text (the questions are in light blue), and a frieze of Dr. Diamonstein's photographs of the subject accompanying each interview. My only complaint is that it's a little hard on the wrists for a beach read.

Q: And how is the book--how to put it?--mentally?

A: That's a little tougher to answer. The clout implied in the sub-subtitle, Artists, Directors, Curators, Collectors, Dealers, is for the most part delivered by the roster. You've got Leo Castelli, Larry Gagosian, Douglas Cramer, Ann Hamilton, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Thomas Krens, and Kirk Varnedoe, along with 28 others. They're all, however, people capable of sitting down for a cup of coffee (or whatever) with Diamonstein, to converse in clean language, to give tacit approval to the whole isn't-it-just-fabu-what-sensitive-rich-folks-can-provide, high-end art world. Even Richard Serra's in a good mood. No potential snarlers--like, maybe, Hans Haacke or David Hammons or a Guerrilla Girl--were invited. But for serious young careerists--the intended audience, I presume, for the book--it's a crash course in the self-congratulation required to make it in the art world, at least up to now.

Q: Doesn't Diamonstein ask the tough questions?

A: No, but she's not Sam Donaldson trying to nail a State Department spokesperson. She's a friendly interviewer, trying to draw out artists typically assumed to be grouchily reticent or cultural bureaucrats whose public pronouncements are usually made in press release-speak. For the most part Diamonstein does a pretty good job. Everybody except Koons comes off as some kind of human being. But what can anybody do with a guy who says things like, "I'm a very coordinated artist. I want to make work that is objective in nature. I want to increase my stage and my platform, my effectiveness in the world as an artist"?

Q: Are there any revelations?

A: Other than Leo Castelli saying that New York Times critic Roberta Smith can "break or make a show," not really. You find out the usual--how people broke into the art business, when they first knew they were artists, and what categories commonly (and reasonably) applied to them they reject, that sort of thing.

Q: Are there any peculiarities?

A: Oh, peculiarities abound! Christo tells us that--in contrast to Japan, where 90 of his umbrellas stood in a river--he could find only a "miserable little pond" in California. "But," Christo adds, "from the photos it looks great!" Tells you where he's really comin' from, doesn't it? Or how about this exchange between Diamonstein and Kinshasha Holman Conwill of the Studio Museum in Harlem: KHC--"And I think people assumed that Kinshasha was my name from birth"; BLD--"I did not assume that was your name from birth"; KHC--"Yes. You're one of the few people." Even in a double-columned book of 277 pages there shouldn't be room for such fatuousness. My own favorite is between the interviewer and Jenny Holzer: BLD--"How often do you follow your own advice? For example: 'Put food out in the same place every day and talk to the people who come to eat and organize them'"; JH--"Not as often as I should!" I'm offering Artforum readers five to one on "Not even once."

Q: Do you think it was deliberate that Diamonstein left out critics as interviewees?

A: Deliberate and very, very prescient.

Peter Plagens is art critic at Newsweek and a painter who shows regularly at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York.