The Uncertainty Principle
Any uncertainty in you, the critic, can be hidden by neatly attributing it to the work. You can't decide whether the work is naff, or charmingly naive? Then say it "hovers between woeful inadequacy and unaffected poignancy" (Martin Coomer, Time Out, 20.1.99). You can't make up your mind if Pollock's paintings fit or don't fit with their time? Then write that "they seem at once to embrace and reject the entire sweep of artistic production (of their time)" (Jeffrey Kastner, Art Monthly, February '99). Paradox is the name of this game - a verbal flourish which papers over the cracks in your argument.
The Comfort of Mediocrity
If you want to be a successful critic, whatever you do, don't criticise. To make value judgements smacks of elitism (see "Great Art" above). Except for charming eccentrics like Brian Sewell, few experienced critics speak out against an artist's mediocrity and incompetence - perhaps because it reassures them about their own: "The photographs of Ulf Lundin are almost entirely devoid of visual interest ... It is ... their very mediocrity, their monotony and their emptiness that attracts us" (John Tozer, Art Monthly, February '99). This journal seems to revel in the more dismal manifestations of post-modernism, which puts its unfortunate reviewers in something of a spot, desperately trying to find something positive to say: "Didensen's video is very likeable mainly, I think, because of its desperate aimlessness."