This is when critics are traditionally required to deliver what is known as The End of Year Piece. They will summarise the most significant events in their areas of specialisation. They will chart important new developments (the emergence of a powerful new strain of Cuban realist cinema; a widespread reaction against the post-Serialist return to tonality). They will make predictions about the year ahead. All of which gives me a problem.
 
Trying to focus on the main developments in contemporary art in 1992 is like attempting to tune a television without an aerial: the occasional barely distinct picture comes into view but for the most part the screen fizzes with interference and the only sound is white noise. The terrifying fact is that nothing makes sense.
 
According to a recently published statistic, the professional artists alive in Western Europe in 1992 would have outnumbered the entire population of Italy at the height of the Renaissance. Art critics have never been less popular with postmen, who have daily to stumble to their doors bearing sacks bulked out with press releases, circulars or hand-written entreaties to review this or that exhibition.
 
The Art Glut means that the elegant generalisation, the quick definition of the zeitgeist, is necessarily a thing of the past. To give an idea of the scale and nature of the problem, here is a brief and very partial list of some of the British (only British) exhibitions that I did not visit in 1992: the tip of the tip of the iceberg of my ignorance. All quotations are taken from the relevant press releases.
 
In January, I failed to see:
 ''Patrick Brill: 'I want to see children's TV. I want to see children's TV banned' '' at the Sue Williams Gallery. ''Valerie Singleton acts as...

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