Andras Szanto over at Artworld Salon reports today that the EU has passed a law to keep cultural promoters from misquoting critics.

Szanto writes:

For those of us in the visual art world, this news raises some disquieting questions. First, how would promoters shrink sentences that run, on industry average, four to seven lines of text, into their meager advertisement space? Second, how would these unscrupulous arts advertisers manipulate the meaning of critical utterances, when those utterances themselves are so often nonsensical and, as surveys have documented, devoid of clear judgments?

Yes, yes, we are terrible. Imagine if the US passed a similar law, and we had to be legible, strict, and sound-biteable without reverting to mere punditry? As Szanto points out, it may be a good imaginary restriction for us to put on ourselves before we sit down to write. Who really is smart, opinionated, and quotable?