"A few years back, when I was teaching a class on art criticism in Salzburg, one of the participants said something that’s stayed with me: that art critics, as they get older, tend to use the first person more. On the one hand, I think that’s true – see this very column, or any of the earlier ones – and is something to do with confusing having your sketchy opinions published for years with them mattering much. For a useful corrective, a critic might pay attention to where they’re placed at the gallery dinner; enjoy getting to know the technicians. On the other hand, grizzled art writers starting every other sentence with ‘I’ are no longer the exception. If anything’s changed in art criticism within living memory, aside from the latter-day ‘crisis’ it seems continually able to stagger through, it’s that the first-person exhibition review has mainstreamed."