The Benjamin Files by Fredric Jameson explains everything by reference to everything else, in a way that often makes the narrative all but impenetrable.
Author Archives: David Carrier
David Carrier is a philosopher who writes art criticism. His Aesthetic Theory, Abstract Art and Lawrence Carroll (Bloomsbury) and with Joachim Pissarro, Aesthetics of the Margins/ The Margins of Aesthetics: Wild Art Explained (Penn State University Press) were published in 2018. He is writing a book about the historic center of Naples, and with Pissarro he conducted a sequence of interviews with museum directors for Brooklyn Rail.
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A Tattoo Artist’s History of Tattoos
TATTOO: 1730s-1970s. Henk Schiffmacher’s Private Collection is strong on the presentation of images, but says very little about their meaning.
Posted inArt
What a Painter Taught Me
Coming from a secular perspective, it seems strange to speak, in almost mystical terms, of being taken out of oneself.
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History According to the Comic Book
Where indelible images restlessly bond with the ambiguity of words.
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The Meanings of Minimalist Memorials
Monuments are built only when the political struggle they commemorate has been definitively won.
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The End of Art History
Writing a global art history demands that we give up historical thinking.
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Where Does a Work of Art Belong?
Like the international financial markets, the art museum is a controlling Western institution.
Posted inArt
The Lives of the Art Museum
Like cabinets of curiosities from the old regime, art museums often display plunder.
Posted inArt
The Art World We Have Lost
Loren Munk’s “SOHO Map” offers a visual record of a densely peopled art world.
Posted inArt
A Mural Rises in Pittsburgh
Liberation Wall by Kyle Holbrook and Moving Lives of Kids Community Mural Project commemorates people and events that deserve attention right now.
Posted inBooks
Félix Fénéon: Critic, Collector, Anarchist
What is the relationship between Félix Fénéon’s politics and the art he admired?
Posted inArt
The Moral Complexity of War Games
An-My Lê is a Vietnamese-born photographer who has portrayed — and participated in — re-enactments of the Vietnam War.