The late New Yorker art critic admonished the stringent “aesthetes” of his time for their blatant dismissal of the social and political contexts in which art emerges.
art criticism
Posted inBooks
New Book Brings Virginia Woolf’s Little-Known Art Criticism To Light
Oh, to Be a Painter! collects nine of Woolf’s published art reviews, catalogue essays, and experimental texts from 1920 to 1936.
Posted inOpinion
How the Art Writing Program at SVA Thrived for 16 Years
Making a place where critical thinking was at the center of everything was bound to be an uphill battle.
Posted inOpinion
Can Art Criticism Be Both Collaborative and Ethical?
What happens if we take up both Corinne Robins’s recognition of the necessity of critique and Adrian Piper’s vision of generative collaboration?
Posted inArt
Assessing My Critical Adjustments and Changing Perspectives
Even if we believe in certain unspoken art criticism criteria that are involuntary but formed and informed by extended looking, nothing can be proved. We can always be wrong.
Posted inArt
Being a Critic on the Outside Isn’t Actually a Bad Place to Be
My biggest regret is that I tried a little too hard to fit in when I first began writing art reviews in 1977.
Posted inArt
The Crafting of an Art Critic
How did I learn to judge between one work and another? By looking and reading and looking and reading and looking.
Posted inPodcast
Christopher Knight: The Critic Whose Love for LA Uplifted Its Arts Community
The veteran art critic has played a formidable role in helping to shape the world’s perception of contemporary art in Los Angeles.
Posted inArt
Reflecting on the Mistakes I’ve Made as an Art Critic
Art critic Seph Rodney considers on his reviews during the last few years and what he may have gotten wrong and why.
Posted inPodcast
Art Critic John Yau Talks About Four Decades of Writing in New York
The words of John Yau continue to be read by those who want to know what is going on in contemporary art in New York and beyond.
Posted inBooks
Twenty Years of Peter Schjeldahl
Schjeldhal moves quickly to characterize an artist, like a cat pouncing on his prey.
Posted inBooks
Gary Indiana’s Helter-Skelter Prose Experiments
In the 1980s I religiously read Indiana’s weekly, polemical Voice dispatches in which he described the ills of US society from the point of view of an energetic, radical, gay critic absent art bona fides.