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“Critical” redirects here. For the threshold mass of a fissile material, see Critical mass.
“Critique” redirects here. For the socialist magazine, see Critique (Journal of Socialist
Theory).
The word critic comes from the Greek κριτικός, kritikós - one who discerns, which itself
arises from the Ancient Greek word κριτής, krités, meaning a person who offers reasoned
judgement or analysis, value judgement, interpretation, or observation. The term can be
used to describe an adherent of a position disagreeing with or opposing the object of
criticism.
Criticism in general terms means democratic judgement over the suitability of a subject
for the intended purposes, as opposed to the authoritarian command, which is meant as an
absolute realization of the authority's will, thus not open for debate.
Constructive criticism is the process of offering valid and well-reasoned opinions about
the work of others with the intention of helping the reader or the artist, rather than
creating an oppositional attitude. An art critic can also be a champion of a new artistic
movement in the face of a hostile public (e.g. John Ruskin), using scholarship and insight
to show the value and depth of a new style. Critics might even champion a wholly new
art medium; for instance the century-long critical struggle to have photography
recognised as a valid art form.
There can be a tension between constructive and useful criticism; for instance, a critic
might usefully help an individual artist to recognise what is poor or slapdash in their body
of work - but the critic may have to appear harsh and judgemental in order to achieve
this.
[edit] Critique
Later thinkers used the word critique, in a broader version of Kant's sense of the word, to
mean the systematic inquiry into the limits of a doctrine or set of concepts (for instance,
much of Karl Marx's work was in the critique of political economy).
The cultural studies approach to criticism arises out of critical theory. It treats cultural
products and their reception as sociological evidence, which may be sceptically examined
to divine wider social ills such as racism or gender bias.
Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty. One of
criticism's goals is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation.
Though critiques of art may have lasted as long as art itself, art criticism as a genre refers
to a systematic study of art performed by scholars and dedicated students of art and art
theory. Throughout history, wealthy patrons have employed art-evaluators; however, only
from the 19th century onwards has criticism had developed formal methods and became a
more common vocation. [citation needed]
The variety of artistic movements has resulted in a division of art criticism into different
disciplines, each using vastly different criteria for their judgements. The most common
division in the field of criticism is between historical criticism and evaluation, a form of
art history, and contemporary criticism of work by living artists. Despite perceptions that
art criticism is a much lower risk activity than making art, opinions of current art are
always liable to drastic corrections with the passage of time. Critics of the past are often
ridiculed for either favoring artists now derided (like the academic painters of the late
19th Century) or dismissing artists now venerated (like the early work of the
Impressionists). Some art movements themselves were named disparagingly by critics,
with the name later adopted as a sort of badge of honor by the artists of the style (e.g.
Impressionism, Cubism), the original negative meaning forgotten.
Artists have often had an uneasy relationship with their critics. Artists usually needs
positive opinions from critics for their work to be viewed and purchased;
unfortunately for the artists, only later generations may understand it. Some critics
are unable to adapt to new movements in art and allow their opinions to override
their objectivity, resulting in inappropriately dated critique. John Ruskin famously
compared one of James Whistler's paintings to "flinging a pot of paint in the
public's face".
Bloomsbury Group members Roger Fry and Clive Bell were notable English pre-war art
critics. Fry introduced post-impressionism to the country, and Bell was one of the
founders of the formalist approach to art. Herbert Read championed modern British
artists such as Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
In the U.S, Clement Greenberg first made his name as an art critic with his essay Avant-
Garde and Kitsch, first published in the journal Partisan Review in 1939.
In the 1940s there were not only few galleries (The Art of This Century) but also few
critics who were willing to follow the work of the New York Vanguard. There were also a
few artists with a literary background, among them Robert Motherwell and Barnett
Newman who functioned as critics as well.
As surprising as it may be, while New York and the world were unfamiliar with the New
York avant-garde, by the late 1940s most of the artists who have become household
names today had their well established patron critics: Clement Greenberg advocated
Jackson Pollock and the Color field painters like Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Barnett
Newman, Adolph Gottlieb and Hans Hofmann. Harold Rosenberg seemed to prefer the
action painters like Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Thomas B. Hess, the managing
editor of Art News, championed Willem de Kooning.
The new critics elevated their proteges by casting other artists as "followers"[1] or
ignoring those who did not serve their promotional goal.
As an example, in 1958, Mark Tobey "became the first American painter since Whistler
(1895) to win top prize at the Biennale of Venice. New York's two leading art magazines
were not interested. Arts mentioned the historic event only in a news column and Art
News (Managing editor: Thomas B. Hess) ignored it completely. The New York Times
and Life printed feature articles." Mark Tobey by William C. Seitz, The Museum of
Modern Art, New York, 1962).
Barnett Newman, a late member of the Uptown Group wrote catalogue forewords and
reviews and by the late 1940s became an exhibiting artist at Betty Parsons Gallery. His
first solo show was in 1948. Soon after his first exhibition, Barnett Newman remarked in
one of the Artists' Session at Studio 35: "We are in the process of making the world, to a
certain extent, in our own image."[2] Utilizing his writing skills, Newman fought every
step of the way to reinforce his newly established image as an artist and to promote his
work. An example is his letter in April 9, 1955, "Letter to Sidney Janis: ---It is true that
Rothko talks the fighter. He fights, however, to submit to the philistine world. My
struggle against bourgeois society has involved the total rejection of it."[3]
Strangely the person thought to have had most to do with the promotion of this style was
a New York Trotskyist, Clement Greenberg. As long time art critic for the Partisan
Review and The Nation, he became an early and literate proponent of abstract
expressionism. Artist Robert Motherwell, well heeled, joined Greenberg in promoting a
style that fit the political climate and the intellectual rebelliousness of the era.
Jackson Pollock's work has always polarised critics. Harold Rosenberg spoke of the
transformation of painting into an existential drama in Pollock's work, in which "what
was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event". "The big moment came when it
was decided to paint 'just to paint'. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation
from value--political, aesthetic, moral."[5]
One of the most vocal critics of Abstract expressionism at the time was New York Times
art critic John Canaday. Meyer Shapiro, and Leo Steinberg were also important art
historians of the post-war era who voiced support for Abstract expressionism. During the
early to mid sixties younger art critics Michael Fried, Rosalind Krauss and Robert
Hughes (critic) added considerable insights into the critical dialectic that continues to
grow around Abstract expressionism.
Other people, such as British comedian/satirist Craig Brown, have been astonished that
decorative 'wallpaper', essentially brainless, could gain such a position in art history
alongside Giotto, Titian and Velazquez.
ART CRITICISM
• Critics tend to focus more on modern and contemporary art from cultures close
to their own.
• Art historians tend to study works made in cultures that are more distant in
time and space.
Journalistic criticism –
• Written for the general public, includes reviews of art exhibitions in galleries
and museums.
• (Suggestions that journalistic criticism deals with art mainly to the extent that it
is newsworthy.)
FORMAL ANALYSIS
-Four levels of formal analysis, which you can use to explain a work of art:
analysis, or interpretation.
a. Form of art whether architecture, sculpture, painting or one of the minor arts
b. Medium of work whether clay, stone, steel, paint, etc., and technique (tools
used)
c. Size and scale of work (relationship to person and/or frame and/or context)
2. Analysis = determining what the features suggest and deciding why the
artist used such features to convey specific ideas.
f. Treatment of space and landscape, both real and illusionary (including use of
perspective), e.g., compact, deep, shallow, naturalistic, random
• It answers the question, "Why did the artist create it and what does it mean
b. Interpretive Statement: Can I express what I think the artwork is about in one
sentence?
• Is it a good artwork?
• Criteria: What criteria do I think are most appropriate for judging the artwork?
• Evidence: What evidence inside or outside the artwork relates to each criterion?
• Judgment: Based on the criteria and evidence, what is my judgment about the
quality of the artwork?
4. Good interpretations of art tell more about the artwork than they tell about the
critic.
8. Interpretations are not so much absolutely right, but more or less reasonable,
convincing, enlightening, and informative.
9. Interpretations can be judged by coherence, correspondence, and
inclusiveness.
10. An artwork is not necessarily about what the artist wanted it to be about.
12. Interpretations ought to present the work in its best rather than its weakest
light.
17. The meanings of an artwork may be different from its significance to the
viewer. Interpretation is ultimately a communal endeavor, and the community is
ultimately self- corrective.
18. Good interpretations invite us to see for ourselves and to continue on our
own.
What is art?
In 1963, Pop artist Andy Warhol exhibited "Brillo Box" in a New York gallery. The
sculpture was identical in appearance to the large cardboard container in which little
packages of Brillo are shipped to stores (though Warhol's is made of wood, not
cardboard). You can see a version of the sculpture (three cartons rather than one) in the
Modern wing of the Philadelphia museum of art.
Is "Brillo Box" art? Customs agents said "No." When the work was shipped across the
border to Canada for a show, it was taxed as a commercial product, and denied the special
tax status of an art work.
Art critic Arthur Danto, in Beyond the Brillo Box, sees "Brillo Box" as marking the end
of modern western art, or at least of the linear history he thinks art had in the west from
the Renaissance to the mid-twentieth century. From the middle of the nineteenth century,
that history was one of increasingly radical challenges to the canons and conventions that
were established in the Renaissance. At that time, the invention of geometrically precise
perspective, and many innovations in the use of oil paint, made possible a degree of
realism in two dimensional representation of three dimensional reality that had never
before been possible. The painter and art historian Vasari, in his Lives of the Painters,
makes it clear that realistic representation of this sort is what painting is about.
"Painting", he writes, "is just the imitation of all the living things of nature with their
colors and designs just as they are in nature." "The School of Athens", the famous
painting by Raphael found on the home page for this course, is a very detailed example of
some of the techniques that made such realism possible (though in other ways it either
gives the lie to Vasari's theory, or is a bad painting, since no photograph would ever have
captured the symbolically rich and didactic image that Raphael gives us).
The rennaissance canons persisted into the eighteenth century, though the kind of
paintings that were done within them varied greatly. In the nineteenth century, however,
they were challenged more and more radically. Thus, (to pick a few highlights),
Delacroix's intense color, sinuous forms, and loose strokes are plainly designed to show
what the artist sees and feels rather than to give a precise representation of things "just as
they are in nature." Goya's "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters", and his "Third of
May, 1808" move even farther away from literal realism, picturing fantasies and
distorting exact resemblance in order to convey disturbing horrors more powerfully.
Cezanne began using flat areas of color instead of modelling; Van Gogh let the brush
strokes show, so that viewer looks at the paint instead of past it. Matisse flattens out the
canvas, and gets rid of the illusion of depth. Picasso introduced primitive forms, and
broke up forms so that they aren't seen from any one perspective. Klee, Kandinsky, and
Mondrian painted abstractly, including fewer and less recognizable forms. Jackson
Pollack dribbled paint on canvas.
Danto sees Andy Warhol's work as a kind of final stop for this train. In the case of "Brillo
Box", the only difference between art and non-art is the fact that art is displayed in art
galleries! See also Wendell Castle.
Boundary Questions: