Why Art Criticism? A Reader

How is art criticism to be understood within an expanding artistic field? A look at its history and its manifestations within globalized conditions shows the variety of the genre, of the criteria and of the styles of writing. This reader is an attempt to bring a diverse range of art-critical voices and perspectives into conversation with each other, with texts from the 18th century to the present. The editors Beate Söntgen and Julia Voss have invited colleagues from various geographical and intellectual backgrounds to present and discuss the art critics of their choice, choosing one example from their respective bodies of work to comment upon. How have these writers approached art criticism? Which styles do they employ? What makes them extraordinary? What can we learn from their writings today, and why is it important in its contemporary context?
BEATE SÖNTGEN (*1963) is professor of art history at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She studied art history, philosophy, and modern German literature in Marburg and Berlin. She is director of the DFG Research Training Group "Cultures of Critique: Forms, Media, Effects" and co-director of the program "PriMus - Doctoral Studies in Museums."

JULIA VOSS (*1974) is an honorary professor at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She studied art history, modern German literature, and philosophy in Berlin and London. She is herself an art critic and journalist and was deputy head of the arts section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

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Title
Colophon
Contents
Foreword
Why Art Criticism? An Introduction
Passion, Performance, and Soberness
Beate Söntgen
Essays on Painting
Denis Diderot
In Conversation
Johannes Grave
In Front of a Friedrich Seascape with Capuchin Monk
Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim
Feelings Before Friedrich's Seascape
Heinrich von Kleist
Emotional Collectivities
Stephanie Marchal
Fellows in Reality
Julius Meier-Graefe
The Leak
Julia Voss
The Klimt Affair
Berta Zuckerkandl
Klimt's letter to the Education Ministry
Crafts and the Spiritual
Monica Juneja
The Indian Craftsman
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
Practical Formalist
Beate Söntgen
The Futurists
Roger Fry
The Case of the Late Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, O. M.
Independent Gallery: Vanessa Bell and Othon Friesz
Agitation
Valerija Kuzema
The Work of Viktor Palmov
Sergei Tretyakov
Photo-Notes
Snapshot
Margarete Vöhringer
Against the Synthetic Portrait, For the Snapshot
Alexander Rodchenko
Decomposition
Malte Rauch
Critiques
Georges Bataille
Decolonizing Art History
Parul Dave Mukherji
Why Exhibit Works of Art?
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
Advocating the Collective
Camilo Sarmiento Jaramillo
The Aesthetic of Our Time
Luis Vidales
Colombian Painting
Materialism and Proximity
Isabelle Graw
Note on the Hostages, Paintings by Fautrier
Francis Ponge
Censorship and the Authorial "I"
Valerie Hortolani and Valerija Kuzema
Annotations on Painting in Leipzig, with an Update on Tübke
Lothar Lang
Hermann Glöckner
The Hans Grundig Exhibition, 1973
Harald Metzkes at the Nationalgalerie, 1978
Fragments on Art Criticism
Trespasser of Gatekeeping
Juli Carson
I Committed a Happening
Oscar Masotta
Embedded Chronicler
Monique Bellan
The Artistic and Literary Life: Reviews from La Revue du Liban et de l'Orient Arabe
Victor Hakim
Undisciplined
Thorsten Schneider
Prolegomena to a Hedonistic Enlightenment
Peter Gorsen
In Drag
Astrid Mania
Warhol: The Medium as Cultural Artifact
Mary Josephson
Self-Reflective Connectivity
Beatrice von Bismarck
Network: The Art World Described as a System
Lawrence Alloway
Vulnerability and Resistance
Florencia Malbrán
Two Decades of Vulnerability in Latin American Visual Arts 1950/1970
Marta Traba
Fellow-Feeling
Sarah Wilson
Réquichot and His Body
Roland Barthes
Documentation as Dialogue
Michael F.