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.