Four Essays on Late Criticism

Caesura: an interruption or break in the temporality of an artwork, ideally causing a moment of reflection in the viewer or listener. 

For the introduction to our project we asked each of our editors to contribute an essay concerning the idea of art criticism. By focusing our attention on what art criticism should be, we hope to illuminate the identity crises currently plaguing art criticism, as well as the ways in which those crises impede the ability to meaningfully reflect on — and potentially change — culture and society. In the essays below we consider the various ways in which the problems of culture are not merely the problems of art, but the ways in which art is thought about. We sense that the emerging interest in new paths for art criticism, paired with the ambiguity of its historical raison d’être, render it a ‘critical’ issue. 

To accomplish these goals we will be casting a wider net than is typical for specialized cultural publications, posting reviews and essays concerning art exhibitions, films, live concerts, recorded music, literature, and more. As we have done in these essays, we will occasionally broaden our scope to discuss art criticism as well, for sometimes art criticism needs its own criticism. One might call this “art criticism in the age of art criticism.”