Criticism, Essays Patrick Zapien Criticism, Essays Patrick Zapien

Crisis of Criticism

Why is it that so much writing on art today — ostensibly criticism — only skates on the surface of artworks, providing description, identifying a handful subjects and themes, maybe some precedents, and then a conclusion — or rather, an ending. The writing stops.

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Criticism, Essays Patrick Zapien Criticism, Essays Patrick Zapien

Sense and Non-Sense

The main problem that the artist encounters at work — the source of all their woes and triumphs — is that materials must be transformed: made to give what they cannot. Appearance is the mask of the true face beneath.

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Reflections, Essays Fred Camper Reflections, Essays Fred Camper

Political, or Not

Cinema remains the least understood of major arts. So often film commentaries discuss mostly, or only, the plot. But to begin to understand any film, one must examine it as cinema, shot by shot, edit by edit, in terms of composition, lighting, movement, editing rhythms and juxtapositions, and more, because the way the viewer sees its depictions affects how one feels and thinks about what is shown

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Essays, Criticism Gabriel Almeida Essays, Criticism Gabriel Almeida

A Farewell to Carmen Herrera

The space of Herrera’s paintings is not the real space we “inhabit” in the gallery or otherwise, but rather the illusory world of images and vision. Hers is the dream ground which, for over hundreds of years, artists have used to tell us stories, to perpetuate the likeness of people and landscapes, or reflect their feelings and visions materialized in objects.

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Essays, Reflections, Art Caesura Essays, Reflections, Art Caesura

Caesura Roundtable: The NFT

The NFT phenomenon is a social, not technological, phenomenon emerging from the new money of the 21st century — the tech sector — working out its own culture and aesthetic tastes as an alternative to the self-critical or self-defeating aesthetic culture that has been dominant since the emergence of liberal society in the 19th century.

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