Art criticism

Art criticism is the study and evaluation of art. Though art criticism can be applied to any artistic field (e.g. theater, music, dance), this article references only painting and the genres of that medium. This criticism usually involves the use of aesthetics or the philosophy of beauty although there are other techniques, objective and subjective. A great art critque must contain a thesis sentence in the body of the part. Part of the purpose of art criticism is to have a rational basis for the appreciation of art and avoid subjective opinions of taste but this is not always achieved.

Art critics have probably existed for as long as there has been art and some people may argue that art is pointless without criticism. Usually, though, art criticism refers to a systematic study of art performed by people dedicated to that task rather than personal opinion. Throughout history, wealthy patrons have been able to employ people to evaluate art for them in jobs similar to the art critic but it's probable that only from the 19th century onwards criticism had developed formal methods and became a more common vocation.

The variety of artistic movements, particularly in the late 19th and 20th centuries, means that art criticism is frequently divided into different disciplines, using vastly different criteria for their judgements. The most common division in the field of criticism is between historical criticism and evaluation - really a form of art history - and contemporary criticism of the new work by living artists. Though it has been said that art criticism is a much lower risk activity than making art, opinions of current art is always liable to drastic corrections with the passage of time. Critics of the past are often held up to ridicule for either favoring artists now debunked (like the academic painters of the late 19th C.), or debunking artists now venerated (like the early work of the Impressionists). Some of the art movements themselves were named in a spirit of disparagement by critics, with the name later adopted as a sort of badge of honor by the artists themselves (e.g. Impressionism and Cubism), the original critic being forgotten.

Artists have often had an uneasy relationship with their critics. The artist usually needs positive opinions from the critic for their work to be viewed and purchased but it may be some time before a new form of art is properly understood and appreciated. 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".

Art critics of the post-World War II era

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 who was an illegal alien and did not become a US citizen during the 1950s.

The new critics elevated their proteges by casting other artists as "followers" 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." 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."

Strangely the person thought to have had most to do with the promotion of this style was a New York Trotskyite, 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.

Clement Greenberg proclaimed Abstract Expressionism and Jackson Pollock in particular as the epitome of aesthetic value. It supported Pollock's work on formalistic grounds as simply the best painting of its day and the culmination of an art tradition going back via Cubism and Cézanne to Monet, in which painting became ever 'purer' and more concentrated in what was 'essential' to it, the making of marks on a flat surface.

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."

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. Artist Robert Motherwell, well heeled, joined Greenberg in promoting a style that fit the political climate and the intellectual rebelliousness of the era.

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.

See also

• Art history