On the Absence of Judgment in Art Criticism

This is excerpted from a pamphlet published in 2004. ¹ It was divided into four parts. The first part proposed that no one reads art criticism (a notion that has since been both criticized as unfactual and taken as a virtue), and that art criticism is in crisis if only because it has largely given up judging artworks in favor of describing them. The second part, which was the bulk of the pamphlet, distinguished seven kinds of criticism, from philosophic essays (such as the Introduction to this book) to journalistic criticism (represented here by Ariella Budick, among others). I am not reprinting that section here, except its opening pages, because the two roundtables were themselves an attempt to embody something of the diversity of art criticism. The pamphlet continued with a list of attempts to “cure” the malaise of criticism, which is reprinted here, and an envoi with several proposals, which are omitted.