ABSTRACT
The theory and criticism of art has been defined by its apparent interdisciplinarity. The critical language is derived variously from aesthetics, semiotics, cultural studies, identity politics, psychoanalysis, psychology, and reception theory amongst very many others. In a manner fitting Adam Phillips's description of psychoanalysis as 'more of a grab bag of culture and history than a vision or system', writers, thinkers, and indeed artists themselves, have tended towards a working methodology best defined as eclectic. To the author, this curiosity about diverse models seems healthy; it marks a real interest in the world and, done well, it is a model for engaging with the full potential and complexity of academic inquiry. The theory and criticism of art is marked by a narrow orthodoxy of pseudo-interdisciplinarity that privileges the same few theories, and theorists, time and again. Victor Burgin's The End of Art Theory railed against the canon of established artistic 'masterpieces', observing that canonical works are 'consigned to perpetual exhumation'.
