Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror—a mammoth two-part show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art through February 13, 2022—is the most comprehensive retrospective ever devoted to Johns’s work. What entitles him to an exhibition of such unprecedented scope? In the Whitney’s exalted view (generally shared by the artworld mainstream): […]
Jasper Johns, Leo Steinberg, meaningless "art", Robert HughesIn both Who Says That’s Art? and my blog post “How Not to Teach Art History” (reprinted in Bucking the Artworld Tide), I cited the eminent art historian Erwin Panofsky’s interpretation of Jan van Eyck’s famed double portrait in the National Gallery, London. Panofsky viewed the work as a marriage portrait, memorializing the private wedding […]
Carola Hicks, Costanza Trenta, Erwin Panofsky, Giovanni Arnolfini, interpreting art, Jan van Eyck, Jeanne Cenami, Lorne Campbell, Margaret Koster, meaning in art, National Gallery - London, primary subject matter[July 3 Addendum] As a member of AICA-USA (the U.S. section of the International Association of Art Critics), I recently received an email message from the Board of Directors announcing: “AICA-USA has issued a statement of solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives [M4BL].”1 That statement—which had not been submitted to members for input or […]
"systemic racism", AICA-USA, art criticism, avant-garde, conceptual art, contemporary art, critical pedagogy, critical standards, critical thinking, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, de-skilling of art, Defund the Police, diversity, George Floyd, Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Children", Gregory Sholette, John Canaday, M4BL, Marilou Lemmens, Peter Schjeldahl, Richard Ibghy, Seattle's CHOP district, Shaun King, Susan Rothenberg, Trump Derangement SyndromeThe Art of Looking (Basic Books, 2018) by art critic Lance Esplund—a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, among other prestigious publications—is yet another of countless attempts to reconcile the public to the bizarre inventions of the avant-garde.1 A more fitting title would be “The Art of Critical Spinning.” Subtitled How to Read Modern […]
Balthus, contemporary art, Damien Hirst, elements of art, Giacometti, Gislebertus, Jackson Pollock, Lance Esplund, language of art, Malevich, Marcel Duchamp, modern art, Piero Manzoni, Piet Mondrian, readymadesFor today’s art establishment (including once-conservative institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Morgan Library), contemporary art must be radically “new”—the more unprecedented or deskilled in form and transgressive or inscrutable in content the better.1 An intrepid group of dedicated contemporary artists begs to differ, however. They are the largely neglected painters […]
AICA, Anthony Baus, Carroll Dunham, Colleen Barry, David Salle, Grand Central Atelier, International Association of Art Critics, Jacob Collins, Jewish Museum, Justin Wood, Keith Haring, Metropolitan Museum, Morgan Library, Norman Kleeblatt, Phong Bui, Rachel Li, Robert Simon Fine Art, Suzaan Boettger, The Brooklyn Rail, Will St. John, Wolfgang LaibGoogle “Ayn Rand’s theory of art,” and the second item you will find [as of this writing] is an article with that title in the online magazine Hyperallergic. Published in September 2012, the article—which prominently cites the book I co-authored on Rand’s theory—has been known to me for some time. But it is such a […]
AICA-USA, art and politics, Ayn Rand's theory of art, Hyperallergic, Jillian Steinhauer, What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand