The Crisis of Criticism

Book Overview

Almost more than artists, art critics today form an elite class that legislates cultural tastes. The Crisis of Criticism is a collection of brilliantly argued, provocative essays that address the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565844173
• ISBN13: 9781565844179
• Release Date: June 1998
• Publisher: The New Press
• Length: 172 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.9" x 0.5" x 4.9"

Customer Reviews

Contents and authors

Introduction: the crisis of criticism (Maurice Berger) Discussing the undisscussable (Arlene Croce) Confronting head-on the face of the afflicted (Joyce Carol Oates) Dance this diss around (Homi Bhabha) Addressing the dress (Richard Martin) The film critic of tomorrow, today (Jim Hoberman) Why bully literature? (Wayne Koestenbaum) Resisting the dangerous journey: the crisis of journalistic criticism (Michael Brenson) Making movie magic (Bell Hooks) Measuring the immeasurable (Sarah Rothenberg)

Compelling essays on all the arts, not just visual

I agree with the earlier rating of this book in that I found all of these essays exceptionally sharp. While the focus is the problematic nature of criticism at a particular time (the mid nineties), the contributors address larger questions which are still pertinent and motivating. Joyce Carol Oats and Homi Bhabha offer retorts to Arlene Croce's non-review (see summary below), Richard Martin writes about the sad (or nonexistent) state of fashion criticism, Jim Hoberman and bell hooks contribute excellent essays on film criticism, Wayne Koestenbaum considers the literary review, Michael Brenson admonishes contemporary art critics for not taking risks and writing reviews which are (in Baudelaire's words) "partial, passionate, and political", and the last entry is by Sarah Rothenberg and is on music criticism. This book would not only be interesting to aspiring writers or critics, but studio artists, historians, or theorists who seek to understand the function or purpose of criticism.

Essays question role of the critic and criticism

Arlene Croce wrote a review of "Still/Here", a dance choreographed by Bill T. Jones and published it in the New Yorker. She had not seen the work but wrote the review to protest Jones' use of terminally ill persons in his work, men with AIDS. As might be expected, Croce's article provoked a storm of protest. "The Crisis of Criticism" grew out of the controversy over Croce's article. The book is a collection of essays about criticism itself and addresses the questions of the critic's role in modern culture. Berger reprints Croce's article and a long rebuttal by Joyce Carol Oates. But the best two essays are by Michael Brenson (Resisting the Dangerous Journey: the Crisis of Journalistic Criticsm), and Sarah Rothenberg (Measuring the Immeasurable). The Brenson piece focuses on the critics that most of us read (in The New Yorker, the NY Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal) and castigates them for failing to deal with the major issues of contemporary art. Interestingly, Brenson finds them all deficient in even acknowledging the controversy over the NEA funding which he thinks is "the intersection for almost every major artistic cultural issue..." The essay by Sarah Rothenberg is a wonderful description of the role of the critic and, by extension, the role of "high culture" in civilized society. She rejects the absolute evaluation of artistic creativity by the marketplace, i.e. financial success and fame as the business of artistic promotion and self-promotion, and asks that art "define itself by values of its own." The role of the critic is to be apart from the marketplace: "critical commentary in terms that are idealistic rather than utilitarian". Croce's original article, by reviewing a performance that the critic had not seen, led to a reevaluation of the role of the critic - something she really asked for anyway.