Month: November 2025
Charades: A Critique of Corridor Criticism
The often tedious little melodrama of art criticism has been loath to examine its own institutional supports, while cheerily sweeping...
Essex Hemphill: Take Care of Your Blessings
Scale is often used as a metric of significance. For viewers eager to be emersed in proclamations of artistic genius,...
Idol Horrors: The Thrills and Chills of Obsession
“What’s the difference between love and obsession?” There’s a scene in Alex Russell’s film Lurker (2025) in which Oliver (Archie...
What is a Critic Now?
This essay was originally published in ART PAPERS November/Decmber 1990, Vol 14, Issue 6. What is a critic now? From...
Art and The Public
This essay was originally published in ART PAPERS November/Decmber 1990, Vol 14, Issue 6. Whatever its aesthetic or philosophical merits,...
Horror After Horror
This issue, Horror After Horror, explores a range of interpretations and evocations of Horror as a medium of displacement through which to process extreme feelings and cultural conflicts. The title alludes both to the relentlessness of horrific events unfolding on a global scale and to the anticipation and unthinkability of what could come next.
Listen to Our Muertos—Emperatriz Plácido San Martín
Emperatriz Plácido San Martín is an artist, activist, writer, and tattooist based in Lima, Peru and Brussels, Belgium. She works across word and image,...
Plantation Horror
Plantations, as we understand them, declined after Emancipation. But the plantation of the American South has endured in the cultural imagination because of its ability to relentlessly innovate. The Southern plantation—as a place, and as an idea—has become decoupled from its violent past, making it easier to commodify for public consumption.
The Criticism of Quality and the Quality of Criticism
This essay was originally published in ART PAPERS November/Decmber 1990, Vol 14, Issue 6. The New York Times headline was...