A Critical Institution for Art
In Dialogue with the Artistic Director of the Quadriennale di Roma
Nicolas Ballario: It seems that between being and not being, Italy as a country prefers to be a has-been. Are we stuck in our ways, or short-sighted? Gian Maria Tosatti: Italy is a country that has slowly let go of its control over the state. The very existence of a political class, be it good […]
The Exhibition as a Critical Device
A Perspective between Past and Present
«Pazzi lamentano il decadimento della criticapoiché il suo giorno è passato da un pezzo.La critica è una questione di corretta distanza.Era di casa in un mondo in cui prospettive e prospetti contavanoe dove era ancora possibile assumere una posizione.Ora le cose premono troppo da vicino sulla società umana»[1].Walter Benjamin La distanza, il distacco e l’intervallo […]
Institutions and Critical Practice
An Organic Horizon
Over the last few decades, a number of economic, social and cultural phenomena have challenged the power of criticism, from both the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’. These involve the rise of the postmodernist vulgate, on the one hand,and poststructuralist thinking, on the other; the spread, since the 1990s, of the anthropological paradigm, the turn introduced […]
An Intergenerational Discussion on Art Criticism
Between Harmless Nostalgia for an Era that One Never Lived Through, and Future Prospects that Are Difficult to Give Direction
In his 1922 canvas Au rendez-vous des amis, Max Ernst records the lively cultural ferment that accompanied the theorisation of the Surrealist movement. Through the artists and intellectuals portrayed in this work, we can clearly see urgency and the centrality of an all-encompassing, constant dialogue. In the German artist’s work, we witness the creation of […]
Between Criticism and Information
Magazines in Changing Times
Laura Cherubini Magazines are doubtless born of a critical impulse. But we need to understand what is meant by criticism. First of all, it is important to say that in order to write about something, one has to know it thoroughly. So, the first thing that needs doing is to study the object of inquiry: […]
Story of a Schizophrenia
From Critic to Curator: A Changing Species
Roberto Pinto «The art critic is an endangered species»[1]Hal Foster In recent years, the marginalisation of the role of art criticism has been discussed at length in many different settings, indeed sometimes in heated terms. This is a very real problem, and we may even venture the hypothesis that no one in today’s society can […]
Communicating Vessels
On the Relationship between Criticism and Art History
Stefania Zuliani In 2002, October — the magazine founded by Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson in the mid-1970s with the stated intention of overturning the formalist canon which then still dominated American criticism — chose to celebrate its hundredth issue with a round table discussion with a surprisingly anodyne title. ‘The Present Conditions of Art […]
Building Consensus
A Brief History of Forced Corporatism
Angela Vettese What is art criticism, what is it for, what are its methods, what potential does it have, and why is it that when a polemic arises ─ as we recently saw in Il Sole 24 Ore ─ things immediately become so inflamed? Art criticism emerged only recently ─ a couple of centuries ago, […]
The Precarity of the Critic and Their Vulnerabilities
Ancient Problems, and Current Ones
Does art criticism still exist? In what settings does it express itself? What is art criticism today? What are its tools? Is it a profession? To whom is it addressed? What impact does it have? Who and what does it move? What real autonomy does the critic have? The fact that there are so many […]
Conflicts of Disinterest
A Conversation with Andrea Bellini
Andrea Cortellessa Andrea Cortellessa: It is striking that Artribune declared your Storie dell’arte contemporanea (jointlywith a text by Marco Mancuso) the ‘best essay’ of the year; and that also in Il Giornale dell’Arte’s ‘best and worst of 2023’ Laura Cherubini pointed to your work as ‘book of the year’. After all, it is obvious, to […]
