After Criticism

1. Auflage 2004
ISBN: 978-0-631-23283-4
Verlag: Wiley

Buch, Englisch, 232 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 519 g

It has recently become apparent that criticism has fallen on hard times. Either commodification is deemed to have killed it off, or it has become institutionally routine. This book explores contemporary approaches which have sought to renew criticism's energies in the wake of a 'theatrical turn' in recent visual arts practice, and the emergence of a 'performative' arts writing over the past decade or so.

Issues addressed include the 'performing' of art's histories; the consequences for criticism of embracing boredom, distraction and other 'queer' forms of (in)attention; and the importance of exploring writerly process in responding to aesthetic experience. Bringing together newly commissioned work from the fields of art history, performance studies, and visual culture with the writings of contemporary artists, After Criticism provides a set of experimental essays which demonstrate how 'the critical' might live on as a vital and efficacious force within contemporary culture.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Butt, Gavin

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations vii

Notes on Contributors viii

Series Editor’s Preface xi

Introduction: The Paradoxes of Criticism 1
Gavin Butt

Part I Performing Art’s Histories 21

1 Solo Solo Solo 23
Rebecca Schneider

2 Binding to Another’s Wound: Of Weddings and Witness 48
Jane Blocker

3 This is I 65
Niru Ratnam

Part II Distracted and Bored: The Critic Looks Elsewhere 79

4 The Trouble with Men, or, Sex, Boredom, and the Work of Vaginal Davis 81
Jennifer Doyle

5 Utopia’s Seating Chart: Ray Johnson, Jill Johnston, and Queer Intermedia as System 101
José Esteban Muñoz

6 Looking Away: Participations in Visual Culture 117
Irit Rogoff

Part III Critical Response/Performative Process 135

7 Itinerant Improvisations: From “My Favorite Things” to an “agency of night” 137
John Seth

8 The Experience of Art as a Living Through of Language 156
Kate Love

9 A Transparent Lecture 176
Matthew Goulish

Selected Bibliography 207
compiled by Andrew Walby

Index 212

Über Autor(innen)

Gavin Butt teaches in the Unit of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His research interests encompass performance and performativity in the visual arts; queer theory; and queer cultures and their histories. He is the author of a book on gossip and homosexuality entitled Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the American Art World 1948–1963 (2005).