Studying at York
How to Be a Critic - HOA00100I
- Department: History of Art
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: I
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
Module summary
This course explores key moments in the history of art criticism, considering the development of experimental forms of writing about art in modern culture.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 2 2024-25 |
Module aims
Art criticism seems always to be in crisis. Taking as a starting point recent questions concerning its continued viability, this module considers the emergence of novel practices of art writing in modernity. Beginning in the eighteenth century and stretching into the present, it will focus especially on the genre’s period of creative foment in Britain from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, and the development of strong, experimental approaches to questions of affect, ethics, environment, and empire. The pleasures and dangers of close description will be explored. Careful readings of historical texts will lead to broad questions: What is the nature of criticism and critique? Is the critic a judge, a historian, a participant, or a creative agent in their own right? In what ways do descriptive practices mediate between word and image? From Denis Diderot to Hilton Als, how have the functions and audiences of art criticism changed, and how has such writing helped to shape the practice of art? These and other questions will be addressed in order to investigate the continued development of art writing’s ambition and scope, and to foster experimental forms of writing of our own.
Critics considered may include Denis Diderot, William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, A. W. Schlegel, Anna Jameson, John Ruskin, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Pater, Sidney Colvin, Vernon Lee, Elizabeth Eastlake, Roger Fry, Adrian Stokes, Alain Locke, Clement Greenberg, and Susan Sontag, as well as more recent voices such as Leo Bersani, Kamau Brathwaite, Geeta Kapur, T. J. Clark, Élisabeth Leibovici, and Hilton Als.
Module learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students should have acquired:
- Familiarity with a range of key modern critical voices;
- An ability to think critically about the parameters and stakes of art writing as a mode of response;
- An opportunity to develop their own experimental approaches to writing about art;
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
You will receive feedback on assessed work within the timeframes set out by the University - please check the Guide to Assessment, Standards, Marking and Feedback for more information.
The purpose of feedback is to help you to improve your future work. If you do not understand your feedback or want to talk about your ideas further, you are warmly encouraged to meet your Tutor and/or Supervisor during their office hours.
Indicative reading
- Eastlake, Elizabeth. “History and Practice of Photogenic Drawing.” The Quarterly Review 101, no. 202 (April 1857): 442-68.
- Fry, Roger. A Roger Fry Reader. Edited by Christopher Reed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
- Greenberg, Clement. The Collected Essays of Clement Greenberg. Edited by John O’Brian. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986.
- Hazlitt, William. Selected Writings. Edited by John Cook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
- Lee, Vernon and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson. Beauty and Ugliness: And Other Studies in Psychological Aesthetics. London: John Lane, 1913.
- Pater, Walter. Studies in the History of the Renaissance. London: Macmillan, 1873.
- Söntgen, Beate and Julia Voss, ed. Why Art Criticism? A Reader. Berlin and Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz, 2022.