What Happened to Art Criticism?

This little book was originally published by Prickly Paradigm Press [distributed by University of Chicago Press], Chicago, in 2003. A revision of part of it has appeared in The State of Art Criticism, co-edited with Michael Newman, with contributions by Stephen Melville, Dave Hickey, Irit Rogoff, Ted Cohen, Guy Brett, Katy Deepwell, Joseph Masheck, Peter Plagens, Julian Stallabrass, Alex Alberro, Whitney Davis, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, and others, vol. 4 of The Art Seminar (New York: Routledge, 2007).

This is the full text of the pamphlet, which has no illustrations or footnotes. The original is available for $10 through University of Chicago Press or www.prickly-paradigm.com (or less through amazon).

From the first paragraph: "Art criticism is in worldwide crisis. Its voice has become very weak, and it is dissolving into the background clutter of ephemeral cultural criticism. But its decay is not the ordinary last faint push of a practice that has run its course, because at the very same time, art criticism is also healthier than ever. Its business is booming: it attracts an enormous number of writers, and often benefits from high-quality color printing and worldwide distribution. In that sense art criticism is flourishing, but invisibly, out of sight of contemporary intellectual debates. So it’s dying, but it’s everywhere. It’s ignored, and yet it has the market behind it."

The pamphlet proposes that art criticism has changed fundamentally in the last forty years, from an activity whose primary and sometimes final purpose was to judge, to an activity whose relation to judgment is more circumspect and much harder to define. That proposition has been proven statistically, by a survey of North American art critics, and it appears to be true in many parts of the world.

The definitionless, directionless, unconceptualized set of practices that currently gets called "art criticism" is produced in enormous quantities, and yet it goes largely unread. This pamphlet ponders these and other odd traits of current art criticism. 

Master Narratives and Their Discontents, chapter 3

See note to chapter 1.

Chapter 3, "Politics," considers theories of the shape of twentieth-century painting that stress the political engagement or pertinence of the art. "Politics" in this sense includes social art history in a general sense, and also more specific enterprises such as institutional critique. The chapter includes discussion of Douglas Crimp, Hal Foster, T.J. Clark, and others, and proposes that Thomas Crow's account may be the most demanding and interesting. The chapter concludes with thoughts on political art that is not of interest in academic criticism, including recherché political art, patriotic art, and popular art with nationalistic themes; I argue that some social art history does not possess reasons to bypass such work, and that some forms of social art history have an allegiance to forms of the avant-garde is not a necessary part of their logic. 

Master Narratives and Their Discontents, chapter 6

See note to chapter 1.

Chapter 6 is "Conclusions," and it is a gesture in the direction of the many other writers whose theories could structure an account such as the one in this book. I mention, briefly or in passing, Adorno, Habermas, Jay Bernstein, Karl Werckmeister, Matei Calinescu, Peter Bürger, Thomas McEvilley, Hubert Damisch, Georges Didi-Huberman, and a dozen others. I conclude by wondering why, given the tremendous complexity and the multiple revolutions in twentieth-century art, there are such a small number of principal theories--mainly modernisms, postmodernisms, and theories of the importance of politics.

Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings, chapter 5

Originally published as Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings (New York: Routledge, 2001). This version lacks an illustration of Giovanni Bellini's Ecstasy of St. Francis, which is easily available in high resolution online.

This is a book about people who have had strong emotional reactions to artworks. It tells a history of times and places when strong passions were expected, and contrasts them with the habits of the last hundred years. The book also has letters from people who have cried, and those who haven't or wouldn't.

Chapter 5 is "Crying Over Bluish Leaves." It is about my own experiences in the Frick Collection, looking at Giovanni Bellini's "Ecstasy of St. Francis." At first I had a very strong reaction to the painting, but it was diluted and finally dispersed as I read art historical accounts of the painting, and of Bellini's cultural context. Art history is pictured here as a kind of poison well, which endangers certain kinds of responses.

Visual Practices Across the University, part one of three

Originally published as Visual Practices Across the University, with contributions by thirty-five scholars (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2007).

This book was published, in English, by the German press Wilhelm Fink. It is posted here because it is almost entirely unknown outside German-speaking countries. The upload is the full text, illustrations included.

It is a study of the range of image-making and image-interpreting practices in an average university, with no particular stress on art. There are chapters by doctors, lawyers, scientists of all sorts, engineers, humanists, social scientists... it is a cross-section of the actual production of images in the university, and a corrective to the special interests of visual studies.

This file contains the opening pages, table of contents, preface, and the lengthy introduction, which assesses the state of scholarship on art / science links, including critical reviews of scholars who write on the "science of art" or vice versa. The introduction also draws out common themes in the 30 disciplines that participated in the exhibition, arguing that it is possible to consider images in various fields without using tropes from the humanities or social sciences as explanatory tools--in other words, by letting the different disciplines speak in their own languages.

The ultimate purpose of the introduction, and the book as a whole, is to justify a university-wide course on visual experience, which would introduce students to work in all faculties or divisions of the university. Such a course would be a corrective to the almost exclusively humanities-based perspective of existing "visual culture" courses; and it would also be an interesting acknowledgment of the visual nature of much of contemporary research and experience (running, as it would, against the grain of other freshman courses, in which words and equations continue to be preeminent).

Note all three parts of this book are large files, between 50 and 100 MB.

Visual Practices Across the University, part three of three

Originally published as Visual Practices Across the University, with contributions by thirty-five scholars (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2007).

See note to part one.

This third part contains these chapters:

17 Anatomy: Fluorescence Microscopy
18 Aerodynamics: Video Analysis of Pigeon Flight
19 Mathematics: Visual Solutions to a Logic Problem
20 Applied Social Studies: Masks in Social Work
21 Pathology: Diagnosis of a Kidney Disease
22 Epigraphy: Three-Dimensional Laser Scanning of Inscribed Stones
23 Geochemistry: Deformation of Grains in Sandstone
24 Food Science: Electrophoresis Gels of Cheddar Cheese 25 Zoology: Automated Recognition of Individual Cetaceans
26 Art History: Political Meanings of John Heartfield’s Photographs
27 Microbiology: Visualizing Viruses
28 Oceanography: Imaging the Sea Bed Using Side-Scanning Sonar
29  Philosophy: Arabic and Russian Visual Tropes
30  Legal pedagogy: Teaching Visual Rhetoric to Law Students

This file also contains the Afterword, which is an essay on the politics of publishing in different countries. In the Afterword, I justify my choice of a German publisher, and write about which presses are considered appropriate for young scholars in the U.S., U.K., and German-speaking countries. The politics is a sensitive issue, and as far as I know it hasn't been addressed elsewhere.

(Note: this is a large file, about 70 MB.) 

Visual Practices Across the University, part two of three

Originally published as Visual Practices Across the University, with contributions by thirty-five scholars (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2007).

See note to part one.

This second part contains these chapters:

1 Chemistry: Reading Spectrograms
2 Performance Art: Problems of Documentation
3 Field Geology: Deductions from Beach Stones
4 Economics: Sirens in Classics, in Philosophy, and in Economic Theory
5 Linguistics: Medieval Irish Color Terms
6 Astrophysics: Doppler Tomography of Accretion Disks
7 Law: Video-game Technology in the Irish Bloody Sunday Tribunal
8 Computer Science: Visualizing the Internet
9 Occupational Therapy: Exercises in Doing, Being, and Becoming
10 Speech and Hearing Science: Speech Spectrograms
11 Restorative Dentistry: Matching Colours in Porcelain Crowns
12 Radio Astronomy: Observations of the Galactic Center
13 Archaeology: Imaging and Mapping Practices
14 Mapping: Uses of Geological Maps
15 Art History: Iconographic Analysis
16 Civil Engineering: A High Resolution Aerial Photograph

(Note: this is a large file, about 70 MB.)

Master Narratives and Their Discontents, chapter 7

See note to chapter 1.

This is the concluding seminar, held in Ireland after the lectures were given; in it several faculty members debate the issues in the book.

(The web version of this book is complete except for the bibliography.)

Stories of Art, chapter 1

Originally published as Stories of Art (New York: Routledge, 2002).

"Stories of Art" is an answer to E.H. Gombrich's "Story of Art." "Stories of Art" is a look at ways people have told the history of art outside the West, and outside the bounds of Gombrich's narrative of naturalism. The book is meant as a gadfly, an accompaniment to Gombrich's ubiquitous volume.

Chapter 1, "Intuitive Stories," is about an exercise I have found very useful in seeing how people visualize the history of art. The exercise is to draw the history of art as a landscape or some other kind of picture, and label the parts of the landscape with the periods, artists, and styles that you feel most comfortable with. I have tried this with students at all levels, and with faculty; I've tried it throughout the U.S., and in Europe and China. The results are always fascinating. It is the opening chapter of the book because it's intended to help readers find their own sense of the shape of art history before they explore other people's ideas.

Master Narratives and Their Discontents, chapter 2

See note to chapter 1.

Chapter 2, "Postmodernisms," considers theories by Rosalind Krauss, Benjamin Buchloh, Arthur Danto, and a number of others, heuristically divided into those that posit postmodernism as a period with a beginning and (eventually) an end, and those that understand postmodernism as a condition or state of culture, whose beginning is either intermittent, indeterminate, or coeval with modernism. The chapter includes a rumination on the uneven international and market prominence of understandings of postmodernism that are modeled on, or inspired by, "October."

Master Narratives and Their Discontents, chapter 5

See note to chapter 1.

Chapter 5 is "The Idea That None of This Matters Anymore." This is a relatively brief look at accounts of twentieth century art that refuse or avoid the question of the shape of the century, or its preeminent movements, partly by insisting that "high" and "low" art are effectively mixed, so that genealogies of fine art no longer have purchase. The principal voice in this field is visual studies, although the popular press, in the form of newspaper arts journalism, often joins in; and postcolonial theory, which rewrites chronologies and values of modernisms as sociopolitical phenomena, is also involved.

On The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, chapter 1

Originally published as On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York: Routledge, 2004).

This book is a speculative attempt to describe why serious religious art that represents major religions is largely excluded from the art world. Why do the major venues of international art, and the principal journals and historians, consider only work that is ambiguous, ironic, or critical in relation to the major religions?

The book has resulted in a number of shorter publications, conferences, and catalog essays, most of which are listed on the vita; this is an ongoing issue between the (relatively small) art world, which is mainly secular, and the (very large) domain of serious religionists who also make art.

The files uploaded here do not include the table of contents, preface, or the later chapters of the book.

Chapter 1, "The Words 'Religion' and 'Art,'" sets the stage for the discussions that follow by providing temporary definitions. I also propose a heuristic definition of "spirituality." These aren't prescriptive, but are intended only to guide some of the discussion later in the book.

On The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, chapter 2

Originally published as On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York: Routledge, 2004).

See note to chapter 1.

Chapter 2 is "A Very Brief History of Religion and Art." It was originally published with two "verys":  "From Bird-Goddesses to Jesus 2000: A Very, Very Brief History of Religion and Art," Thresholds [MIT] 25 (2002): 76–83, including a discussion with Caroline Jones. Later it was reprinted in Faith, exh. cat., edited by James Hyde (Hartford CT: Real Art Ways, 2005-2006), 79-90.

This is about as brief as a history can get: the idea is to show that in Western practice before the Renaissance, the concepts of "religion" and "art" did not exist in their current forms, so it does not make sense to talk about "religious art" in all centuries and cultures. The chapter also points to developments from the 16th to the 19th centuries, in which "art" became increasingly detached from "religion." Without these very abstract, very sweeping observations, it can sometimes be difficult to know what is being claimed in conversations on religion and art.

Master Narratives and Their Discontents, chapter 4

See note to chapter 1.

Chapter 4, "The Importance of Skill," is a polemic. A survey of theories of modernism and postmodernism in the visual arts might not pay attention to skill, because it would be seen as an ideologically overdetermined category that remains, outside the avant-garde and the international art world, as a remnant of nineteenth-century European and North American art academies.

I wanted to include a chapter on skill for two reasons: first, several of the contributors to this series, including Richard Shiff, are engaged with issues of skill and depiction; but more importantly, I think that naturalistic depiction remains the most widespread criterion in the judgment of painting worldwide. It seemed important to remain aware of the much larger artworld outside the one countenanced in academic writing and in "biennale culture."

This chapter mentions Tom Wolfe, Deborah Solomon (a reporter who writes for the New York Times), and various realist artists including the well-organized groups of "starving artists" who sell in hotels and malls. There is also a discussion of the role of naturalistic skill, or the lack of it, in Duchamp, Magritte, and other modernists.

Master Narratives and Their Discontents, chapter 1

Originally published as  Master Narratives and Their Discontents, with an introduction by Anna Arnar. Theories of Modernism and Postmodernism in the Visual Arts, vol. 1. (Cork, Ireland: University College Cork Press; New York: Routledge, 2005).

This is from the first book in the series "Theories of Modernism and Postmodernism in the Visual Arts." The series also includes books by Stephen Bann, Richard Shiff, and (forthcoming) by Pamela Lee and Joseph Koerner.

Vol. 1, "Master Narratives and Their Discontents," is a look at the major accounts of visual art, and especially painting, in the last hundred years. The idea is to collect and compare the most coherent and elaborated accounts of the shape of the twentieth century.

Chapter 1 is a survey of theories of modernism, including accounts by E.H. Gombrich, T.J. Clark, Michael Fried, Robert Rosenblum, and Clement Greenberg. The chapter considers different starting-points for modernism in painting: the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, the mid-nineteenth century, the generations of Cézanne and Picasso; and there is also a discussion of the uneven dissemination of Clement Greenberg's theories in different parts of the world.

On The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, chapter 3

See note to chapter 1.

Chapter 3 is "How Some Scholars Deal with the Question." It is mainly about Thierry de Duve's exhibition and book "Look!" and comments he makes regarding a Manet painting. It is important, I think, to consider what it means that a painting like Manet's "Christ with Angels" is "religious": in one sense, it has a religious theme; but in another sense, it is only about religion because it does not behave itself as an image in a liturgical context should behave. The twilight between "religious" and "about religion" is very problematic, but crucial for the sense we may want to make of expressions like "religious art."

On The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, chapter 4

Originally published as On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York: Routledge, 2004).

See description for chapter 1.

Chapter 4 is "Five Stories." This is the heart of the book: five stories about art students whose work engages religion. They are all based on students I had, with the names and some details changed. They are a spectrum from sincere work that aims to express a major religion's central beliefs, to insincere work that is critical of anything resembling faith. Together I think the five define the field of possibilities in contemporary art--although if I were to rewrite the book now, I would put much more stress on the first and fourth, instead of treating them as five potentially equal cases.

On The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, chapter 6

Originally published as On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York: Routledge, 2004).

See note to chapter 1.

Chapter 5 is "Rehema's Story Explained." This and the next four chapters in the book explain the five stories given in the previous chapter. I have uploaded two of them here.

Rehema--her pseudonym--was a "new age" artist, who made very personal objects of devotion, including versions of the Venus of Willendorf in beads, and an artwork involving her mammogram. "New age" art--the proper term is NRM, "new religious movement"--is one of the most consistently marginalized forms of contemporary art. It engages what is perceived to be idiosyncratic, syncretic, and often largely private practices and beliefs, and it can seem to be an appropriation of the superficial forms of contemporary art for very different purposes. This chapter is about NRM practices, and their exclusion from the art world.

Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students, chapter 6

Originally published as Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001).

And this is the book's somewhat pessimistic conclusion.

Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students, chapter 5

Originally published as Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001).

This chapter makes various proposals for how to make more sense--or at least how to make a little sense--out of art critiques.

I hope this material can be useful in the studio. There are many suggestions here that can be adopted by students, and practical experiments with the structure of critiques that can be implemented by instructors and students. If you read this, and do any experimenting, please let me know!

Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students, chapter 4

Originally published as Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001).

This chapter is an analysis of art school and art department critiques, from many different perspectives (rhetorical, epistemological, institutional, etc.). It offers advice, and includes transcriptions of critiques.

Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students, chapter 3

This was published as Why Art Cannot be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001).

This site includes 4 of the 6 chapters of the book. This chapter concerns theories people have about whether or not art can be taught.

The first two chapters introduce the problematic: there is very little writing about the logic of teaching in art schools, except for some art education literature which tends to be abstract and disconnected from the ordinary conversations and concerns of the studio. The first chapter tells the relevant history of art academies and art schools (that is, the portions of that history that still effect the present), and the second chapter rehearses a number of recurring themes among art students (whether they are isolated from the wider society, what it means to be an average artist).

The "Papers" section of this website has an interview about this book.

On The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, chapter 7

Originally published as On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York: Routledge, 2004).

See note to chapter 1.

This chapter is "Brian's Story Explained: Art That is Critical of Religion." The student I call Brian made life-size Cibachrome prints of himself and others in sacreligious poses: the Virgin as Madonna, Elvis as Jesus, and so on. He wasn't a serious critic of religion, and his work would be generally normative in commercial gallery settings where some critical distance and ambiguity are expected. Andres Serrano, Chris Ofili, and Maurizio Cattelan, are similar examples: despite the wide differences between them, their work is initially of interest in art world contexts because it is ambiguously critical of religion (in contrast, for example, to Kim's work). This chapters discusses the assumptions that make such acceptance possible.

Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts: Art History as Writing, chapter 1

This was originally published as Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts: Art History as Writing (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1997), paperback edition, with new preface (New York: Routledge, 2000).

This is a book about art historical writing, with special attention to its qualities as writing: its voice, pace, and narrative; its need for theory and for inexplicit theory; and in an entirely nontechnical sense, its interest and force as writing. The book has two themes: that "untheoretical" art historical texts can be richer and more rewarding as writing than texts in which theories are explicit; and that writing, in a general sense, is what art historians do, and so it needs to be taken as seriously as possible.

This opening chapter sets out both those themes by means of an exploration of recalcitrantly untheoretical texts and their hidden virtues.

This book gets involved in the minutiae of theories and art historical writers in the mid-1990s, and ends up being more specifically of its time and place than it needed to be. I still believe in its two themes, however: the mistake was not to frame the book as a general meditation on writing in the humanities.

Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts: Art History as Writing, introduction and final page

Originally published as Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts: Art History as Writing (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1997), paperback edition, with new preface (New York: Routledge, 2000).

See the description to chapter 1.

This is two excerpts: the introduction to the paperback reissue (2000), which summarizes the book; and the final page of the book.

Of everything I've written on the importance of writing in the humanities, the final page is my best.

On Pictures, And the Words That Fail Them, chapter 3

Originally published as On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

This book is about the nature of images. It begins with a theory about how semiotics is more or less ruined by images, even though parts of it can be recovered in an historically specific fashion. The book compares familiar Western images with less familiar objects in order to question what we take as natural properties of images. One chapter is about neolithic marking; another is about the prehistoric Balkan Vinca culture, which produced writing-like artifacts; a third is on Persian and Chinese texts about images.

This chapter surveys concepts of figure and ground in a number of different disciplines, including cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and Gestalt psychology, in order to broaden and problematize the largely phenomenological and modernist senses of figure and ground that continue to dominate critical writing.

On Pictures, And the Words That Fail Them, chapter 6

See description for chapter 3.

This chapter considers texts on images written in China, Persia, and India, largely without knowledge of the Western tradition. The texts use concepts that are wholly new to Western discourses on images, and in doing so they pose a challenge for the fields of art history, art theory, and aesthetics. How can such conceptualizations be related to the received concepts of images in the West? Why is it, as Vinay Lal has pointed out, that Western writers from Marx to Badiou continue to provide the conceptual scaffolding for our interpretations of visual art, even when the subject is, for example, Chinese painting?

This is a fundamental problem in the conceptualization of art--perhaps the most fundamental one. This chapter doesn't resolve the problem, but rather provides raw material for ongoing conversations, which are sometimes more abstract than they need to be in the absence of non-Western terms.

Visual Literacy, introduction

Originally published as Visual Literacy (NY: Routledge, 2008).

This book is an edited volume, with contributions by Barbara Stafford, W.J.T. Mitchell, Jon Simons, Jonathan Crary, and others. It was the product of a combined conference and exhibition of the same name, which has generated another book, "Visual Practices Across the University" (which is uploaded, in its entirety, on this site) and "Visual Cultures" (not yet published). "Visual Literacy" is intended to survey the meanings of the expression, and related notions such as visual competence. Some contributors are interested in the theory of literacy when it pertains to the visual; others in its rhetoric; and others in its implementation at college and secondary school level.

The book is intended to serve as a resource for conversations about what comprises minimal or desirable visual ability, competence, or literacy in a university or secondary-school setting.

This text is the introduction, the only part of the book I wrote--and so the only part I will upload here.

The Project of Painting, 1900-2000, table of contents

The book "Project of Painting" is a work in progress. Some earlier versions were called "Success and Failure in Twentieth-Century Painting." Except where noted, all chapters are unpublished.

The "Project of Painting" is my current research project. It has been ongoing for about a decade. It's about painting around the world during the last century, with special attention to modernist art that is now known outside its country or region. It includes all sorts of painting, from clown painting and marine painting to high modernist abstraction. The idea is to be as inclusive as the current accounts -- for example "Art Since 1900" -- are exclusive.

The full work in progress (only parts are uploaded here) contains extensive material on writers such as Canclini, Appadurai, Chakrabarty, and Bhabha, as well as newer work by John Clark, Rasheed Araeen, and Iftikhar Dadi. Here is a brief explanation of that problematic:

Before c. 1920, many countries had forms of international academic art, and after c. 1960, many countries began to take part in the international art market. In mid-century, much of the world was practicing forms of modernism. With a few exceptions, the only modernism that is internationally known was made in the North Atlantic: roughly the eastern United States and Canada, and western and central Europe. Outside of the major centers, modernist painting was often local, and has proven to be largely outside the interests of academic art history. In recent years much of this material has been recuperated by postcolonial and area studies, which is interested in specific socioeconomic contexts. The difficulty with that recuperation is that it needs to bypass the artists' own desire to be compared with the major North Atlantic modernists: in other words, postcolonial studies needs to avoid the question of quality and intrinsic aesthetic value. In other periods in history, that might not be a problem: but value and quality are intrinsic to modernism, so it does not make sense to ignore them. In a nutshell, that is the basic problem of the book. I want to produce a fuller account that involves both socioeconomic conditions in particular non-North-Atlantic places, and also engages the importance of judgment, quality, value, and aesthetic that often drove the work in the first place.

I have not yet figured out exactly how to do that, and the chapters uploaded here are only small parts of the project. All comments and suggestions are welcome.

The Project of Painting, 1900-2000, chapter 1, "Lack of Irony"

See the description for the table of contents, above.

The Project of Painting, 1900-2000, chapter 5, "Missing the Point"

See the description for the table of contents, above.

The Project of Painting, 1900-2000, chapter 7, "Being Academic, Alexandrian, Mannerist, Precious, and Ivory-Tower"

See description for the table of contents, above.

The Project of Painting, 1900-2000, chapter 8, "Lacking a Unified Style"

See the description for the table of contents, above.

The Project of Painting, 1900-2000, chapter 10, "Getting Tired"

See the description for the table of contents, above.

The Project of Painting, 1900-2000, Conclusions

See the description for the table of contents, above.

The Visual, chapter on "The End of the Theory of the Gaze"

"The Visual" is a work that was in progress, and now is stalled. It was, or is, an attempt to write a better "art appreciation" text: something for freshmen that goes beyond the usual color wheels and composition studies. The idea was to jump-start the usual "introduction to art" course, letting beginning students take part in current debates in art theory and criticism.

This is a chapter on the theory of the gaze. Parts are written at what would normally be considered graduate level; it includes discussions of the recent literature, psychoanalytic theories, and so forth. It is also strongly critical and partisan: it is an introduction and an assessment in one.

The Visual, chapter on "A Multicultural Look at Space and Form"

See the description of the chapter on the gaze.

This chapter takes the place of the standard chapters on form and space in art, which typically rely on Arnheim, possibly with material on perspectival constructions. I won't use the word "multicultural" if I rework this material, but it is intended to critique existing accounts by demonstrating what lies outside the usual Western concerns. It is also an attempt to show how space and form are interdependent, and can't usefully be exposited separately.

The Visual, chapter on "Time and Narrative"

See the description of the chapter on the gaze.

This chapter is intended to take the place of the usual "art appreciation" chapter on time; it includes detailed discussions of the time of viewing and of narrative forms in art.

Artists with PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art, opening

This is a chapter from a book that is forthcoming from New Academia Press, www.newacademia.com.

This is the first book on the new PhDs in studio art that is addressed to the North American academic system. It is intended as a comprehensive introduction to the subject, with chapters by a number of people who run such programs in Europe and elsewhere, and excerpts from studio art PhD dissertations. My own contributions are polemic -- not because I want to prevent the spread of such programs, but because I am wary of the administrative and theoretical discourse (really, jargon) that supports and justifies them in the U.K.

This file has the table of contents and preface. Two chapters from the book, and the Conclusion, are also posted on this page.

Artists with PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art, chapter 9

This is a chapter from a book that is forthcoming from New Academia Press, www.newacademia.com.

See the description with the opening material.

This chapter is about the two key concepts that underwrite the majority of existing studio-art PhD programs around the world: "research" and "new knowledge." I argue that neither one is appropriate or indispensable for the PhD in studio art, and that new programs should consider scrapping them and exploring alternates.

Artists with PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art, chapter 11

This is a chapter from a book that is forthcoming from New Academia Press, www.newacademia.com.

See the description with the opening material.

This chapter is about the possible configurations of PhD programs: it includes ones that actually exist, and it attempts to sort out further possibilities. Most programs are compromises, and are therefore not as radical or as engaged with university-wide concerns as they might be.

Artists with PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art, conclusion

This is a chapter from a book that is forthcoming from New Academia Press, www.newacademia.com.

See the description with the opening text.

This is the book's brief conclusion.