Art critic
Encyclopedia
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites. Art collectors and patrons often utilize the advice of such critic
Critic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
s as a way to enhance their appreciation of the art they are viewing.
Typically the art critic views art at exhibitions
Art exhibition
Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which art objects meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" or...
, galleries
Art gallery
An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...
, museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
s or artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
s' studio
Studio
A studio is an artist's or worker's workroom, or the catchall term for an artist and his or her employees who work within that studio. This can be for the purpose of architecture, painting, pottery , sculpture, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, radio or television...
s.
Professional art critics are expected to have a keen eye for art and a thorough knowledge of art history
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
. Knowledge, however, provides no guarantee that a critic will know if a work of art
Work of art
A work of art, artwork, art piece, or art object is an aesthetic item or artistic creation.The term "a work of art" can apply to:*an example of fine art, such as a painting or sculpture*a fine work of architecture or landscape design...
, an exhibition, or an artist will stand out in history as "great".
The opinions of art critics has the potential to stir debate on art related topics. Due to this the viewpoints of art critics writing for art publications and newspapers adds to public discourse concerning art and culture. Some of today's art critics use art blogs and other online platforms in order to connect with a wider audience and expand debate about art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
.
Many now famous and celebrated artists were not recognized by the art critics of their time, often because their art was in a style not yet understood or favored. Conversely, some critics, have become particularly important helping to explain and promote new art movements — Roger Fry
Roger Fry
Roger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...
with the Post-Impressionist movement, Lawrence Alloway
Lawrence Alloway
Lawrence Alloway was an English art critic and curator who worked in the United States from the 1960s. In the 1950s he was a leading member of the Independent Group in the UK and in the 1960s was an influential writer and curator in the US...
with Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
as examples.
Some famous art critics
- Lawrence AllowayLawrence AllowayLawrence Alloway was an English art critic and curator who worked in the United States from the 1960s. In the 1950s he was a leading member of the Independent Group in the UK and in the 1960s was an influential writer and curator in the US...
- Guillaume ApollinaireGuillaume ApollinaireWilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
- Zacharie AstrucZacharie AstrucZacharie Astruc was a sculptor, painter, poet, and art critic. He was an important figure in the cultural life of France in the second half of the 19th century, and participated in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874 and also in the Exposition Universelle of 1900...
- Albert AurierAlbert AurierG. Albert Aurier was a poet, art critic and painter, devoted to Symbolism.Son of a notary born in Châteauroux, Indre, Aurier went to Paris in 1883 to study law, but soon his attention was drawn to art and literature, and he began to contribute to Symolist periodicals...
- Charles BaudelaireCharles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
- Michael BaxandallMichael BaxandallMichael David Kighley Baxandall, FBA was a British-born art historian and a professor emeritus of Art History at University of California, Berkeley...
- Sister Wendy Beckett
- Clive BellClive BellArthur Clive Heward Bell was an English Art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group.- Origins :Clive Bell was born in East Shefford, Berkshire, in 1881...
- Bernard BerensonBernard BerensonBernard Berenson was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. He was a major figure in pioneering art attribution and therefore establishing the market for paintings by the "Old Masters".-Personal life:...
- John BergerJohn BergerJohn Peter Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.-Education:Born in Hackney, London, England, Berger was...
- John CanadayJohn CanadayJohn Edwin Canaday was a leading American art critic, author and art historian.-Early life:...
- ChampfleuryChampfleuryJules François Felix Fleury-Husson , who wrote under the name Champfleury, was a French art critic and novelist, a prominent supporter of the Realist movement in painting and fiction.In 1843 Fleury-Husson moved to Paris...
- Kenneth ClarkKenneth ClarkKenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark, OM, CH, KCB, FBA was a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians of his generation...
- T.J. Clark
- Robert CoatesRobert Coates (critic)Robert Myron Coates was an American writer and a long-term art critic for the New Yorker. He coined the term "abstract expressionism" in 1946 in reference to the works of Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.As a writer of fiction, he is considered a member of the Lost Generation,...
- Clarence CookClarence CookClarence Chatham Cook was a 19th-century American author and art critic.Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Cook graduated from Harvard in 1849 and worked as a teacher. Between 1863 and 1869, Cook wrote a series of articles about American art for The New York Tribune...
- Douglas CooperDouglas Cooper (art historian)Douglas Cooper, who also published as Douglas Lord was a British art historian, art critic and art collector. He mainly collected Cubist works.- Family background :...
- Royal CortissozRoyal CortissozRoyal Cortissoz was an American art historian and long-time art critic for the New York Herald Tribune from 1891 until his death. During his tenure, he consistently championed traditionalism and decried modernism...
- Arthur DantoArthur DantoArthur Coleman Danto Arthur Coleman Danto Arthur Coleman Danto (born January 1, 1924 is an American art critic, and professor of philosophy. He is best known as the influential, long-time art critic for The Nation and for his work in philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of history, though he...
- Denis DiderotDenis DiderotDenis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
- John ElderfieldJohn ElderfieldJohn Elderfield was the Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 2003 to 2008.Elderfield studied the history of art at the University of Manchester and the University of Leeds...
- James Elkins
- Félix FénéonFélix FénéonFélix Fénéon was a Parisian anarchist and art critic during the late 19th century...
- Hal FosterHal Foster (art critic)Harold Foss "Hal" Foster is an American art critic and historian. He was educated at Princeton University, Columbia University, and the City University of New York. He taught at Cornell University from 1991 to 1997 and has been on the faculty at Princeton since 1997...
- Peter FrankPeter Frank (art critic)Peter Frank is the Senior Curator at the Riverside Art Museum and an art critic for Angeleno Magazine. He is an occasional contributor to The Huffington Post. Until July 9, 2008, a long-time critic for LA Weekly...
- Michael Fried
- B. H. FriedmanB. H. FriedmanBernard Harper Friedman , better known by his initials "B. H.", was an American author and art critic who wrote biographies of Jackson Pollock and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a number of novels that combined his experiences in the worlds of art and business, as well as an autobiographical account...
- Roger FryRoger FryRoger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...
- Théophile GautierThéophile GautierPierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....
- Gustave GeffroyGustave GeffroyGustave Geffroy was a French journalist, art critic, historian, and novelist. He was one of the ten founding members of the literary organization Académie Goncourt in 1900....
- Clement GreenbergClement GreenbergClement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
- Dave HickeyDave HickeyDavid Hickey is an American art and cultural critic. He has written for many American publications including Rolling Stone, Art News, Art in America, Artforum, Harper's Magazine, and Vanity Fair...
- Robert HughesRobert Hughes (critic)Robert Studley Forrest Hughes, AO is an Australian-born art critic, writer and television documentary maker who has resided in New York since 1970.-Early life:...
- Edouard JaguerEdouard JaguerEdouard Jaguer was a French poet and art critic linked with the surrealist movement.He was born on 8 August 1924 in Paris and died on 9 May 2006 in Paris.He was involved with many groups and revues including:* La Main a la Plume...
- Michael KimmelmanMichael KimmelmanMichael Kimmelman is an author, critic, columnist and pianist. He is the chief architecture critic for The New York Times and written on issues of public housing, community development and social responsibility. He was the paper's longtime chief art critic and, in 2007, created the Abroad column,...
- Hilton KramerHilton KramerHilton Kramer is a U.S. art critic and cultural commentator.Kramer was educated at Syracuse University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Indiana University and the New School for Social Research. He worked as the editor of Arts Magazine, art critic for The Nation, and from 1965 to 1982,...
- Rosalind Krauss
- Donald KuspitDonald KuspitDonald Kuspit is an American art critic, poet, and Distinguished Professor of art history and philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and professor of art history at the School of Visual Arts. Kuspit is one of America's most distinguished art critics. He was formerly the A....
- Julien LeclercqJulien LeclercqJulien Leclercq was a French poet and art critic, devoted to Symbolism. Like his close friend Albert Aurier, he contributed regularly to the Mercure de France, for example in September 1890 an obituary of Vincent van Gogh...
- Louis LeroyLouis LeroyLouis Leroy was a French 19th century engraver, painter, and successful playwright. However, he is remembered as the journalist and art critic for the French satirical newspaper Le Charivari, who coined the term "impressionists" to satirise the artists now known by the word.Leroy's review was...
- Lucy Lippard
- Giovanni ListaGiovanni ListaGiovanni Lista is an Italian art historian and art critic born in Italy on February 13, 1943 at Castiglione del Lago and now living in Paris...
- Camille MauclairCamille MauclairSéverin Faust , better known by his pseudonym Camille Mauclair, was a French poet, novelist, biographer, travel writer, and art critic....
- Octave MirbeauOctave MirbeauOctave Mirbeau was a French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde...
- Robert C. MorganRobert C. MorganRobert C. Morgan is an American art critic, art historian, curator, poet, and visual artist.-Background:Robert C. Morgan received his M.F.A. in Sculpture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1975 and his Ph.D. in contemporary art history from New York University in 1978...
- Linda NochlinLinda NochlinLinda Nochlin is an American art historian, university professor and writer. She is considered to be a leader in feminist art history studies. She is best known as a proponent of the question "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"...
- Frank O'HaraFrank O'HaraFrancis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...
- Saul OstrowSaul OstrowSaul Ostrow is an art critic and Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Technologies at The Cleveland Institute of Art Trained as an artist, he is best known as a critic and curator, having curated over 80 exhibitions.-Education and professional experience:...
- Griselda PollockGriselda PollockGriselda Pollock is a prominent art historian and cultural analyst, and a world-renowned scholar of international, post-colonial feminist studies in the visual arts. She is best known for her theoretical and methodological innovation, combined with deeply engaged readings of historical and...
- Arlene RavenArlene RavenArlene Raven was a feminist art historian, author, critic, educator, and curator...
- Herbert ReadHerbert ReadSir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....
- Pierre RestanyPierre RestanyPierre Restany , was an internationally known French art critic and cultural philosopher.Restany was born in Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda, Pyrénées-Orientales, and spent his childhood in Casablanca. On returning to France in 1949 he attended the Lycée Henri-IV before studying at universities in France,...
- John RewaldJohn RewaldJohn Rewald was an American academic, author and art historian. He was known as a scholar of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cézanne, Renoir, Pissarro, Seurat, and other French painters of the late 19th century. He was recognized as a foremost authority on late 19th-century art...
- Rainer Maria RilkeRainer Maria RilkeRené Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
- Barbara RoseBarbara RoseBarbara Rose is an American art historian and art critic. She was educated at Smith College, Barnard College and Columbia University. She was married to artist Frank Stella between 1961 and 1969...
- Harold RosenbergHarold RosenbergHarold Rosenberg was an American writer, educator, philosopher and art critic. He coined the term Action Painting in 1952 for what was later to be known as abstract expressionism. The term was first employed in Rosenberg's essay "American Action Painters" published in the December 1952 issue of...
- Robert RosenblumRobert RosenblumRobert Rosenblum was an American art historian and curator known for his influential and often irreverent scholarship on European and American art of the mid-eighteenth to 20th century....
- John RuskinJohn RuskinJohn Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
- John RussellJohn Russell (art critic)John Russell CBE was a British American art critic.-Life and career:John Russell was born in Fleet, Hampshire, England, in 1919. He attended St Paul's School and then Magdalen College, Oxford....
- Frank RutterFrank RutterFrancis Vane Phipson Rutter was a British art critic, curator and activist.In 1903, he became art critic for The Sunday Times, a position which he held for the rest of his life...
- André SalmonAndré SalmonAndré Salmon was a French poet, art critic and writer. He was one of the defenders of cubism, with Guillaume Apollinaire and Maurice Raynal.-Biography:Andre Salmon was born in Paris...
- Jerry SaltzJerry SaltzJerry Saltz is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and a columnist for New York magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for The Village Voice, Saltz has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism three times. He was the sole advisor for the 1995 Whitney...
- Irving SandlerIrving SandlerIrving Sandler is an American art critic and educator. He has provided numerous first hand accounts of American art, particularly around the abstract expressionist circles of the 1950s, where he managed the Downtown Tanager Gallery and co-ordinated the New York artists' 'Club' from 1955 to its...
- Meyer SchapiroMeyer SchapiroMeyer Schapiro was a Lithuanian-born American art historian known for forging new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art...
- Peter SchjeldahlPeter SchjeldahlPeter Schjeldahl, , is an American art critic, poet, and educator.Schjeldahl was born in Fargo, North Dakota. He grew up in small towns throughout Minnesota, and attended Carleton College and The New School...
- Brian SewellBrian SewellBrian Sewell is an English art critic and media personality. He writes for the London Evening Standard and is noted for artistic conservatism and his acerbic view of the Turner Prize and conceptual art...
- Roberta SmithRoberta SmithRoberta Smith is an art critic for the New York Times and a lecturer on contemporary art.Born in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, Smith studied at Grinnell College in Iowa. Her career in the arts started in 1968 while an undergraduate summer intern at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in...
- Rafael SquirruRafael SquirruRafael Squirru , is an Argentine poet, lecturer, art critic and essayist.- Biographical notes :Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Squirru was educated at Saint Andrew's Scot School and at the Jesuit El Salvador Secondary School...
- Leo SteinLeo SteinLeo Stein was an American art collector and critic. He was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, the older brother of Gertrude Stein. He became an influential promoter of 20th-century paintings. Beginning in 1892, he studied at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for two years. The...
- Leo SteinbergLeo SteinbergLeo Steinberg was an American art critic and art historian and a naturalized citizen of the U.S.-Life:Steinberg was born in Moscow, Russia and grew up in Berlin, Germany. He was the son of Isaac Nachman Steinberg. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art...
- Michel TapiéMichel TapiéMichel Tapié was an internationally active French critic, curator, and collector of art. He was an early and influential theorist and practitioner of "tachisme", which is generally regarded as the European equivalent of abstract expressionism...
- Théophile Thoré-BürgerThéophile Thoré-BürgerÉtienne-Joseph-Théophile Thoré was a French journalist and art critic. He is best known today for his rediscovery of the work of painter Johannes Vermeer.-Biography:...
- Tristan TzaraTristan TzaraTristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
- Kirk VarnedoeKirk VarnedoeJohn Kirk Train Varnedoe was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia and was an American art historian and writer, a Professor of the History of Art at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a noted curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.-Life:He studied...
- Louis VauxcellesLouis VauxcellesLouis Vauxcelles was an influential French art critic. He is credited with coining the terms Fauvism , and Cubism ....
- Karen WilkinKaren WilkinKaren Wilkin is a New York-based independent curator and art critic specializing in 20th century modernism. Educated at Barnard College and Columbia University, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, to Rome...
- Émile ZolaÉmile ZolaÉmile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...