Critique and post-critique in contemporary art history: Excessive attachment to suspicion in academia and beyond

Abstract

This essay offers a broad look at the way critique as a mode, method, and attitude in post-war art history research and teaching intersects with occurrences of critique in humanities scholarship and teaching generally, but also how distorted forms of critique occur in contexts outside the academic field. The essay outlines concerns raised by humanities scholars with what they consider to be an over-reliance on critique as a negative skill, resulting in scholarship that tears down without building up, and self-satisfied debunking of anything that does not stand up to the current era’s identity politics. The essay argues that the question of critique is of particular urgency to the field of contemporary art. Here critique is embedded in the material studied—artworks, artistic practices, and discourses—and therefore in dire need of being understood, challenged, and decentered as a method.