Toward a comprehensive history of criticism

Last week, Columbia Journalism Review ran an interesting article by Robert Seitsema on the evolution of restaurant reviewing in New York papers. Touching on how reviews have changed from extensions of the 'women's' section of the paper (where recipes might be reprinted), to consumer advice, to a baroque form of descriptive literature, to how reviews are changing in the digital age, the article introduced readers to a number of important figures, from Craig Claiborne to blogger Danyelle Freeman. It also vividly laid out the terms of ethical debates in restaurant writing, making such industry-specific and arcane controversies relevant to readers to whom they might otherwise seem obscure or arbitrary.

It's hard for me to read such a piece without thinking of art reviewing (okay, it's hard for me to read much of anything without thinking of art reviewing). By the nature of their subject, art reviews cannot be part of the consumerist movement that restaurant reviewers might belong to (though I've seen sales happen in relation to art reviews, it's so unusual that it qualifies as an exception that proves the rule). At most, an art reviewer can tell you whether your time would be well-spent at this gallery or that museum, and as busy as we all are, a risk-taking member of the art audience doesn't really need a journalist to be her filter.

Art criticism is a heavy subject (I've just been asked to another seminar in it this summer), but food criticism is not afforded the same cultural weight (compare the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism to..what?) Is there something we can learn about writing about art from writing about food, or perfume?

I say yes. We can recapture some of the enthusiasm for our subject that it deserves. We might even be able to do this without slipping into flagrant partisan behavior, though I think that's beyond me. We can stop strangling our prose with academic distance. We can begin to write as if what we were writing was mean to be read.

Personally, I would be greatly interested in recommendations for things to read about the history of criticism of all sorts of cultural output. Some years ago, I put together a reader on art criticism that was broad and deep, but I've not kept it up in the last year. And interesting articles - like Seitsema's on restaurant reviewing - cast an indirect light on the practice of writing about art. Please send your favorites to me here...

Once again, I have students writing about art. I hope you'll check out the comments my Tyler graduate students are making on the PrintSeminar blog. Art that's worth showing is worth writing and talking about, so please keep reading.