Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Permissions INTRODUCTION: Beyond Critique Pamela Fraser (University of Vermont, USA) and Roger Rothman (Bucknell University, USA) PART 1: HISTORY & THEORY 1. An Allegory of Criticism David Joselit (CUNY Graduate Center, USA) 2. Fluxus and the Art of Affirmation Roger Rothman (Bucknell University, USA) 3. Defining Criticality as an Historical Object of the 1970s and 1980s AnneMarie Perl (Princeton University, USA) 4. "The people were smart and hungry": Criticality, Egalitarianism, and the Pictures Generation Anthony E. Grudin (University of Vermont, USA) 5. Shiny Things Paul Preissner (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA) PART 2: PRACTICE 6. Still in the Cage: Thoughts on "Two Undiscovered Amerindians," 20 Years Later Coco Fusco (independent artist) 7. Parasitism and Contemporary Art Adrian Anagnost (Tulane University, USA) 8. Time, Autonomy and Criticality in Socially Engaged Art Grant Kester (University of California at SanDiego, USA) 9. Radical Proximity Sofia Leiby (independent artist) 10. Post-Critical Painting Andreas Fischer (Illinois State University, USA) 11. Intimate Bureaucracies: A [Sweetened and Condensed] Manifesto dj readies [Craig Saper] (University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA) PART 3: INSTRUCTION On Performing the Critical Billie Lee (University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA) Consideration (As an Antidote to Critique) Karen Schiff (Rhode island School of Design and Boston Architectural College, USA) Re-Thinking Art Education (Revisited), or How I Learned to Love Art Schools Again Jen Delos Reyes (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA) Pragmatics of Studio Critique Judith Leeman (Massachusetts College of Art and Design, USA) Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Gift, Circulation, and Community Building in the Studio Art Crit. Shona Macdonald (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA) Index

Promotional Information

Beyond Critique provides new ways of thinking about art's longstanding critical orientation and identifies a range of alternative methods and aspirations.

About the Author

Pamela Fraser is an artist and an Associate Professor at The University of Vermont, USA, whose work has been exhibited internationally since 1996. Roger Rothman is the Samuel H. Kress Professor of Art History at Bucknell University, USA. He has published articles on Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism, and is the author of Tiny Surrealism: Salvador Dali and the Aesthetics of the Small (2012).

Reviews

The anthology is most valuable as a taking stock of the waning appeal of 'autonomous criticality' as a criterion of value, and, as such, offers a tentative first step in the circumvention of cul-de-sac critique. * ASAP Journal *
Beyond Critique represents new scholarship that addresses the thesis that critical theory, or 'critique,' has become a master narrative, is complicit in its domination of aesthetic discourses, and is deserving of critical analysis. A much-needed, wide-ranging, intellectually informative discussion, the volume provides alternative approaches to thinking about art in history, theory, practice, and instruction. * Kristine Stiles, France Family Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Duke University, USA *
Navigating through postmodern pluralisms, neoliberal coercions of institutional critique, socially exclusive networks and market ideologies, this collection provides concrete analyses not only of the academic, ethical, socioeconomic and geopolitical obstacles that lay claim to the illusory capacities of critique in contemporary art, but alternatives for an art that is overwhelmed at its own upheaval of visible organization. Beyond Critique welcomes the reader into empirical approaches to past projects (such as Coco Fusco's 'Thoughts on "Two Undiscovered Amerindians," 20 Years Later'), and utilizes some of the most prominent thinkers of the 21st century to negotiate and reformulate the dissipation of critique today. * Anton Vidokle, artist and director of e-flux *
Articulating an urgent and formidable challenge to the institutionalized authority of suspicious and symptomatic reading, Beyond Critique offers compelling arguments for a more inclusive range of affective styles and modes of post-critical interpretation. As a timely follow-up to Rita Felski's The Limits of Critique, this text is sure to further the long-awaited critical turn within the field of interpretation while impacting our awareness of contemporary critical analysis both inside and outside of the academy. * Michelle Grabner, Crown Family Professor of Painting and Drawing, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA *
Critique enjoys an unassailable position atop the academic hierarchy, whether in the visual, performing, musical arts, or the academic systems used to make sense of them. Beyond Critique: Contemporary Art in Theory, Practice, and Instruction explores in groundbreaking fashion critique's habitually neglected other side in the transformative experiences that make culture a fundamental human experience and right. In this particular political moment, when political systems and aesthetic systems seem to be simultaneously imploding under the weight of unbridled critique, Beyond Critique offers a compelling and wide-ranging collection of models for thinking through the dialectics of art and politics today. * Hannah Higgins, Professor of Art History, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA, and author of Fluxus Experience and The Grid Book *