criticism

Eve Babitz's Archive Reveals the Person Behind the Persona

by Kevin Dettmar

"What could the personal documents of a writer who was so public about her private world teach us about her work? How much of that persona was a performance and how much a reflection of her real anxieties and ambitions?"

Leo Bersani: Contrarian Critic of Gay Desire

by Jack Parlett

"For Bersani, reading is meant to hurt a little or you’re not doing it right. A preface that preempts what you’ll take away, or paraphrases what is particular, can have, he suggests, a simplifying or even sanitizing effect."

Morris Dickstein, Critic and Cultural Historian, Dies at 81

Morris Dickstein was a fierce advocate for the necessity of cultural criticism as part of public discourse, to elevate public understanding of art above the vagaries of hype and trend. 

How Black Women Musicians Defined What We Call Culture

Daphne Brooks's new book "Liner Notes for the Revolution" examines the ways that Black women as creators, critics and consumers of popular music have advanced a political vision of transforming society. 

Anarchism and the Avant-Garde: Félix Fénéon at the Museum of Modern Art

by Sam Ben-Meir

A new MOMA exhibition centers not on artists, but on the avant-garde critic and editor Félix Fénéon, whose championing of innovative artists meshed with his radical politics as a critique of the injustices of modern society.