Art criticism

i was pretty conflicted about picking this one up. i pretty much learned what art history i know from hal foster. he was a visiting prof during my first year of college and all my friends took his class, read his books, and talked his talk. so i have a pretty strong affection and sympathy for his ideas. also, this is a compromise move. another bookstore has a copy of october #2 in a case for $30 and i've been trying to keep from buying it for a long time now.

OTOH i have read a number of scathing reviews on the book, and i distrust comps as a rule.

any opinions on the subject??

picked up clement greenberg's 'art and culture' a while back - this is what anti-rockism crit looks like, there's some stuff on the novel too, but for the most part its criticism that HAD to be written. 'right place, right time etc'

john berger's 'ways of seeing' has a materialist view

but, i do own and enjoy uncontrollable beauty. theory-wise, it leans more towards aesthetics than sociology, which makes it sort of unusual (at least as far as my bookshelf goes).

We have tweets and AI slop.

Nothing shaped me intellectually more than great arts criticism. Just all kinds of smart people explaining in daily and weekly papers what I needed to know about history and politics and love in their writing about music and film. It’s mostly gone, I fear.

— Jeff Melnick (@melnickjeffrey1) June 7, 2025

Art in the 20th Century is pretty solid. I am decades behind the contemporary field now… I am ok with that.