Letter To The Editor -- The Brooklyn Rail
This open letter to The Brooklyn Rail is a full-scale assault on contemporary art criticism, arguing that the field persists as a hollow resume machine after losing its audience, authority, and nerve. Williams marshals Jeff Poe, Carl Andre, Leo Steinberg, Manet, Duchamp, Dave Hickey, Will Self, Benjamin Buchloh, Dean Kissick, Jason Farago, John Ioannidis, and Harry Frankfurt into a prosecutorial brief against jargon, reference farming, and criticism without hierarchy. The letter's central demand is brutal: criticism must recover judgment, differentiation, and exclusion, or submit to AI's faster exposure of its vacuity. Its case studies of Brooklyn Rail writing become autopsies of theoretical density mistaken for intelligence. The result is a defiant manifesto for criticism as execution rather than accompaniment, written in the voice of someone delighted to burn down the seminar room.
- DATE:
- December 23, 2024
- DOCUMENT TYPE:
- Letter / Open Letter
- PUBLICATION / VENUE:
- Brooklyn Rail
- NAMED ARTISTS / FIGURES:
- LG Williams; Jeff Poe; Carl Andre; Leo Steinberg; Clement Greenberg; Edouard Manet; Marcel Duchamp; Dave Hickey; Will Self; Dean Kissick; Jason Farago; Benjamin Buchloh; Andrew Woolbright; Oscar yi Hou; John Ioannidis; Harry Frankfurt; Gore Vidal
- INSTITUTIONS / VENUES:
- The Brooklyn Rail; The Baer Faxt Podcast; American Academy of Arts and Letters; Harvard University; Harper's; Nature
- PLACES:
- Brooklyn
- KEYWORDS:
- criticism as resume machine; art criticism without judgment; jargon as credential; AI faster at exposure; execution vs accompaniment; hierarchy demanded; seminar room burned; Brooklyn Rail as autopsy