Art Criticism after Black Studies
BLCK 480

Undergraduate Seminar,
Department of Gender Studies
Queen’s University
Tuesday 2:30pm-5:30pm
Fall 2023

Art criticism occupies a unique position in contemporary critical discourse. As a practice of writing, it has a long history in periodicals, magazines, newspapers, and exhibition catalogues. Unlike art history or arts journalism, art criticism seeks to articulate the significance of artworks to and from an immediately contemporary perspective.

This course surveys the genre to analyze key texts that have shaped criticism leading up to, and including, the current approaches and perspectives. Students will gain a practical overview of art criticism and the social, economic, art historical contexts of the art world in which artists practice and present their work. The focus of the lectures, readings and writing assignments is meant to familiarize the students with art critical discourses and styles of art criticism, while also paying attention to questions of race, class, gender, (hetero)sexuality, and social justice.

Discussions and readings will review the contexts of criticism that often go unmentioned: the economic interests and social realities that overdetermine production and presentation of art works. Engaged students will learn to be attentive to the material forms and mediums of art as well as the critical discourses and aesthetics that shape the art world. They will be able to identify and discuss the cultural significance of artists and their practices, and to contextualize this work within social, economic and material (media) histories.

Language is the medium by which critics work to put forth their well-researched, grounded-in- evidence interpretations and successful students will complete the course with the ability to research, structure, draft and revise their own art criticism essays.
Song. Prayer. Scream. A Praxis Of Looking is a writing workshop that asks us to consider the ways artists offer pathways of escape from everyday oppressions—sites of pleasure outside expected forms of work, gender, family and desire.

SYLLABUS

COURSE SCHEDULE

Week 1: September 5, 2023 — Introduction

Film: Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (short 1970), directed by Terence Dixon

Suggested reading:
“A History of Art Criticism” by Kerr Houston in An introduction to art criticism: histories, strategies, voices

Week 3: September 19, 2023 — Art Ecologies

“Power Relations within Existing Art Institutions” by Adrian Piper in Institutional Critique: an anthology of artists’ writings, eds. Alexander Alberro and Black Stimson, 1983.

Week 5: October 3, 2023 — Guest Lecture: Joana Joachim

“Speaking Ourselves Into Being” by Liz Ikiriko and Andrea Fatona, C Magazine, 2019.

“In the Presence of Absence: Invisibility, Black Canadian History, and Melinda Mollineaux’s Pinhole Photography” by Andrea Fatona, Canadian Journal of Communication, 31(1), 2006.

Week 7: October 24, 2023 — Race for Theory

“The Race for Theory” by Barbara Christian, Feminist Studies, 14(1), 1988.

“On Black Canadian Thought” by Peter James Hudson and Aaron Kamugisha, The CLR James Journal, 20(1/2), 2014.

Week 9: November 7, 2023 — The Critic’s ‘I’

“Kara Walker’s Monstrous Intimacies” by Christina Sharpe in Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects, 2009.

“An Open Letter to Donald Kuspit” by Adrian Piper, Real Life Magazine, 1980.

Week 11: November 21, 2023 — What is the Contemporary?

“Poor Meme, Rich Meme” by Aria Dean, REAL LIFE, 2016.

“In Defense of the Poor Image” by Hito Steyerl, e-flux Journal, 2009.

Week 2: September 12, 2023 — What is art criticism?
What Happened to Art Criticism? by James Elkins, 2003.
Suggested readings:
“Critical Genealogies: Writing Black Art” by Bell Hooks from Art on My Mind, 1995.

“Way of Introduction” by Donna Bailey Nurse from What's a Black Critic to Do?, 2003.

Week 4: September 26, 2023 — Black Aesthetics

“Black Aesthetic” by Sylvia Wynter in The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, ed. Michael Kelly, 2014.

“More Life—Beyond the Archival & the Algorithmic” by Mark V. Campbell, RACAR 47(2), 2022.

*Reading Week: October 10, 2023 — NO CLASS*

Week 6: October 17, 2023 — Rethinking Aesthetics

“Rethinking ‘Aesthetics’: Notes Towards a Deciphering Practice” by Sylvia Wynter in Ex-Iles: Essays on Caribbean Cinema, ed. Mbye B. Cham, 1992.

Week 8: October 31, 2023 — Guest Lecture: Tiana Reid

“Feeling and Falling in Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, the Message is Death” by Christina Knight, The Black Scholar, 49(3), 2019.

Week 10: November 14, 2023 — Black Modernity

“The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity” by Paul Gilroy

“From Africa to the Americas: Face to Face, Picasso Past and Present and Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art” review by Joana Joachim, RACAR 43(2), 2018.

Week 12: November 28, 2023 — Zong

“(Zong) Bad Made Measure” by Katherine McKittrick in Dear Science and Other Stories, 2021.

“Ethics Beyond Language” on M. NourbeSe Philip by Nasrin Himada, Canadian Art, 2018.

Oluseye, Eminado Series, Reunion, 2018-Ongoing

Assignments and Evaluation

20% Discussion Facilitation
You will be responsible for leading a discussion around the week’s reading. You should be familiar with the main points and ideas presented by the author and come up with key questions to pose to the text and facilitate engaged conversation. Sign up online.

• Due once this semester

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20% Reading responses
Write a one-page response to ONE of the week’s assigned readings. Each response is worth 2%. A printed copy is due weekly, at beginning of class. No late assignments accepted. No electronic submissions accepted.

• Due Weekly

15% Reviews
During the semester you will write three 500-800 word reviews (each worth 5%). Your reviews should present an opinionated stance on a contemporary art exhibition and contain a balance of context, description, analysis and judgement.

• Due Week 4, Week 5, Week 7

5% Final paper proposal
Submit an outline of your final paper.

Paper option: Write an outline of your final essay, including main ideas/points of focus you will use to support your interpretive stance. These arguments can be presented in point form. Keep in mind that your thesis should complicate and/or differ from the original curatorial or artistic intent for the artwork. A one page preliminary bibliography should also be included.

• Due Week 9

35% Final Paper
Paper option: Write a 2000-word essay about a single artwork or exhibition by a practicing contemporary artist. The assignment is meant to give you an opportunity to practice close reading and interpretation/analysis. You should develop a well-researched, interpretive stance for the artwork that is different than or greatly extends from the curatorial/ artistic intent. Essays should critically engage with at least two of the readings or concepts reviewed during the course.

• Due Week 12, at the beginning of class.