Elkins' Last Chapter

Three steps to be engaging as an art critic

1.   Be ambitious.  Compare your work with past work and previous writings.  Allow yourself to show off the fact that you are familiar with literature and the work of others.  You can “acknowledge complex ideas . . . given the short formats . . . of newspaper publishing.”

2.   Reflect on your own writing.  Be serious: offer your judgements and take time to think about your words.  “Why did I write that?” or “Who first thought of that?”

3.  Criticism should be good enough to be counted as academic writing.  The ideal world would have a two-way street between critics and art historians.  Galleries’ catalog essays would “be cited in art historical monographs published by university presses.”  Read everything, “have an endless bibliography;” read until the words blur together.

Wordle image based on Peter Schjeldahl's "Surrealism Revisited" article