Home - Critical Read

• Blogging Fellows, Essay, Feature, First Person, Music, Trains in the Basement

Snow in the Concert Hall

Composers John Cage and R. Murray Schafer sculpt sound into moments that evade on-demand consumption. What can we learn from these sonic environments?

• Art and Mind, Blogging Fellows, Feature, In-Depth, Visual Art

Between Parlors and Oceans

Edward Hopper’s ‘Rooms by the Sea’ captures the psychic tension resulting from conflicting states of mind. The visible ambivalence of the painting is particularly relatable during Covid.

• Appreciation, Feature, In-Depth, Poetry

Victim of his own intent: On Alvin Feinman

“My ambition, nonetheless, is that someday in the distant future, just one lonely reader will wander the shelves of a library and discover a slim volume of my poetry, taking inspiration from my work in the way I found it in Alvin Feinman’s.”

• Essay, Feature, First Person, Literature, Visual Art

An Itch for Things Remote

From ‘Moby Dick’ to Frank Stella, a writer looks to art of the sea for inspiration.

In-Focus:

Aesthetics

When the Bug is the Feature

• Blogging Fellows, The Art of Thinking, Visual Art

Glitch artists remind us that the limit of the quantification of art is the banal. ...

How To Objectively Identify Beauty

• Blogging Fellows, Performance, The Art of Thinking

A philosopher explains the importance of form and freedom in aesthetics, juggling included. ...

Can Sports Be an Aesthetic Experience?

• Blogging Fellows, The Art of Thinking

Contingency and unpredictability can elevate a football game into a kind of theater....

What Does Platonic Form Have to Do with Art?

• Blogging Fellows, In-Depth, The Art of Thinking, Visual Art

Photographs stage a confrontation between the idea of an object and its representation, and...

Art Is Essential

In March 2020 Critical Read began the Art Is Essential flash nonfiction project. We asked writers to describe the art that they are turning to during these uncertain times. Since then, we’ve heard from over 300 writers across the country.

Learn more about sharing your 300-word story.

“I am grateful for art’s power to touch us wherever we may be and open our minds and hearts to experiences that would otherwise be obscured.”

– Adam Zucker on Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s Touch Sanitation

Art Is Essential Essays vol. 6

...art invites us into lives beyond our own time and place. #ArtIsEssential

Joanne B. Mulcahy Tweet

Isolation can drain us but art offers nourishment. #ArtIsEssential

Averi Daniels Tweet

We all deserve to take a moment to draw free breath, and then raise a hopeful cry for a better tomorrow. #ArtIsEssential

Tain Leonard-Peck Tweet

We may console ourselves that our isolation -however long, however uncertain- will also contain its treasures. #ArtIsEssential

Alexander B. Joy Tweet

Hidden Histories + Criticism

Art In-Depth

Winnowing The Wynn

• Blogging Fellows, Dicey, Public Art, Reported

A critic surveys the Wynn Las Vegas art holdings and asks, “What can compete with a hanging parasol garden, life-size crystal peacocks, anemone-lantern trees, dramatic drapery edged with passementerie, and swirling golden mosaics, as well as carpets, ceiling moldings, and chandeliers fit for royalty?”

How a 19th-Century Idea Could Rescue 21st-Century Art

• Commentary, Reported, Visual Art

The American Art-Union offers a model for supporting artists with direct engagement from the ...

Have Skateboard. Dive Deep.

• Far Out, Poetry, Reported

Poet Anders Carlson-Wee on the skateboarding aesthetic, the benefits of dumpster diving, and ...

How to Tell a Dance on Film

• Dance, Film, Reported

Elliot Caplan and Mirra Bank watch dance with eyes and minds open to creative possibilities. ...

Drop Out. Tune In. Start a Revolution.

• Far Out, Reported, Visual Art

Mario Torero on leaving art school, his place in the Chicano art movement, and fifty years of ...

Art has history

Online since 2016, Critical Read is a nonprofit, non-partisan publisher dedicated to making American art and art history more inclusive and discoverable.

We tell the true stories of the fine, literary, and performing arts.

Memoir + Essay + Travel

First Person Stories

Seventeen Ways of Looking at the Mona Lisa We asked writers and artists to show us what the…
Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico Lessons from a master in living with beauty: Georgia O’Keeffe’s…
Family Portrait Portraits of distant relatives survive a married couple's home reorganization,…
Winnowing The Wynn A critic surveys the Wynn Las Vegas art holdings and…
How to Tell a Dance on Film Elliot Caplan and Mirra Bank watch dance with eyes and…
The Lewis Chessmen, Deer Antler, and a French Bulldog "What could I make with antler?" I recalled the Lewis…
Walls Covered in Basquiat "What might be if he lived? What does it mean…
To Bobby, With Love The last single person among her friends, a young woman…