Art is Essential July 2021
Writers on the art that matters to them. #ArtIsEssential
Meaning in Adjacency
What would a national Covid-19 memorial look like?
When the Bug is the Feature
Glitch artists remind us that the limit of the quantification of art is the banal.
A Beat of His Own
Our newest Artwork Biography comes from musicologist Rebecca Bodenheimer.
Explore
Art in America
How To Objectively Identify Beauty
A philosopher explains the importance of form and freedom in aesthetics, juggling included. ...
Can Sports Be an Aesthetic Experience?
Contingency and unpredictability can elevate a football game into a kind of theater....
Winnowing The Wynn
A critic surveys the Wynn Las Vegas art holdings and asks, "What can compete with a hanging parasol...
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.
– Adam Zucker on Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s Touch Sanitation
...art invites us into lives beyond our own time and place. #ArtIsEssential
Isolation can drain us but art offers nourishment. #ArtIsEssential
We all deserve to take a moment to draw free breath, and then raise a hopeful cry for a better tomorrow. #ArtIsEssential
We may console ourselves that our isolation -however long, however uncertain- will also contain its treasures. #ArtIsEssential
Hidden Histories + Criticism
Art In-Depth
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.
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. Browse our Artwork Biography e-books, available in MOBI, EPUB, and PDF files.
Memoir + Essay + Travel
First Person Stories
Lost Words
A writer stuck on a story lets the words carry her to a new page. ...
Family Portrait
Portraits of distant relatives survive a married couple's home reorganization, the subjects'...
The Monster Within
Psychiatrist and art critic Deborah Kostianovsky explains why she can't turn away from a portrait...
Snow in the Concert Hall
Composers John Cage and R. Murray Schafer sculpt sound into moments that evade on-demand...
Greenhouse in the Desert
"If you revisit the things that once interested you, you can return to that period of your life....
Graphite Insomnia
“A deep black square can be an object or an opening. Sometimes you can get a surface so deep,...
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Seventeen Ways of Looking at the Mona Lisa May 2, 2019 We asked writers and artists to show us what the…
Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico December 23, 2019 Lessons from a master in living with beauty: Georgia O’Keeffe’s…
Family Portrait March 2, 2021 Portraits of distant relatives survive a married couple's home reorganization,…
Winnowing The Wynn December 4, 2020 A critic surveys the Wynn Las Vegas art holdings and…
The Lewis Chessmen, Deer Antler, and a French Bulldog June 23, 2020 "What could I make with antler?" I recalled the Lewis…
How to Tell a Dance on Film July 8, 2020 Elliot Caplan and Mirra Bank watch dance with eyes and…
Walls Covered in Basquiat August 31, 2020 "What might be if he lived? What does it mean…
Drop Out. Tune In. Start a Revolution. May 12, 2020 Mario Torero on leaving art school, his place in the…
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How a 19th-Century Idea Could Rescue 21st-Century Art
October 20, 2020• Commentary, Reported, Visual Art
The American Art-Union offers a model for supporting artists with direct engagement from the...
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