
April 15, 2021• Ebook, Feature, Music
A Beat of His Own
Our newest Artwork Biography comes from musicologist Rebecca Bodenheimer.
April 13, 2021• Blogging Fellows, Feature, Performance, The Art of Thinking
How To Objectively Identify Beauty
A philosopher explains the importance of form and freedom in aesthetics, juggling included.
April 6, 2021• Art and Mind, Blogging Fellows, Feature, Visual Art
Staying Afloat
One of the first paintings of the Arctic landscape offers lessons in fortitude and resilience.
March 12, 2021• Art Is Essential, Feature
Art Is Essential March 2021
Writers on the art that matters to them. #ArtIsEssential
Art Across America
The Sound of Jeanne Lee’s Voice
February 15, 2021• Blogging Fellows, Music, Reported, Vanguard Voices
Jeanne Lee (1939-2000) was a poet and vocalist of wide-ranging musical talents who pushed the...
Read More →Can Sports Be an Aesthetic Experience?
February 4, 2021• Blogging Fellows, Reported, The Art of Thinking
Contingency and unpredictability can elevate a football game into a kind of theater....
Read More →Vanguard Voices
January 19, 2021• Blogging Fellows, Music, Reported, Vanguard Voices
"If creative music is under celebrated and under documented compared to other eras in jazz, the...
Read More →Winnowing The Wynn
December 4, 2020• Blogging Fellows, Dicey, Public Art, Reported
A critic surveys the Wynn Las Vegas art holdings and asks, "What can compete with a hanging parasol...
Read More →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
There's nothing quite like the warmth of oil on canvas. #ArtIsEssential
Isolation can drain us but art offers nourishment. #ArtIsEssential
I no longer felt so alone, and this was when I first learned the power of poetry. #ArtIsEssential
We may console ourselves that our isolation -however long, however uncertain- will also contain its treasures. #ArtIsEssential
Art In-Depth
Between Parlors and Oceans
January 15, 2021• Art and Mind, Blogging Fellows, In-Depth, Visual Art
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.
Agnes Martin in Coenties Slip
December 2, 2020• Blogging Fellows, In Residence, In-Depth, Visual Art
Read More →Victim of his own intent: On Alvin Feinman
July 21, 2020• Appreciation, In-Depth, Poetry
Read More →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.

First Person Stories
Family Portrait
March 2, 2021• Essay, Feature, First Person, Visual Art
Portraits of distant relatives survive a married couple's home reorganization, the subjects'...
Read More →The Monster Within
February 15, 2021• Art and Mind, Blogging Fellows, First Person, Visual Art
Psychiatrist and art critic Deborah Kostianovsky explains why she can't turn away from a portrait...
Read More →Snow in the Concert Hall
January 25, 2021• Blogging Fellows, Essay, First Person, Music, Trains in the Basement
Composers John Cage and R. Murray Schafer sculpt sound into moments that evade on-demand...
Read More →Greenhouse in the Desert
December 11, 2020• Blogging Fellows, First Person, Performance, Trains in the Basement
"If you revisit the things that once interested you, you can return to that period of your life....
Read More →Graphite Insomnia
November 23, 2020• Appreciation, First Person, Visual Art
“A deep black square can be an object or an opening. Sometimes you can get a surface so deep,...
Read More →Walls Covered in Basquiat
August 31, 2020• First Person, Visual Art
"What might be if he lived? What does it mean that his image is defined and further commoditized...
Read More →Trending
Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico December 23, 2019 Lessons from a master in living with beauty: Georgia O’Keeffe’s…
Seventeen Ways of Looking at the Mona Lisa May 2, 2019 We asked writers and artists to show us what the…
Family Portrait March 2, 2021 Portraits of distant relatives survive a married couple's home reorganization,…
The Lewis Chessmen, Deer Antler, and a French Bulldog June 23, 2020 "What could I make with antler?" I recalled the Lewis…
Winnowing The Wynn December 4, 2020 A critic surveys the Wynn Las Vegas art holdings and…
How to Tell a Dance on Film July 8, 2020 Elliot Caplan and Mirra Bank watch dance with eyes and…
Vanguard Voices January 19, 2021 "If creative music is under celebrated and under documented compared…
Walls Covered in Basquiat August 31, 2020 "What might be if he lived? What does it mean…
What Is Aesthetics? An Introduction to ‘The Art of Thinking’
November 10, 2020• Blogging Fellows, Commentary, In-Depth, The Art of Thinking
"If you’ve ever asked yourself why a particular painting is considered beautiful, or whether a ...
Read More →