This thesis explores the following questions: What might a 21st century expressionist art criticism consist of? How does such a mode of “art writing” relate to oppositional strategies often employed by certain artists challenging the boundaries traditionally separating art from writing? What role does the body play in such a model of writing? What role might fiction play in an expressionist art criticism? The intended outcome is to render a new model of writing “in the expanded field,” to borrow Rosalind Krauss’s phrase.
The essays and pieces of writing comprising this dissertation have been organized into four sections. The first part, “Bad Writing,” lays the groundwork for the three stylistic modes of expressionist art criticism that follow: the Expressionist Essay, Ficto-criticism, and Object-Oriented Writing. Prefaces before each section elaborate the conceptual thinking involved in arriving at each particular designation, as well as the positioning of each mode in the overall conception of a 21st century expressionist art criticism.
This thesis begins with the argument that art criticism must first and foremost be understood as a literary art form. This is an issue of intentionality that must be asserted at the outset, one that resonates with John Dewey’s notion of criticism’s re-creative and imaginative aim. It is one of the essential qualities that distinguishes art criticism from the art historical endeavor. I contend that the practice of art criticism is an art form in and of itself, one that, following the poet-critic model (or, more aptly, anti-model) advanced by Baudelaire and Apollinaire, is essentially complementary to the art object. This complementarity is what the task of an expressionist art criticism hopes to achieve. Thus, this thesis should be considered as an example of an art writing practice in the context of a thesis-based dissertation.