A combination of artspeak and gossip, Matthew Collings' seemingly casual ruminations can reveal surprising depth beneath their absorbing surface: in a way he is crafting a new kind of art criticism, chic, clever, and street-smart, but with an edgy self-consciousness that mimics the style of contempor
Among the foremost members of the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno launched a tirade against the modern world. With an arsenal of unsupported assertions strung together without obvious connecting elements, Adorno set out to critique what he called the "phantasmagoria" of commodity consumption.
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The preeminent art critic of Victorian England, John Ruskin elevated a personal and sentimental response to art into a manifesto against modernity. Like the poet Wordsworth, whom he greatly admired, Ruskin found in nature the stimulus to an untapped repository of emotion. He admired art that reflecte