A Historical Theory of Art Criticism

Edmund Burke Feldman writes in his Varieties of Visual Experience, a widely used text in art education, that whatever else it is, criticism is something we do. It is a practical activity (with theoretical underpinnings) in which it is possible to gain proficiency.' For those who share this intuition-and I count myself among them-the theoretical question that arises is, What exactly is this activity, and what reasons are there to think that it has any special art-critical status? Feldman's answer to the first question is that art criticism is an orderly and sequential process that is divided into four stages: description, formal analysis, interpretation, and judgment, where judging a work of art means giving it rank in relation to other works of its type.2 What grounds are there for believing that art criticism that follows the model has any special status? In this article I present a model for type-relative criticism, somewhat along the general lines suggested by Feldman. And I offer my reasons for thinking that criticism of this sort has a special theoretical status. Following Feldman, I will focus on visual art, in particular paintings. In art criticism judgments are made about the value of artworks. Artworks have many kinds of values, including historical, functional, and aesthetic.3 I will understand art criticism to be directed to the aesthetic value or values of art-