Art Criticism as Social Critique: The Disintegration, Deculturalization, and Objection of Art Criticism in 1969

Frida Sandström

This dissertation focuses on a specific conjunctural transformation of art criticism into social critique undertaken by critics and artists between 1955 and 1975 in the United States and Italy. Their social critique was formulated and enacted against a formalist critical subjectivity which they embodied even while they polemicized against it. Introducing the notion of “the double character of the art critic,” specific for this context and period, I discuss three subjects: Italian art critic and separatist feminist Carla Lonzi, (1931–1982) American cultural critic and lesbian activist Jill Johnston (1931–2009) and American-German artist and philosopher Adrian Piper (1948–). Central for all three was the abandonment, negation, or sabotage of formalist critical subjectivity. All three made the critical subject – themselves – the object of critique, while simultaneously immersing their presupposed autonomy into the heteronomous social context in which they lived. Therefore, the self-reflection of these critics and artists questions its own conditions of possibility and, concomitantly, the historical categories of art, gender, race, and sexuality. The research focuses on published material and works, along with informal correspondence, with a specific emphasis on the years 1969–1970.