Martha Schwendener
is an art historian and critic living in Brooklyn.
Guest Critic
Dear Reader
By Martha SchwendenerMuch lies before you, so I won’t keep you long except to tell you how this came about. When Phong asked me in mid-December to edit the February issue of ARTSEEN, I thought, that’s impossible.
Ethical Criticism
By Martha SchwendenerWe have “mastered” aesthetic criticism. Now it’s time for an ethical one
In Conversation
TISHAN HSU with Martha Schwendener
Tishan Hsu speaks with art historian and critic Martha Scwhendener about his painting and sculpture practice, the relationship of the screen to the body, and Vilém Flusser’s prescient theories of photography.
Re: Art Criticism Today
By Martha SchwendenerFor me, art criticism is in dialogue with art, but also with culture. It is not merely “supporting” or “evaluating” art, but describing how it functions within and as a form of culture.
After Some Advances, A Backslide
By Martha SchwendenerThe idea of “progress” was widely debunked by critical postmodernism, but it is hard to dispute the fact that some genuine progress has been made for women in the art world.
William Cobbett
By Martha SchwendenerDue to unforeseen and unexpected circumstances, I arrived in the 1980s at a boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut. I immediately liked my surroundings. The students were smart and came from all over the world.
Notes on Landscape/Painting/Photography/the Sublime
By Martha SchwendenerThe Hudson River School painters hiked mountains, climbed trees, and paddled rivers and streams. But the images they produced weren’t made outdoors. Many of them were painted in the Tenth Street Studio Building in Lower Manhattan. By the 1860s, it was like a small landscape-painting factory.
The Ten Best Art Books of 2014
The Rail’s selection of the best art books of 2014.
