Art criticism: Quick Facts

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Photos

Painting by Gustave Courbet showing the artist at his easel in a crowded studio, surrounded by figures including a nude model, onlookers, and a child with a white dog.

Raphael: The School of Athens

Nicolas Poussin: St. John on Patmos

Peter Paul Rubens: The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus

François Boucher: The Toilet of Venus

Théodore Rousseau: Under the Birches, Evening

John Ruskin seated at an ornate wooden desk, writing with a pen, wearing a long coat and sporting a full beard, in Coniston, Lancashire, England.

Eugène Delacroix: The Death of Sardanapalus

Édouard Manet: Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)

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Topics

film criticism contextualism critical review taste gynocriticism literary criticism arts journalism musical criticism Deconstruction dance criticism Historiography Philosophy of art social science geography Art conservation and restoration Folklore Art history History Mimesis South Asian arts

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aesthetics: Taste, criticism, and judgment

Key People

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Edmond Goncourt

French author

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Sidney Colvin

English scholar

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Philostratus the Younger

Greek author

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Ada Louise Huxtable

American architecture critic

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Jules Goncourt

French author

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

German author

Portrait painting of French dramatist Moliere, shown with long curly hair, a mustache, and wearing a richly detailed robe, by Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse after Pierre Mignard.

Molière

French dramatist

Portrait of Jane Austen seated, wearing a light blue dress and bonnet, holding a closed book on her lap with a thoughtful expression.

Jane Austen

English novelist

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire

French author

John Ruskin

John Ruskin

English writer and artist

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

Irish dramatist and critic

Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz

French composer

Stendhal, oil painting by Pierre-Joseph Dedreux-Dorcy; in the Bibliothèque Municipale de Grenoble, France.

Stendhal

French author

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold

British critic

Black and white portrait of French novelist Emile Zola with glasses, a full beard, and mustache, wearing a suit and looking to the side.

Émile Zola

French author

Wassily Kandinsky: Painting with Green Center

Wassily Kandinsky

Russian-born artist

Robert Browning.

Robert Browning

British poet

Bronze self-portrait of Lorenzo Ghiberti in relief, set within ornate floral and geometric decoration on the Gates of Paradise at the Florence Baptistery.

Lorenzo Ghiberti

Italian sculptor

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William Morris

British artist and author

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

American author