Criticism Without Authority
Gene Swenson’s and Jill Johnston’s Queer Practices
9780226842844
9780226842820
9780226842837
Criticism Without Authority
Gene Swenson’s and Jill Johnston’s Queer Practices
A reframing of the history of 1960s New York avant-garde art centered on the queer, genre-bending criticism of Gene Swenson and Jill Johnston.
In the early 1960s, Gene Swenson and Jill Johnston began to imagine art criticism as something unruly and expansive, rejecting modernist appeals to purity and coherence that had overtaken the field. These critics were deeply enmeshed in New York’s avant-garde art scene, and both were explicitly and unapologetically queer. First working independently of one another, then later in dialogue, Swenson and Johnston demanded criticism become life-sustaining, subverting protocols and distorting its form beyond recognition. They utilized criticism as a means of navigating queer existence and reclaimed terms like lesbian, homosexual, mad, and psychotic as their own.
Jennifer Sichel follows the intertwined paths of Swenson and Johnston, providing a history of queer practices that were central to the development of avant-garde art but have been largely overlooked. Criticism Without Authority makes their work visible not just as criticism, but as its own form of art. As Sichel shows, Swenson and Johnston’s practices, bucking categories and disciplinary formations, resist historical streamlining and stand as a key for unlocking the queerness of postwar art history.
In the early 1960s, Gene Swenson and Jill Johnston began to imagine art criticism as something unruly and expansive, rejecting modernist appeals to purity and coherence that had overtaken the field. These critics were deeply enmeshed in New York’s avant-garde art scene, and both were explicitly and unapologetically queer. First working independently of one another, then later in dialogue, Swenson and Johnston demanded criticism become life-sustaining, subverting protocols and distorting its form beyond recognition. They utilized criticism as a means of navigating queer existence and reclaimed terms like lesbian, homosexual, mad, and psychotic as their own.
Jennifer Sichel follows the intertwined paths of Swenson and Johnston, providing a history of queer practices that were central to the development of avant-garde art but have been largely overlooked. Criticism Without Authority makes their work visible not just as criticism, but as its own form of art. As Sichel shows, Swenson and Johnston’s practices, bucking categories and disciplinary formations, resist historical streamlining and stand as a key for unlocking the queerness of postwar art history.
192 pages | 63 halftones | 6 x 9
Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Collection
Art: American Art, Art Criticism
Reviews
Table of Contents
Introduction: An Impure Situation
Chapter 1: What Do You Say About Homosexuals? Gene Swenson’s Other Tradition
Chapter 2: The Disintegration of a Critic: Gene Swenson’s and Jill Johnston’s Protests and Panels
Chapter 3: lesbianlesbianlesbianlesbianlesbianlesbianlesbianlesbian: Jill Johnston’s Feminist Solutions
Conclusion: Revolutions Deferred
Acknowledgments
Notes
Select Bibliography and Further Reading
Index
Chapter 1: What Do You Say About Homosexuals? Gene Swenson’s Other Tradition
Chapter 2: The Disintegration of a Critic: Gene Swenson’s and Jill Johnston’s Protests and Panels
Chapter 3: lesbianlesbianlesbianlesbianlesbianlesbianlesbianlesbian: Jill Johnston’s Feminist Solutions
Conclusion: Revolutions Deferred
Acknowledgments
Notes
Select Bibliography and Further Reading
Index