On the Need for ‘Poetic’ Art Criticism

Abstract What would it be for the language of art criticism to be both appropriately and productively responsive to a work of art? Philosophical reflections on art criticism commonly betray a commitment to what I will call ‘prosaic’ discourse. The ‘prosaic’ view is committed to the claim that art criticism, when it is good, presents and justifies a specific way of appreciating or of evaluating the artwork at issue. In this paper, I highlight the need for a ‘poetic’ quality in art criticism, where this ‘poetic’ quality is a moment of discourse that brings forth new possibilities of sense-making. My proposal takes its cue from German Idealist poet/philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin. I want to show that although this ‘poetic’ quality of language is present in an intensified form in Hölderlin’s ‘poetic’ translations of Sophocles, it can also be seen to be present in good art criticism.