“For all criticism is based on that equation: KNOWLEDGE + TASTE = MEANINGFUL JUDGMENT.” – Daniel Mendelsohn, The New Yorker

“The art critic, however, formalizes and deliberately exemplifies the role of the spectator who realizes the artist’s work—not by leaving it just as it is, but by adding something to it, making a personal contribution.” – Barry Schwabsky, The Nation

“[Criticism] means making fine distinctions. It means talking about ideas, aesthetics, and morality as if these things matter (and they do).” – Dwight Garner, The New York Times

I chose these three quotes because although I think they make wildly different claims about the role of criticism, they are all equally interesting to me and equally forceful. Each critic writing is clearly up on his soapbox, writing this particular line so it drips with emphasis and conviction. The concentration of “keywords” waiting to be unpacked is through the roof – taste, meaning, judgment, spectator, aesthetics, morality – which makes these quotes feel like the diamonds in the unfolding rough of these essays. Mendelsohn even incorporates an all-caps font to drive his point home. Yet after they manage to distill the act of cultural criticism to its simplest possible “sound-bite,” it is clear they have arrived at different conclusions with different levels of effectiveness.

Only one of these critics mentions what I might have thought was the linchpin of criticism: judgment. Mendelsohn holds up “meaningful judgment” as the desired end result of his equation, while Garner only talks about “distinctions.” Distinctions are important to make, but there is less of a connotation of assigning value with distinctions. Schwabsky moves even farther away from suggesting value judgments by calling criticism a “personal contribution” to an artist’s work. I have to admit I chafe a little at this; I do not want to believe that negative critical reviews give critics any ownership over a work. Call me old fashioned, but I think that it’s possible to view the discourse around a work of art as existing alongside the work rather than “adding something to it” or altering it. Further, I think that the notion of giving a subjective “contribution” might be at odds with Schwabsky’s idea of the critic as representing the Audience Member with capital letters.

But enough beating on Schwabsky. No quote works harder towards distillation than Mendelsohn’s equation, and I was really taken with its simplicity at first. However, on further thought, something started to seem a little off about it. I realized the problem was in one of his “keywords”: taste. Taste is pretty hard to define, but for me taste is not separate from knowledge (as the equation might suggest). I would define taste as having the knowledge to either justify or overcome your base feelings about a work of art in order to decide whether or not it has merit. Taste is not only knowing what you like to consume in culture, but also knowing what work is valuable (another word with many meanings). This sounds a lot like criticism. Maybe replacing “knowledge” with “context” or “teaching” would make the equation make more sense to me.

At the end of the day, I think Garner’s distilled take on the role of criticism speaks to me the most. As the humanities seem increasingly undervalued next to STEM fields, it is just nice to hear the simple statement that the intangible things I like to think about are, in fact, important. (I can overlook my slight problem with judging the “morality” of art to preserve this feel-good moment.) Garner only has to zoom out a little from the detailed debate on criticism to point out the fundamentally important aspects of critical thinking to the broadest human experience. Something that is exciting to me about criticism is the commitment to making important, nuanced ideas clear to an audience outside the ivory tower. Garner manages to do this gracefully and make a powerful point: “Our critical faculties are what make us human.”