Les Levine: Critic, 1966

For his 1966 work Critic, Les Levine made a video projection with two-minute clips of art critics sharing their thoughts on contemporary criticism. In the years following its only public screening (at New York University’s Loeb Student Center on March 7, 1967) the work’s video component was lost. But the audio survives, and this publication presents, for the first time, a transcript of the work. Illustrated with Levine's photographs of all thirteen critics, the book also includes an essay by art historian Alex Kitnick that explores other historical examples of art about criticism, situating Levine's work in an ongoing "crisis of criticism" produced by shifting roles of both artist and critic.