Criticism Without Authority

“An essential, vivid, and brisk account of two renegade art writers in postwar New York, Criticism Without Authority is as flush as its subjects with creative energy and the conviction that it’s important to sit with things, ideas, and histories we are not sure about. Beyond its importance to scholarship, this book is deeply moving.” – Prudence Peiffer, author of “The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever”“Situating these two critics together is a brilliant idea, and Sichel charts their various entanglements with laser-like precision as she offers a new orientation for how we should regard the avant-garde art scene of 1960s New York, one that is decisively queer and marked by failed gambits. Criticism Without Authority is sharp, rich, and packed with insight, reflection, and fantastic archival finds.” – Jo Applin, author of “Lee Lozano: Not Working”“Gene Swenson and Jill Johnston produced some of the most widely admired if eccentric art criticism in 1960s New York, in writing that was empirical, confessional, unembarrassed. Both were unabashedly ‘anti-workers’ of the art world. Finally, we have a study that brings them together with verve and spleen. Criticism without Authority is a lively, funny, provocative, and tonic book. Asking what is made possible by Swenson and Johnston’s queer praxes, Sichel follows the meandering leads of these two figures through her own methodological tracking. Doing the best kind of storytelling, Sichel’s account is grounded in thick description—the deep play of the cultural historian, allowing for both structure and phenomena to body forth.” – Judith Rodenbeck, author of “Radical Prototypes: Allan Kaprow and the Invention of Happenings”

Jennifer Sichel is assistant professor of contemporary art and theory at the University of Louisville, Hite Institute of Art and Design. Her work has been published in Selva, Oxford Art Journal, and in catalogs for museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Jewish Museum, and National Portrait Gallery.