"The typical work of modern scholarship is intended to be read like a catalogue. But when shall we actually write books like catalogues? If the deficient content were thus to determine the outward form, an excellent piece of writing would result, in which the value of opinions would be marked without their being thereby put on sale."
Walter Benjamin, 'Teaching Aid' in One-Way Street, Selected Writings, p. 457, OWS p. 63f
"I try to describe with love what I love. My secret ambition is to pierce through the veil: think about a work and then not just describe it but arrive at something, an underlying principal or an underlying emotion and then say what the work's true value and beauty really is." Joan Acocella
Recommended reading
- Baird, George. “Criticality and Its Discontents,” Harvard Design Magazine, 2004.
- Butt, Gavin. After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance, Blackwell: Malden & Oxford, 2005.
- Critical Inquiry
- Eagleton, Terry. After Theory, Penguin: London, 2004.
- Hays, K. Michael. “Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form,” Perspecta 21: The Yale Architectural Journal, 1984. pp. 14-29.
- Martin, Reinhold. Critical of What?
- Somol, Robert & Whiting, Sarah. “Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism,” Perspecta 33: The Yale Architectural Journal, 2002.
- Sontag, Susan. ‘Against Interpretation’ and ‘Notes on Camp’, in A Susan Sontag Reader, Intro. Elizabeth Hardwick, Penguin: London, 1983.
- Speaks, Michael. “Design Intelligence, Part I: Introduction,” A+U, 2002.
About Me
- Rolf Hughes
- Writer & critic; Guest Professor in Theory and Practice-Based Research at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm; Senior Professor in Research Design at the Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, Brussels & Ghent; Senior Researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology, School of Architecture, Stockholm.