Taking Ben Davis’s book 9.5 Theses on Art and Class as a framework, three leading art critics discuss the role of class, economics, and social forces in contemporary art.
Ben Davis is an art critic living and working in New York City. He is the author of 9.5 Theses on Art and Class (Haymarket, 2013). He is currently National Art Critic for artnet News, and was formerly executive editor of Artinfo.com and an editor of The Elements of Architecture , the catalogue of the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. His writings have appeared in Adbusters, The Brooklyn Rail, e-Flux Journal, Frieze New York, The New York Times, Slate.com, The Village Voice , and many other venues.
Andrianna Campbell is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she specializes in art of the modern and contemporary period. Her doctoral research focuses on Norman Lewis and Abstract Expressionism. Alongside her scholarly research, she is the author of essays and reviews on contemporary art for Artforum, Art in America, Frieze and Mousse. Campbell is a founding co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal apricota. She has taught at Parsons, the New School for Design and Yale University. She is a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Resident for 2018.
Brian Boucher is Creative Director at Sperone Westwater, where he works with the press as well as serving as liaison to some of the gallery’s artists. He was previously senior writer at artnet News, where, among other stories, he reported on the global expansion of art fairs, undertook a scuba-diving mission with artist Trevor Paglen to see undersea internet cables, and wrote about initiatives such as Agnes Gund and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Art for Justice program. Previously, in various editorial positions at Art in America, he wrote and edited scores of exhibition reviews and wrote several feature articles on artists including Tom Sachs, Rachel Harrison, and Michael Rakowitz. His writing has also appeared in publications including New York and Flash Art, and his media appearances include NPR’s Morning Edition, WNYC, and the BBC.
Martha Schwendener, Ph.D., is a Visiting Associate Professor at New York University, Steinhardt School of Art, and an art critic for The New York Times. Her criticism and essays have been published in Artforum, Bookforum, Afterimage, October, Art in America, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, The Brooklyn Rail, Art Papers, New Art Examiner, Paper Monument, Flusser Studies, and other publications. She edited Flusser/Essays (São Paulo: Metaflux, 2017), and is working on a manuscript on Vilém Flusser’s philosophy and its relationship to art.