Outliving Criticism

Today we are taking a break from my personal investigation into my tastes and preferences in design, architecture, etc. and looking at a subject that was brought to my attention by my friend at the Knowlton School of Architecture. He wrote an essay in his architectural theory class on how some art outlives its criticism, and I thought this was an interesting topic. I will link my friends essay at the bottom of this post. Something important to note is that the essay was written in response to the prompt "any objections" in regard to the readings assigned in the class. The readings include Krauss' "Sculpture in the Expanded Field" and Deleuze's "Plato and the Simulacrum" and are included in the footnotes of the paper. I think the paper hits some important points when it comes to how modern art and popular culutre have intertwined and have made it very hard to distinguish between art and the semblence of art. In the paper, Virgil Abloh is noted to have become a simulacrum, meaning he is always reaching for semblence and is arbitrary. This may be true, but his work sells, evidently. I do think that this poses some interesting questions regarding how cost and significance are related, and how people will denote something as significant because of the price, not because of it's actual value to art, design, or cultural significance. To conclude, I am alarmed on a daily basis by the amount of money one can spend on arbitrary design, even if the person behind the design is an acclaimed architect or designer.
Essay on Outliving Criticism by Samuel Roediger