One of the Two is Always Lacking. Notes on Artwriting

The term ‘artwriting’ – coined in the late eighties by David Carrier to refer to a specific kind of philosophically-informed art criticism – has recently enjoyed a revival of sorts. However, its original usage seems to have been largely neglected, adopting in its new incarnation a meaning that manages to be simultaneously more restrictive and imprecise. In this way, for example, the recently established MA in Artwriting at Goldsmiths College takes artwriting to refer to ‘work that addresses art as writing, writing as art, and writing about art’. I consider this characterisation of artwriting in the light of the wider prominence of what I call ‘theory in general’. It will be argued that despite the (frequent but largely fruitless) attempts to differentiate artwriting from literary, critical or theoretical writing, it is from its affinity to such theory that artwriting makes its claim on a post-Romantic and post-conceptual contemporary art.