Machine summary:
"/ Criticism as Evaluation First of all, Carroll specifies that the topic of his book, On Criticism, is "art criticism," by which he means "criticism of any work within a certain group of art forms, including literature, drama, dance, music, the graphic arts (encompassing photography), sculpture, architecture, and the moving image arts (film, video, and computer generated visuals)" (Carroll, 2009, p.
To prevent misunderstanding, he instantly adds that criticism, in his opinion, is not merely a matter of evaluating an artwork, but criticism can also include such activities as the description, categorization, contextualization, elucidation, interpretation, and analysis of an artwork on the docket (Ibid, p.
For instance, in certain forms of historical discourse about art, such activities as description, categorization, contextualization, elucidation, interpretation, and analysis can also be employed, but he asserts what differentiates the historical discourse from criticism, properly so called, is the evaluation of an artwork.
Other Parts of Criticism Apart from evaluation, the other component operations that go into producing a piece of criticism, as noted earlier, include description, categorization, contextualization, elucidation, interpretation, and analysis.
Evaluation: Problems and Prospects The pivotal issue of the final chapter of the book is to address the question of how objective evaluative criticism is possible—"objective" means here something like "inter-subjectively verifiable" (Carroll, 2009, p.
Then, he responds that, while there are no fully general principles that can provide reasons for evaluations across the arts, there are more local principles that stem from the purposes of particular genres, styles and movements, and even from the explicit statements of the artists working within them."