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| Aesthetic Review | |
|---|---|
| Title | Aesthetic Review |
| Format | Quarterly print and online |
| Founded | 1987 |
| Founder | Elena Marlowe |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Headquarters | London |
| Language | English |
| ISSN | 0950-0000 |
Aesthetic Review Aesthetic Review is a critical periodical and platform dedicated to the analysis, evaluation, and dissemination of aesthetic discourse across visual arts, design, and cultural criticism. The journal engages with practitioners, theorists, curators, and institutions through essays, reviews, interviews, and manifestos, positioning itself within transnational conversations about taste, style, and cultural value. Its editorial remit spans contemporary art, historical scholarship, curatorial practice, and design theory.
Aesthetic Review defines its remit at the intersection of contemporary art criticism, curatorial studies, and design analysis, aligning discussions with figures and institutions such as Marcel Duchamp, Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, Francois Lyotard, Clement Greenberg, Theodor Adorno, Jacques Derrida, Martha Rosler, Hans Ulrich Obrist and organisations like the Tate Modern, Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Serpentine Galleries, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The scope incorporates exhibitions at venues including Venice Biennale, Documenta, Whitney Biennial, São Paulo Biennial, and debates prompted by auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's. The Review situates material practice alongside discourses produced by universities and research centres such as Goldsmiths, Courtauld Institute of Art, Yale School of Art, Columbia University and think tanks including Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Ford Foundation.
Founded in 1987 by editor Elena Marlowe amid debates sparked by exhibitions like Sensation (1997) and retrospectives of Andy Warhol, Aesthetic Review emerged alongside journals such as Artforum, October (journal), Frieze (magazine), Art in America and The Burlington Magazine. Its early issues featured dialogues with curators such as Nicholas Serota, critics like Robert Hughes, and artists including Jenny Holzer and Damien Hirst. During the 1990s the Review responded to movements and events—Young British Artists, the expansion of the Art Basel circuit, and postcolonial exhibitions at the South Bank Centre—while engaging with theoretical trajectories from Postmodernism through debates influenced by Postcolonialism and Feminist art history exemplified by interventions from Griselda Pollock and Linda Nochlin. In the 2000s the journal expanded online, covering digital practices by artists like Rafaël Rozendaal and institutional critiques associated with Alexander Alberro and movements around Occupy Museums.
Aesthetic Review presents plural theoretical frames, foregrounding influences from Formalism linked to Clement Greenberg, Marxist aesthetics associated with Karl Marx and Theodor Adorno, Phenomenology following Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger, Feminist theory advanced by Judith Butler and Laura Mulvey, and Poststructuralism through Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. It addresses concepts such as authorship debated in relation to Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault; spectatorship in dialogues invoking John Berger and Susan Sontag; and institutional critique referencing Daniel Buren and Michael Asher. The Review also connects to practices in Graphic Design and Industrial Design through analyses of designers like Dieter Rams, Massimo Vignelli, and movements tied to Bauhaus and De Stijl.
Editorially, Aesthetic Review employs mixed methodologies: archival research engaging collections at British Library and Bibliothèque nationale de France; formal analysis exemplified in reviews of works by Pablo Picasso and Gerhard Richter; curatorial case studies referencing exhibitions at MoMA and Royal Academy of Arts; and ethnographic fieldwork around biennials such as Istanbul Biennial and Gwangju Biennale. Criteria for assessment draw on provenance traced via Getty Research Institute standards, conservation debates linked to ICOM-CC, market indicators from Artprice and auction houses like Phillips, and reception metrics including citations in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde and academic impact from journals such as Critical Inquiry.
The Review influences curatorial practice at institutions like National Gallery, Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and design programming at Cooper Hewitt. It shapes pedagogy in departments at Royal College of Art, Pratt Institute, Rhode Island School of Design and informs critique published in outlets such as The New Yorker, ArtReview, ArtNews and Los Angeles Times (newspaper). The journal's essays have been cited in exhibition catalogues for retrospectives of Marina Abramović, Anish Kapoor, Ai Weiwei, and monographs on designers like Charles and Ray Eames.
Aesthetic Review operates via an editorial board including academics from Cambridge University, University of Chicago, University of California, Berkeley and curators connected to Victoria and Albert Museum and Imperial War Museum. Funding models have included grants from Arts Council England, fellowships via Henry Moore Foundation, and partnerships with universities and foundations such as Getty Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Peer review practices follow double-blind models used by journals like Art History (journal), while editorial projects have collaborated with festivals including Frieze Art Fair and research networks like Cultural Heritage Research Centre.
Critiques of Aesthetic Review mirror wider field disputes: charges of institutional bias aligned with museums such as Tate Britain and galleries like Gagosian Gallery, debates over market influence flagged with Sotheby's and Christie's, diversity critiques referencing advocacy groups like Black Lives Matter and scholars such as bell hooks and Stuart Hall, and methodological disputes with proponents of activist publishing represented by ArtLeaks and e-flux. Additional contention arises around digital transitions critiqued alongside platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, and questions about accessibility raised by activists connected to Theaster Gates and community curators at Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
Category:Art criticism magazines