by Jon Lackman | 22 May 2006 | Books, Contemporary
Reviewing Pamela M. Lee’s Chronophobia: On Art and Time in the 1960s for CAA Reviews, Christopher Bedford writes: “the limitation of the project for me is that Lee does not reflect explicitly enough on the tightly interwoven fabric of art and criticism that emerges so vividly in her coverage of the ’60s … It might be argued that the unspoken injunction against polemic that guides contemporary art criticism today has impoverished the current moment, and that poverty may only become apparent when thirty years from now an art historian undertakes the same sort of study Lee has successfully completed here, only to find a stagnant critical landscape, devoid of meaningful exchange between critics and artists … Is a lively critical climate a necessary precondition for the eventual creation of engaging art history? Do art historians today tend more toward periods that are ‘text-rich’? The answer to some of these questions seems to be a resounding yes.”
