As Ben Davis leaves Artnet, he shares his principles as a critic and thinker in an essay called "Beyond the Art World." I couldn't agree with him more. He writes,

To feel truly passionate about a work of art means connecting it up, consciously or unconsciously, to a way of thinking, an existential world, a social reality. That is why a particular art gesture at one historical moment can seem heroic, while at another, the same gesture might seem cheap. At one instant, it is a symbol of daring and innovation, relating to the social outlook of freaks and eccentrics; at another, it becomes associated with the preachings of professors and the shenanigans of ad men.

Writing about the Bauhaus earlier this year, I said that an art critic has "to put the history back into art history" to make sense of it. This is true of the present as well as of the past: You must make contemporary art feel truly contemporary, part of the present and not removed from it.

Read the whole thing.