In these six essays, Mitch Speed plumbs the ambivalences that at once fuel and plague art. Written over the last fifteen years, in parallel to Speed’s work as an art critic, the essays forward ways of writing, which might be better equipped to trace art’s role life, from personal intricacies to looming political questions.
Each piece proceeds through a specific theme, for example: the art world’s relationship to socioeconomic injustice, the beguiling return of found objects to contemporary art, the devolution of art criticism into a branch of the communications industry, and how we can better understand art’s meanings, by attending closely to the words of the people who make it.