quotes from "FROM METAPHYSICS TO INVECTIVE: Art Criticism as if it Still Matters" written by David Levi Strauss

"The “crisis in criticism” is inherent in the word itself. The Greek word krisis means discrimination and dispute, but also decision, in the sense of judgment or appraisal. If you could solve the crisis in criticism, you wouldn’t have criticism anymore, but something else.

[...]

Why does art need criticism? Because it needs something outside of itself as a place of reflection, discernment, and connection with the larger world. Art for art’s sake is fine, if you can get it. But then the connection to the real becomes tenuous, and the connection to the social disappears. If you want to engage, if you want discourse, you need criticism.

I used to think that the plight of criticism was to be always the lover, never the beloved. Criticism needs the art object, but the art object doesn’t need criticism. Now I agree with Baudelaire: “It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.” Artists who disparage criticism are attacking their own progeny, and future." - David Levi Strauss

(source: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/05/art/from-metaphysics-to-invective-art-criticism-as-if-it-still-matters)