15 Critic Examples

The review is a character text expository–argumentative that summarizes the fundamental aspects of a cultural product (which can be a literary work, a rehearsal, a film, a theatrical show, a plastic creation, among others) and also offers a well-founded evaluation of its quality by a critic or specialist on the subject.

It is a text that combines characteristics of expository and argumentative texts because it pursues two objectives:

General characteristics of the critic

• • Praise. To highlight the merits of the author.
  • Friendly persuasion. To make explicit its affinity with the proposal of the reviewed work and, in this way, get the public to value it positively.
  • Alternating positive and negative comments. To soften negative judgments.
  • I start with the positives. To moderate the negative evaluations that remain at the end of the text.

Criticism structure

A review can be organized in this way:

Linguistic resources to reformulate the argument

To expose the essentials of the source text, the following linguistic procedures can be applied:

Examples of criticism

1. Flesh and stone: the body and the city in Western civilizationby Richard Sennett. The author offers an analysis of the architectural characteristics of the most important cities of Western civilization, from ancient times to the present, considering the bodily experience that each one offered to the inhabitants, and which is reflected in the way of organizing the intimate and social life of each one from them.
2. Philosophy of the theater, by Jorge Dubatti (volumes I, II, III). The author analyzes the different theatrical practices in the specific scene of the city of Buenos Aires to understand its relationship of the scenic activity with other entities and events, political, historical, private or universal.
3. The blind field. Essays on realism in cinemaby Pascal Bonitzer. The author offers an analysis of great works of classical cinema (by authors such as the Lumiére brothers, Griffith, Eisenstein, Bazin, Rossellini, Hitchcock and Godard), to understand the ties that unite these works representing the most resonant moments of this art with reality, through the different resources and styles that are put into play in the screen.
4. Mismatches. Cinema and paintingby Pascal Bonitzer. The author analyzes the relationships that are established, often in a subtle way, between cinema and painting, considering aesthetics, movement, points of view, among others.
5. Ways of seeingby John Berger. The author analyzes the different ways of appreciating pictorial art and photography that, according to her, can be “read” in the sense that they provide direct information. He also proposes ways of reading and interpreting paintings in a way different from the classical analysis that is made of these works.
6. Hasper, from various authors. Various authors analyze the work of Graciela Hasper, a contemporary Argentine artist who continues the abstract tradition and whose productions are mostly in the Ruth Art Gallery Benzacar.
7. Kinetic art and neo-kineticismby Elena Oliveras. The author analyzes the presence of kinetics in contemporary painting and sculpture, based on the observation and investigation of the work of five artists.
8. 33 artists in 3 actsby Sarah Thornton. The author analyzes the work of thirty-three contemporary artists, whom she considers fundamental in the scene current artistic, to highlight its importance in the development of new trends and in the renewal of language Of art.
9. Become contemporary. The transformations of art in the contemporary agoraby Boris Groys. In a series of essays, the author analyzes the evolution of art and the different aspects of that transformation embodied in important works of each era.
10. Against interpretationby Susan Sontag. It is a book that compiles numerous essays by the author, in which she discusses and analyzes the work of numerous established authors and actors on the art scene such as Sartre, Godard, Simone Weil, Beckett.
11. Linguistic turn, literary theory and critical theoryby Frank Ankersmit. The author presents a series of essays in which he analyzes the relationship between language and reality to understand the narratives with which the past is constructed.
12. About writingby Virginia Woolf. The author expresses a series of reflections about the writing technique and the creative process, and critically analyzes and explains the works of her colleagues.
13. Feminist literary theoryby Toril Moi. The author reflects on the relationships between the problems that she presents in a literary text with the gaze and priorities that feminist politics sustains.
14. Powers of perversionby Julia Kristeva. The author analyzes Céline's work to understand and, at the same time, explain how she achieves the fascinating and mysterious effect of her texts.
15. To understand photographyby John Berger. The British artist and intellectual brings together his most brilliant reflections in this series of essays to analyze the work of photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paul Strand and Eugene Smith.

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