Beyond Aesthetics: How Art Criticism Shapes Culture, Politics, and Identity

Art is often understood as a visual or emotional encounter, something to be admired for its beauty or expressive power. However, artworks do not emerge in isolation. They are shaped by cultural memory, lived experience, and historical conditions.

Art criticism is the practice that enables us to understand these deeper layers. It is not limited to identifying technique or style. Instead, it is a way of reading artworks as cultural texts that participate in shaping how societies think, feel, and interpret the world.

Contemporary art criticism asks: How do images behave in social contexts, and what kinds of meanings do they generate? This question shifts the focus from the artwork as a static object to the artwork as something dynamic that circulates, influences perception, and frames collective memory. Understanding this requires interdisciplinary thinking. Art criticism today draws from anthropology, literature, gender studies, sociology, philosophy, and cultural history. It is concerned not only with what is visible but also with the values and power structures that determine what becomes visible in the first place.

In the South Asian context, this expanded understanding of criticism is particularly significant. India contains multiple artistic traditions, linguistic worlds, and visual cultures that overlap and diverge. To write about art here requires sensitivity to plurality. A critical writer must understand how images carry regional histories, how artistic practices respond to social change, and how meaning is shaped through translation across languages and cultural boundaries. This approach recognises that visual culture is not uniform. It is layered, complex, and constantly shifting.

Writing about art, therefore, is not just an academic exercise. It is a cultural responsibility. The critic translates the visual experience into language without flattening it. This involves attentiveness to what is seen and what is implied. The task is to articulate the experience of art in a way that is precise, thoughtful, and aware of its cultural implications. It requires both analytical clarity and imaginative openness.

Art criticism also plays an important role in public discourse. Exhibition essays, catalog entries, museum writing, journal articles, and review essays influence how audiences encounter artworks. These forms of writing guide interpretation and help shape cultural conversation. They determine whether an artwork is understood as personal expression, historical commentary, social intervention, or something else entirely. For this reason, criticism is not separate from cultural life. It is part of it.

“Art criticism is a way of thinking through images and understanding their inner lives. It invites layered observation, careful interpretation, and a deeper comprehension of how art reflects and shapes cultural experience. Learning to write about art is also learning to read culture in compelling ways. It is a way of making sense of one’s evolving self in a transforming world,” remarks Mr. Abhay Sardesai, Professor & Director of Dr. Shantilal K. Somaiya, School of Art (SKSSA) at Somaiya Vidyavihar University.

To engage in art criticism is to recognise that art plays many roles. It is cultural, historical, and political. Criticism allows us to see how identities are expressed, how histories are remembered, and how power circulates through representation. It teaches us to look closely and think carefully. Beyond aesthetics, art criticism shapes how we understand ourselves and the world around us.