Grunnleggelsen av en norsk kunstkritikk : Emil Tidemands kritiske praksis

Abstract

Emil Tidemand was the most important figure in establishing art criti-cism as a literary genre in Norway. Nevertheless, his importance has been underestimated in the art his-torical literature, where he has been dismissed as a layman critic whose understanding of art was limited. This criticism is the result of a modernist understanding of art, which was unable to grasp the qualities of Tidemand’s critical writings. This is because he operates with a concept of art’s moral and social signifi-cance, an understanding partly rejected by modernist aesthetics. This article brings out aspects of Emil Tidemand’s critical praxis that will show him as a far more progressive and interesting critic than previously known.