Writing Art and Architecture

Objects of criticism always become more than mere documents. These essays dissolve the prejudices that have determined our relation to aesthetic objects and to thought, releasing in their very care and attentiveness to the 'objects themselves' the unexpected potentialities such objects harbour. In his sensitivity to what he calls 'the particularity of material events', Benjamin's writing comes to exemplify new possibilities for the contemporary practice of criticism itself. These essays are a major contribution to critical thought about art and architecture today, and a genuine work of what Benjamin himself identifies as a 'materialist aesthetics'.