Maria Fusco's 'Give Up Art' Explores Art Writing Beyond Criticism

Maria Fusco's book 'Give Up Art' collects her writings from 2005 to 2013, challenging conventional art criticism. The publication includes essays, poems, reviews, and lists, arguing that art writing should not be limited to being 'about' art but should engage through prepositions like 'in', 'with', 'of', 'on', or 'off'. Fusco, founding director of the now-defunct MFA Art Writing programme at Goldsmiths, co-authored '11 Statements Around Art Writing' with Yve Lomax, Michael Newman, and Julian Rifkin. The book features texts originally published in Art Monthly, Dot Dot Dot, and Untitled, alongside a reading list from Frieze's 'Ideal Syllabus' series. Fusco discusses creating a script for artist Ursula Mayer based on an Ayn Rand play and reviews a performance by German composer Heiner Goebbels at the Barbican, which transposed texts by T.S. Eliot, Kafka, and Beckett into music. She emphasizes art writing as a perpetual possibility, focusing on what it might be rather than what it is, and calls for critical judgments through questions rather than answers. The book, published by New Documents in April 2018, costs €28 or £22 in softcover and presents art writing as akin to artistic creation, encouraging immersive engagement over objective explanation.