Focusing on canonical modern artists such as Manet, Cezanne, Picasso and Pollock, this book provides an important understanding of writing and criticism in modern art for all students and scholars of art theory and art history. Mainstay issues discussed include aesthetic evaluation, subjectivity and meaning in art and art writing. Jonathan Harris examines key discourses and identifies points of significant overlap as well as sharp disjunction between the critics. Developing the notions of 'good' and 'bad' complexity in modernist criticism, creates ways for us to think outside of these discourses of value and meaning and helps us to look at the place that art writing holds in the latter twentieth century and beyond.