This essay offers a broad look at the way critique as amode,method, and attitude in postwarart history research and teaching intersects with occurrences of critique in humanitiesscholarship and teaching generally, but also how distorted forms of critique occur incontexts outside the academic field. The essay outlines concerns raised by humanitiesscholars with what they consider to be an over-reliance on critique as a negative skill,resulting in scholarship that tears down without building up, and self-satisfied debunkingof anything that does not stand up to the current era’s identity politics. The essay arguesthat the question of critique is of particular urgency to the field of contemporary art.Here critique is embedded in the material studied—artworks, artistic practices, anddiscourses—and therefore in dire need of being understood, challenged, and decenteredas a method.