Louisa Elderton
Art Writing: Developed and Distilled Upon the Page
17. – 29. 8. 26
This course centres the “art” in art writing and asks you to get up close and personal with why art matters to you. It focuses on language to ask what it means to write authentically and accessibly about your opinions on and experiences of art, and how to make that compelling for a reader.
In many ways, writing about art feels like falling in love in the sense that you let yourself be drawn into its circle; it holds your attention; you want to be seen by it, feel touched by it, and respond in kind. Sometimes you might also hate it, dancing in and out of each other’s affections. Ultimately, being an art writer requires a conviction that the relationality between art, aesthetics, and culture is the stuff of life, and this course works out of that premise.
Over an intensive two-week period, we prioritize close looking, attention, curiosity, and inquiry to consider how the intricacies of your thoughts, feelings, and responses to art can be developed and distilled upon the page. Examining works by different artists and writers, as well as visiting numerous galleries in Salzburg, we will be engaging in discussions that crisscross through painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, and performance. Our focus will fall on elements like colour, line, shape, light, symbols, material, humour, harmony, awkwardness, and much more. Through individual and group exercises in looking, reading, writing, and editing, you will learn techniques to confront the blank page and experiment with form, style, voice, argument, and narrative to find your own original way of writing about art.
key data
- Venue
- Festung Hohensalzburg
- Date
- 17. – 29. 8. 26
- Teaching language
- English
- Participation fee
- 670 Euro (reduced 495 Euro)
- Requirements
- None
- What to bring
- Pencil, paper, laptop
- Maximum number of participants
- 20
- Co-teacher
- Sandro Huber
Louisa Elderton
Louisa Elderton is a British art critic, writer, and editor based in Berlin. She is the Managing Editor of ICI Berlin Press, an independent, non-profit publisher that promotes radical lines of questioning, diverse voices, and novel approaches to academic scholarship, and was also recently the Text and Editorial Lead for Bergen Assembly 2025. Her writing has been featured in numerous publications including Artforum, Art Monthly, Artnet News, Art Review, Frieze, Flash Art, Harper’s Bazaar, Mousse, The New York Times, Vogue, and many more, as well as in gallery and museum catalogues and artist monographs. With significant experience of working for cultural institutions and galleries, she was Chief Editor of Side Magazine for Bergen Assembly 2022, Curatorial Editor at Gropius Bau from 2019–2022, and the Managing Editor of various publications for KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Hatje Cantz. From 2016–2019 she was Project Editor of Phaidon’s acclaimed ‘Vitamin’ series and Content Editor of Great Women Artists, and from 2011–16 she was a Curator & Artist Liaison at Blain|Southern. She has a Master’s degree in ‘Curating the Art Museum’ from The Courtauld Institute of Art, and specialised in learning and interpretation, as part of which she worked in the Research department at Tate.
Website
Publications
Selected Magazines and Newspapers
“Thea Djordjadze: Become Like a Resonance Chamber” in: Plus Magazine, Issue 9, 2025.
“Is Smell the Next Big Thing?” in: Artnet News, 28 December 2025.
“Yayoi Kusama Is Still One of Our Most Important Artists” in: Frieze, 30 October 2025.
“How Ukrainian Artists Are Grappling with the War” in Artsy, 4 March 2025.
“Mortal Machines: Mire Lee” in: Flash Art, Issue 343, Fall, 2024.
“An Electric Temple of Culture Fires Up“ in: The New York Times, 11 September 2019.
Selected Book Chapters
An Endless Play of Surfaces: The Paintings of Erik Schmidt (essay for exhibition catalogue by KINDL, Berlin, 2025).
Vitamin V: Video and Moving Image in Contemporary Art (Phaidon, 2025).
Vitamin Txt: Words in Contemporary Art (Phaidon, 2024).
Vitamin C+: Collage in Contemporary Art (Phaidon, 2023).
Prime: Art’s Next Generation (Phaidon, 2022).
Birds: Exploring the Winged World (Phaidon, 2021).
Selected Editorial Work
Editor of Bergen Assembly 2025 Reader: across, with, nearby (Bergen Assembly 2025).
Copyeditor of Against Morality by Rosanna McLaughlin (Floating Opera Press, 2025).
Copyeditor of Imperfect Solidarities by Aruna D'Souza (Floating Opera Press, 2024).
Chief Editor of Side Magazine: Yasmine and the Seven Faces of the Heptahedron (Bergen Assembly/Wirklichkeit Books, 2022).
Managing Editor of Dayanita Singh: Dancing with my Camera (Gropius Bau/Hatje Cantz, 2022).
Managing Editor of Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective (Gropius Bau/Prestel, 2021).
Project Editor of Vitamin D3: New Perspectives in Painting (Phaidon, 2021).
Content Editor of Great Women Artists (Phaidon, 2019).
