Critique is co-originary with modern culture and a fundamental instrument of modern self-awareness. This is particularly true of art criticism: It equally deals with a viewer's sensory-reflexive encounter with an object as well as with himself/herself as the discerning and reflecting subject. The current state of research is diametrically opposed to the relevance of the phenomenon: The genesis, history and methods of art criticism have only been touched upon. The currently prevalent talk of a "crisis" in art criticism is lacking a thorough analysis of the genre and its purpose. Thus, the primary focus of the professorship which is realized in cooperation with the Leuphana University Lüneburg is the fundamental question of what exactly can be considered art criticism and how it can constitute itself. It is all about functions, methods, styles and effects as well as fundamental conditions, potentials and limits of art criticism.The so-called Kunstschriftstellerei serves as a model system which developed around 1900 under genuinely modern circumstances. Print media and the art market were booming, and the art world became more diversified. As a result, art criticism positioned and legitimized itself anew and with the propagation of impressionism generated new ways of writing. Kunstschriftstellerei can be described as a threshold-time that equally ties in with romantic traditions of the genre and anticipates issues of today's art criticism.