The critic, Jill Johnston once archly observed, is “one who practices the ART of criticism.” Johnston honed her skills through deep immersion in the New York scene of the 1960s, as a dance critic and later columnist for the Village Voice, and subsequently as a contributor to Art News, Art in America, and The New York Review of Books. Her brief, punchy reviews document an art that had not yet acquired a descriptive language, giving words to events that required a new sort of prose. Her writing style was intuitively suited to the task—an easy, fluid stream of consciousness; a direct response to things seen and felt; an informed, authoritative voice that could be funny, disparaging, and provocative in turns. More than a historic document of incredible immediacy, her work offers a model of art writing that recognizes its own stakes in creative production. —Media Farzin “Environments” at Martha Jackson’s The “terrible children” invaded Martha Jackson’s Gallery last May and June with more of those baffling noncommercial commodities, things you can’t use or sell or label even, which nobody could be too clear about why they should be encouraged or endured much less considered the prestige items they obviously are, or …