Guidelines for Critique and Self Evaluation.

Below you will find Self Evaluation and Critique guidelines for Digital Image Making.

After each critique, you will be writing a short Self Evaluation. The areas of discussion during critique will be covering issues with the Elements of Art and Principles of Design, and then these items below. My first section will be about general guidelines, then followed by specifics for certain projects.

CRITIQUES: Critiques are done verbally. Each student will be asked to take part. If a student feels he or she does not want to be graded on verbal critique alone, they can write a critique paper to accompany that verbal section. That paper is due the very next class after the critique, and will not be accepted any later for grading.

GENERAL GUIDELINES.

When I was in college as a new undergraduate, a set of guidelines was given to me to develop my sense of procedure, content, understanding, and application of professional critique. The guidelines made sense to me, and even more so when I used them in actual critique sessions. These guidelines are from a book that I have had for years, "Varieties of Visual Experience," 3rd edition, by Edmund Burke Feldman. This edition was published in 1987 through the University of Georgia, by Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York. If I add anything to the guidelines as they come from the book, my words and paraphrases will be italicized.

Chapter Fifteen: The Theory of Criticism (pages 453-494).

Art criticism is talk about art.

The chief goal of art criticism is understanding.

1. understand intellectual motives (meaning and content, what information does it imply within its timeframe/within our timeframe).
2. understand the causes in the work of the effect it has on us (pleasure, delight, gratification, personal motives).
3. understand the social implications and motives of the work (sharing of knowledge, emotion, is the work trying to communicate or is it propaganda).
4. understand the formal elements of the work of art.

Establishing a value system for critique.

1. Establish a sound foundation for art (never-changing, answer the question, "what is art?").
This foundation does not evolve (although new art forms add to the formal elements).
2. Establish a standard criteria for judging art (always changing).
These standards evolve continuously. Ask yourself these questions:
a. Should my criteria for judging art always rely on sound foundational concepts?
b. Shoud my criteria for judging art sometimes rely on sound foundational concepts?
c. If I ignore foundational concepts, what happens to judgment integrity?

Art criticism is like teaching; it is the communication of ideas about art - and often about life, the soil in which art is nourished.

The historical and humanistic value of art criticism.

The history and criticism of art become disciplines that enable us to see connections between art and the major patterns of human thought and behavior.

Critical judgment and analysis is rooted in a sound foundation.

Criticism affects the production of what it criticizes, providing critical standards for artists, ending with the formulation of ideas and opinions that act as standards for artistic creation. Making art and talking about art is not linear. It is the evaluation of art in a cycle that provides a new beginning in creation. When that new beginning comes full cycle to a finished work of art, the re-evaluation then provides again a new beginning. I refer to this type of thinking as cyclical, or the vortex of learning. I very strongly believe that a formal sound foundation in art is such an important step in an artist's education that it cannot be separated from the art of that artist at any time during his or her life.

Note: Learning new concepts can be tedious, and applying those concepts to your art even more tedious, especially if you have not done so before. Artists don't generally want anything to dominate their art that does not come to them intuitively. Developing professionally consists of making those very important formal concepts become intuitive. Then they are second nature, and again, the artist can allow them to take second place to their ideas, and not worry about whether their work is formally proficient. Two things in art are incredibly ugly, an artist without foundational integrity, and an artist who is strongly foundational with no message (an extremely linear statement, that is why it is ugly and has no place in the vortex of learning). Throw away the linear graph of your life, and buy a circle :)

The Tools of Art Criticism.

1. Know art: study art history (books, videos, internet study).
2. See art: go to exhibitions, art shows, etc. (real art, actual art, not internet galleries).
3. Experience art: do it yourself. Ever tried doing some technique you never tried before?
4. Talk and listen: practitioners (artists), historians (art historians), and theoriticians (art critics).

Types of Art Criticism.

1. Journalistic Criticism: a written review, informs and describes.
Why do we need them? They stoke the fires of critical controversy, and by expressing their biases forcefully, they help create the atmosphere of striving and rivalry that artists, collectors, and the general public seem to require. Here's my take: newsworthy - it may be news, but is it worthy?

2. Pedagogical Criticism: oral critique.
Why do we need them?
a. to advance the artistic and aesthetic maturity of students.
b. to analyze and interpret a student work for the student's benefit (during the process and for the final work).
c. to establish standards in a flexible manner that are compatible with student personality.
d. to help students develop artistic discernment and awareness.
e. to help students relate their work to the works of artist throughout time.

Note: did all artist learn to use criticism in a proper manner?
You answer that question by these famous artists examples:
Robert Henri taught diversity. :!
Thomas Benton taught imitation. :(
Jackson Pollack taught lifelong rebellion. :+

3. Scholarly Criticism: specialized journals.
Why do we need them? To provide the kind of analysis, interpretation, and evaluation that academic detachment makes possible. Each era has its own way of seeing art. Although scholarly criticism appears to be lifeless, it affords art criticism a special insight: scholarly critics are in a position to render the informed and sensitive judgment that serious art deserves. Unfortunately, not all artists live to see that judgment, but it is reassuring to know that it will eventually come to light.

4. Popular Criticism: Lay people.
Why do we need them? This type of criticism comes from non-artists, non-critics, etc. It serves as our only resource for non-elitist evaluation and analysis. They judge art in terms of its representational power. They want art to be faithful to the visual facts. Artists must find the delicate balance between being faithful to visual fact/truth, and enhancement of their own senses, emotions, and concepts. Artists must remain faithful to their art. I value popular criticism in my own work. I don't change my work every time a non-artist tells me to do so, but I listen to their ideas because they are my public audience. There is a whole world of thought about whether artists create art for other artists, or whether they create art for the general public.

5. Artistic Criticism: creative people.
Why do we need them? Every critical decision the artist makes during creation has a critical dimension. The creative act is one of continual revision, that is, acceptance or rejection of forms and meanings in the light of the artist's expressive goals and critical standards. Artists make critics rethink the art. Critics make artists rethink the art. Again, the vortex of learning.

Kinds of Critical Judgment.

Formalism.

Definition: a term to describe the critical position that greatness in art results from the ideal juxtaposition and treatment of the basic elements of visual form (such as pictorial organization and craftsmanship).

Expressivism.

Definition: a term to describe the critical position that greatness in art results from the vivid, intense, and convincing expression of emotion (such as intensity beyond normal experience, emotional responses at a heightened state). Expressivists believe that art should have "something to say."

Expressivist criteria:
1. originality.
2. relevance to the present.
3. cognitive validity in technique and formal organization.

Instrumentalism.

Definition: a term to describe the critical position that greatness in art results from effectiveness in advancing the objectives of humanity, usually as defined by one of a number of major social or economic institutions: family, church, state, guild, firm, political party, corporation.

Instrumentalists believe:
1. Medieval art was meant to communicate the doctrines of the Church to people who could not read.
2. That motivation and purpose cannot be separated.
3. That form, purpose, and idea are identical.
4. If they cannot "see" or feel or understand the purpose of the work, they know it has failed.

Despite its abuses - especially in official censorship - instrumentalism provides useful grounds for criticizing art:
1. it encourages critics to seek out the social, moral, or economic purposes that art serves.
2. it emphasizes the worthiness of art that is related to society's dominant concerns.
3. it acts as a corrective to the tendency of artists to become excessively involved with purely technical problems.

The Critical Performance (this is your guide to critique).

Description, Formal Analysis, and Interpretation.

The first step in the critical performance is Description.
Description: a process of taking inventory, of noting what is immediately visible in an artwork. Avoid inferences, judgments, or discussion of personal feelings. Discover what is in the art, make no value statements. Describe names of things we see; objects, numbers of objects, visual relationships that are readily seen, shapes, colors, directions of shapes, colors, and directions, visible execution characteristics, and subjects within the work.

A complete description of the work allows the critic to form a basis for later interpretation. A critique of artwork without all of the information is misled.

The second step in the critical performance is Formal Analysis.
Formal Analysis: discovering the relations among the things we discovered in the description. Inferences, implications, possible and conflicted meanings, depth of idea, are among the steps needed to formally analyze the work. Formal analysis affords the accumulation of evidence for interpreting and judging a work of art. Formal analysis also involves applying the elements of art and principles of design, compositional and pictorial organization, logic of spatial representation, positive and negative play, and the way these elements and principles are related to inferences, implications, and meanings. Violations to our expectations are part of the analysis.

The third step in the critical performance is Interpretation.
Interpretation: the process of finding the overall meaning of a work of art, after describing the work completely, and then analyzing the work by formal means. Through interpretation, we discover the meanings of the works of art and state their relevance to our lives and the human situation in general. The function of language in critical interpretation is to deal with the formal and sensuous qualities of the art in terms of their impact upon our feelings and intelligences.

We should first form a hypothesis: this is a tentative interpretation of the facts, leading us to an explanation of the work as a whole. Use the terms, "looks like, reminds me of, feels like," to form the initial hypothesis, and, in fact, more than one hypotheses can be formed.

Once our hypothesis is formed, we can then begin to interpret the work. Our basis for interpretation, remember, is our complete description, a formal analysis of the work, and then our search for meaningful interpretation.

Note: critique is not a substitute for creating art itself, for without the actual creation of art, there would be no art to talk about.

There you have it, my take on critique and how one should go about learning the initiation, the formation, the application, and the evaluation of the critique of art.


PROJECT-SPECIFIC GUIDELINES.

These guidelines will be posted as we approach each critique for specific projects. They will not repeat the information above, so please study that. Project-specific guidelines will directly relate to that project.

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