Showing only Notes & Links tagged critique on art, design, creativity and, technology by Casey A. Gollan

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“Turbo“, 2008 by Baptiste Debombourg.

Tom Moody dissects this piece of “internet aware art” from VVORK, which he defines, in one sense, as “offline art made with internet presentation and dissemination in mind.”

Neat idea but it doesn’t need to exist as a piece—you have everything you need from the installation shot. The bulge, a gallery pole, and the human for scale. It reads as instantly and dramatically as an advertising image, with the “product” being an academic soundbite about patriarchal space rendered abject. Would this have been made without vvork.com and the internet to spread it around? Yes, it could be an image in an art magazine, but would it have survived the first critic’s visit who noticed the piece only “read” from a couple of angles and didn’t hold up to more than a few seconds’ study? Vvork means never having to explain—success is presumed.

One of my teachers says that a good work of art can’t be read like a sentence.

In the process of making the film, we reviewed the material every day. Now, this is counter-intuitive for a lot of people. […] Suppose you come in, and you’ve got to put together animation or drawings and show it to a famous, world-class animator. Well, you don’t want to show some thing which is weak or poor. So you want to hold off until you get it to be right.

The trick is actually to stop that behavior. We show it every day—when it’s incomplete. If every body does it, every day, then you get over the embarrassment. And when you get over the embarrass ment, you’re more creative. Show it in its incomplete form. There’s another advantage to that. When you’re done… you’re done.

Pixar president Ed Catmull on sharing work (via viafrank)
The lore around the class is such that incoming students are often desperate to have the once-in-a-lifetime experience. As one student told me, they “arrive with pre-nostalgia.” 

Sarah Thornton — Seven Days in the Art World, 45

I’ve always just thought of it as “high expectations”, but “pre-nostalgia” is a wonderful and apt term.
Group crits are such an established part of the curriculum in the United States, and to a lesser extent in Europe and elsewhere, that only a few teachers reject them. Dave Hickey, an art critic who describes his pedagogic style as “Uncle Buck—Hey, smoke this,” is one of the few. “My one rule,” he says in his freewheeling southwestern drawl, “is that I do not do group crits. They are social occasions that reinforce the norm. They impose a standardized discourse. They privilege unfinished, incompetent art.” He tells his students, “If you’re not sick, don’t call the doctor.” Hickey is not alone in thinking that there is undue pressure on artists to verbalize. Many believe that artists shouldn’t be obliged to explain their work. As Hickey declares, “I don’t care about an artist’s intentions. I care if the work looks like it might have some consequences.

Sarah Thornton —Seven Days in the Art World, p. 54

My sister is reading Seven Days in the Art World, the best-selling quick read by Sarah Thornton, so I picked it up and read Chapter Two, “The Crit”. It only delves shallowly into interesting topics, but seems like a light and sweet overview for people that want to know a little about a lot.

To clarify: this is interesting to think about, but I’m not necessarily sure I agree. See this quote by Albert Brooks about having too much of other people’s opinions.

I’m not convinced that the purpose of a crit is to create good artwork (though it might be a side effect) or that a good crit is most valuable for the person being critiqued. The artist being critiqued is, in my experience, no way obliged to act on the class’s feedback. However, learning how to talk about what’s in front of me is important for me as an artist and being able to engage in a conversation that includes the artist is important for the group-at-large

Separate your assignments from your artwork. Separate what you put on the wall from who you are. Separate conflicts with people from the work they create.

This is going to be hard.