Chapter 9 of potential hindrances to our creative development continued…
I won’t be going into the specifics of the non-judicative critique that I was first introduced to (mainly to protect the trade secrets of that particular professor)— I will, however, reveal the general features that I also experienced in other classes and have come across in conversation and reading from multiple sources.
One vital characteristic of this other-than-criticism model is that the artist is not permitted to say a word about their work before and during the critique. This may be a relief to some and a frustration to others (or a bit of both) but I hope it seems less strange now that I’ve spent the last two chapters going into some different ways to think about our individual role in our creative expression. If we consider an art critique as a chance to witness how our work stands on its own without us and how it might speak to an audience in a way that is beyond our current conscious awareness, it can be pretty exciting. It’s like we’re about to learn something from our work on a whole new level beyond what we think— letting our ‘ego-self’ take a breather. As American photographer and filmmaker Cindy Sherman confessed, “I feel I’m anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren’t self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear.”
My own relief around not having to talk about my work in a class crit came from the constant rerun episode of presenting my work (adhering to course deadlines) and having no firm grip on what it was about. Most of the time I couldn’t tell you any particular reason why I had made it (and really wondered how much it had to do with me). I’ve mentioned this before— how creativity extends into dimensions beyond logic or reason and cause and effect. If I was forced to explain my work (in another crit model), I would end up making something up on the spot and then I’d likely be held to this irrelevant thing I said. When asked, “why did you make this? it’s usually not cool to say, “ah, no reason” and yet in an interview from the June 1995 issue of Art in America, American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer Robert Morris said,
Robert Morris with Box for Standing, 1961.
©2018 ROBERT MORRIS AND ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
“People do things and then find a reason for them. Or they have reasons and then do them. Or they do things without reasons and never look for them. Or they do them for reasons they did not know they had. Wittgenstein asks somewhere, ‘Have I reasons? The answer is my reasons will so give out and then I will act without reasons.'”
The way I see it, being a silent witness of my own art critique offers me the chance to find out new clues and possibilities about my work. Even if I want my audience to glean a certain something, I’ll know they have without me telling them (and I can avoid anyone’s, “oh, now I see it” based on me having to point it out). If I’m not the one initiating the conversation with a filter of me and my ideas, I’ll potentially receive more expansive and diverse feedback. What I mean is, the viewers will have to engage directly with the work and not with what I have said about it.
To give an example, early in my second year (of art school) I was showing work that coaxed out a critique conversation about the ‘Institutions of Art and Science.’ This happened in several classes with different professors and classmates and I hadn’t said anything about it. I hadn’t intentionally set out to make anything about this subject but I found it particularly curious and took this feedback (ignoring a bunch of other comments and feedback) as a clue to what I might be motivated by on an unconscious level. I started wondering how institutions think or how thought might depend on an institution, how my thought patterns had been deeply influenced by institutions…basically, I very naturally and easily dropped into a deep well of inquiry. I should probably point out that I did not consequently try to make work about any ideas or concepts I was enjoying thinking about—I would just continue to make the things I enjoyed and they would consistently reflect back to me more clues and questions to wonder about. This was a totally invigorating process.
So how do we actually get this conversation rolling in an art critique when we attempt to set aside our blatant judgements and ask the artist to keep their mouth shut?
A painting of mine works when it looks like I had nothing to do with it…
when something else took over.
~DOROTHEA ROCKBURNE
[Title image: My photo of the de-installation of a Cindy Sherman show at the MET back in 2012)
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