Chapter 9 of potential hindrances to our creative development :

**00IX: An ‘art critique’ is a necessarily painful affair.** 

I don’t want to assume that anyone who wishes to expand their creative capacity and expression wants or needs to expose themselves to an ‘art critique.’ But I’ve noticed how tricky it is to avoid casual everyday commentary coming at us— there always seems to be someone hovering around (even children) who can’t wait to share their (uninvited) opinions that are, for better or worse, usually judgy and possibly abusive.

If you have been perusing these chapters since the beginning, I hope you’ve found some space to locate and move beyond something that’s held you back. At this point, though, you may discover how much unlearning can be put to the test if we decide to share our work with others— especially in an arena of a commonly practiced art critique. I can remember feeling like I had really cleared the decks on my personal limitations and then shrinking back in doubt again in the face of an authority or harsh criticism.

Jean Charles de Castelbajac Fall/Winter 1994. (It’s not about babying anyone)

Before I go any further, I need to clarify the perspective of feedback that I want to go into within this context of creative expression. All sorts of ideas could come up around the upside of failure or being able to handle getting called out for something. I am not arguing against any of that. This isn’t about babying anyone. There are circumstances and contexts that pose a need to acknowledge mistakes, accept some defeat and make some adjustments.

That being said, I’ve already noted how personal creative expression resists any universal criteria of measurable or quantifiable knowledge—so what are we left with? Usually we are accustomed to giving or receiving individual opinions of the work’s ‘goodness/badness’ or ‘value’. This is where critique has possibly been confused with or too focused on criticism. And because the expression is personal and unique to the individual, negative opinions about it tend to have a contracting effect on the creator and can lead to intense frustration, feelings of being misunderstood and/or a lack of trust in oneself.  

Allow me to share a story from a close family friend who is now in her 80s: Back when Margaret was in a grade 4 art class, she was working on a picture and decided it was for her mother. At this time, she admired her mother’s flawless skin and noticed her preference for wearing pastel colours. Her drawing was of a deer lying under a tree on a gentle slope and she rendered it using only her mother’s favourite pastel tints. When she was finished, she proudly skipped up to her teacher’s desk and her teacher proceeded to take a black crayon and draw all over her picture saying, “You’ve left out all the shadows!” Not surprisingly, Margaret was devastated and took her picture home to her mother in tears that day. After sharing her crumby experience, her mother came back with, “Well, you have to learn to take criticism.” This incident strongly influenced Margaret’s attitude about art and creativity and it deeply hampered her willingness and ability to express herself thereafter.

There are a couple things I want to pull out of this downer experience: For one thing, the whole scene may have been avoided if the teacher had engaged Margaret in a dialogue with a bit of inquiry. She could have asked her, “why have you chosen to use only pastel colours?” And if the class assignment was more geared to the craft of drawing shadows, Margaret could have been asked to make another picture where she tried some of those. A creative space invites spontaneity— in this case, a drawing about an individual’s feelings and appreciation of her mother. Such an impulse is what we hope to draw out in an art class (but I’ll expand on that later). The second thing is the mother’s attempt to defuse (and unintentionally undermine) her child’s feelings of hurt and frustration with the so very practical you have to learn to take criticism. I’m not saying that the teacher and mother in this story are to blame—they were probably exposed to the same sort of thing. I’m wondering, does criticism needs to play any part in creative expression? My intention here is my usual— what is it about art critiques that causes resistance and what coaxes expansion? 

I’m sure there are multiple reasons why it’s popular to distrust feedback unless it’s negative—like, give it to me straight! or tell me the (awful) truth, I can handle it! I have often been accused of lying or you’re just being nice when I offer feedback to my students about their work. It’s not like I’m dishing out passive or insincere encouragements like “good job” or “I like the colours”—I am usually asking them questions, commenting on something curious that has unexpectedly shown up in their work, or bringing their attention to possibilities. But our education has conditioned us to look to an authority to point out something we’ve done wrong or to tell us to do this or that— isn’t that how we know we’re really learning something? Meanwhile, we’re actually afraid, hurt or discouraged when we face such judgement or explicit direction.

American artist, writer, editor, and educator Mira Schor has written about abusive teaching practices in art schools as well as our own (student) role in the continuation of such practices. This is from her essay, Authority and Learning: 

Mira Schor. Source: https://www.uniarts.fi/en/articles/interviews/visiting-professor-mira-schor-a-woman-artist-is-always-too-young-or-not-dead-enough/

..teaching techniques and philosophies commonly expressed and performed in art schools are suffused with the idea of abuse, plain and simple, as pedagogy— the kick-in-the-pants method of criticism. How many group crits involve a girl or two dissolving in tears? One sometimes feels the (male) teachers are “counting coups,” putting notches on their— paint brushes. Crit the girls and make them cry. 2 Live Crew would be right at home on this range. Those tears are as often as not caused by anger and frustration at being bullied and silenced by the louder voice, or dismissed as too disquieting. If the student changes in a manner consistent with the teacher’s aesthetic, or even just fights back in what turns out to be a productive manner then this pedagogy is deemed successful. The kick was for her/his own good. Abuse is self-perpetuating, as social research has shown, and this form of abuse is deeply self-perpetuating and ingrained in Western Culture. 

[…]

Another, disconcerting, difficulty in countering this pedagogy is the fact that students crave the visible exercise of authority, indeed of brutality— even as they claim to rebel. Critiques which follow different models are not credited or understood. If a teacher tells you your work is full of shit, without elaborating his or her own position, motivation, or bias, he or she may not be helping you achieve self-criticality, but it is a noticeable commentary. In a time of conspicuous consumption, that is important. “I was told I was full of shit”, or even, perversely, “I cried!” 

Obviously, this craving for some sort of brutality is pretty messed up. Besides an approach that brings out our masochistic side, what are some other models for an art critique? Are they still challenging and promise some depth of self-inquiry and transformation? As Schor goes on to admit,

Clearly, rendering flesh is sometimes necessary for growth. What is at issue is how to get to clean bone without brutality, and not for the sake of being destructive. How does one make it possible for someone to change “by themselves?”

I can’t top that last question. Let’s lead the next article with that.

We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion.

-Jacqueline du Pré

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