Critique Handbook Assignment

In conjunction with my previous post about The Critique Handbook, I thought I might post the assignment (and my answers) that my painting professor required us to complete after reading.  A worksheet similar to this could be used in my classroom after my students have read excerpts from the book.



What is critique?

Critique is a process where a student presents work to be judged by a professor or class.  The evaluators provide constructive criticism so that the student can continue to improve in their work.  It becomes a kind of tracking device for the professor and student so that they can evaluate the progression of the student’s work.

Discuss your thoughts about formalism – how much does your own work depend on formal qualities for its meanings? What are your thoughts on how you use formal comments in critique?

My own work depends greatly on formal qualities for its meanings.  The section that talked about formalism and modernism really struck me, because I see myself as a painter that intentionally focuses my work on the formal elements such as shape, color and materiality. I really identify my own work with this quote, “In other words, a work of art no longer represents something out of the world but presents itself.”  I think that most of the content of my work is really presented with that formalist approach – that meaning is found in the materials themselves and how they are working together to create something that is new and non-referential.
In critique, because I think a lot about shape and color and material, I find that is the first thing I notice about a painting.  I am interested in how the brush strokes capture my attention, and work toward the broader goals of the painting, and I am especially interested in the colors and how they speak to the painting.  When I comment on formal qualities, I try to ask myself or the artist how their surface, colors, and size are helping their painting, or if these things don’t seem to be important to their painting – in which case they should think more about that for next time.

Write a little about how you use abstraction in your work.

I am kind of on the border in my ideas about the abstraction of my work.  Because I feel that my work doesn’t really rely on representation, sometimes I think that it is not abstracted at all, because it has nothing that it originated from.  If I am not using any sort of reference, it my work doesn’t begin with reality and draw away from it, my work could be considered an object itself, not abstracted from anything.  Yet, in some of my work, I am taking shapes I have found in my world, and converting them into a two dimensional form onto my canvas or paper.  I then layer these forms to create my own sense of space.  When I am doing this, I feel that you could argue that my work is highly abstract – I am referencing shapes that I see and converting them into a painting that no longer looks like it came from those shapes.  Therefore, I can identify with those critics and art historians they mention in the book, that wonder if the term abstraction should be used to describe works that don’t refer to anything.  The critics say pure abstraction is still in some way making reference to something, which you can argue with my work.  Yet, if I am not presenting my work with the goal that it looks like something else, can we judge it based on the associations we see in it?  I think I might prefer that it be assessed more formally, unless those associations are affecting the way the viewer is interpreting my work.

In the section, Looking at a Painting Formally, which formal considerations resonate with you the most in your own work right now? Why?

I thought this whole section was really relevant for my work, just because I try to think about all the formal things mentioned when I am creating a piece.  Thinking about the internal logic - the line, color, composition, and fields of color – is important to me because I am making compositions that need to address each of these issues.  The external logic – the edges, the scale, and the format – is also significant in my process, because if my piece is going to be viewed as an object, how I am addressing each of those things could speak to how I want my work to be identified (as object vs. painted surface.)  I also think about surface, gesture, and process, because I have been playing with how differences in surface, mark, and process can change how my work is viewed.  The section Painting as Presentation really resonated with me as well, because it helped me see how other are thinking about their non-representational work.
In your own work, how would you describe the content and the subject matter? (from The Story it Tells)

In my work, because I feel I have taken a more formalist approach, the form of my work makes up much of the content.  I try to create a dialogue between sculpture and painting, challenging the limits between what is traditionally known as a sculpture or as a painting, by using paint as a way to create a sculpture (as in my larger wall piece), or using paint as a way to reject sculpture (as with my smaller painted pieces.)  I am still trying to develop my language about my content, because in my head I am coming to a place where I know what I have to make, I’m just not always sure why, but it always makes so much more sense in my head than when I try to explain it.  So for me I am trying to learn how to express this better in how I talk and think about my work.  I would say that my work denotes layers of paint on a wall, paper, or canvas, but it connotes a creating of space that relies on shape, color, and other elements that relate it to sculpture.