Edmund Burke Feldman developed a model of art criticism that is still used by many people as a way to begin an understanding of individual art works. In fact as students you may recognise several of Feldman's stages of criticism in the advise given to you when you are asked to think and make notes about your relationship with other art. These are Feldman's basic steps:
Description: You are asked to make a list of the visual qualities of the work that are obvious and immediately perceived. Once you have exhausted the question; “What do you see in the artwork”? then you are to finally ask, “What else”? This "what else?" question is to ensure that you have included both the subject matter, especially in representational works, and the more abstract elements in nonrepresentational work.
Analysis: The focus is on the formal aspects of the work such as composition, tonal range, colour, texture, materials used etc. Questions asked are similar to, “Where is the focus or centre of interest?” "How do the formal elements, line, tone, colour, composition etc. direct or support this centre of interest?”
Interpretation: You are asked to propose ideas for possible meanings based on the evidence. You are allowed to bring your subjective feelings into this, and can project your emotions/feelings/intentions onto the work. The questions are often, “What do I think it means”? “What was the artist trying to communicate to me?", “What elements in the work support my ideas as to how the work is communicating to me?" and what does it make me feel?"
Judgment: Discuss the overall strengths/success of the work. "How powerfully has the work affected my feelings/understanding about something?" "Is it better or worse in communicating something to me than another work of art?"
Feldman's 'Becoming Human Through Art', presented this method for the criticism and evaluation of works of art and it became standard right across the western world of art education for many years. However like many things it comes with a lot of unacknowledged baggage and in Feldman's desire to be more rational and balanced perhaps more important things are missed, such as his acceptance of formalism as being central to a critical language.
A quick search of methods of art criticism or art appreciation will give you a list similar to this: aesthetic, pragmatic, expressive, formalist, relativist, processional, imitation, ritual, cognition, mimetic, postmodern and communication theories. Feldman's theory is partly formal, (description and analysis) and partly expression (interpretation) and partly pragmatic and communication theory. However the theory that I'm personally most drawn to and the one that is the harshest critique of Feldman’s Model is the ritual theory of art.
In 'Art as Experience' John Dewey reminds us that there was a time when the arts were "part of a significant life of an organised community." and "the collective life that was manifested in war, worship, the forum, knew no division between what was characteristic of these places and operations, and the arts that brought colour, grace, and dignity, into them." Art (in this case the combined broad field of visual (painting, decorating, drawing etc.), aural (singing, rhythmic music making, chanting etc.) and anything else that helped communal integration into the life field, such as ingestion of certain foods or drugs, ways of clothing and moving the body, (costume, dance or breathing techniques) was part of "the rites and ceremonies in which the meaning of group life was consummated."
Dewey's definition of art as ritual, when applied to the current role of art in our society, is problematic, but if it was to be returned to, it does point to the need for a transformation of our approach to the arts, if they are to retain the sort of relevance or centrality that they used to possess. Dewey states that the "dislocations and divisions of modern life and thought" hinder art from achieving its true value. His writing is in effect a critique of modernity, and it suggests that if we were to begin evaluating whether an artwork was good or bad, we would have to think about how it celebrated the qualities found in common experience and how it helped us to come to terms with life as it is lived. As such it moves the attention away from individual works of art and begins to look at the events that surround the work or that are intimately associated with it. It also sets the scene for how those that encounter the art enter the ritual. For instance as I go up the steps of the National Gallery and enter its column framed portals, I feel as if I am leaving 'normal' life behind and am entering some sort of special place, whereby my engagement with the things I find in there will be made as part of a ritual.
The feminist aesthetician Heide Gottner-Abendroth, developed what have been called 'matriarchal aesthetics' and in doing so also called for a return, in some way, to premodern times, which she saw to be matriarchal and fundamentally ritualistic. Her "Nine Principles of Matriarchal Aesthetics" is a reflection on ways in which prehistoric art and mythology become a model for contemporary feminist art practice. She also looks at the aesthetics of what were previously considered not aesthetic, an issue I well remember Jill Morgan leading on when she came to Leeds. Back in the 1980s Jill had already turned Rochdale art gallery into a space known for its championing of working class, feminist and black artists and when she came to Leeds she brought with her fresh ways of appreciating other practices in such a way that the borders of what were then considered art, were rethought. I well remember a jam making project, whereby the jars of jam were exhibited as art and she asked the question, why is a painting seen as more important than a jar of home made jam?
Going back to Feldman's model of art criticism, how in the above context, would it have been applied to a jar of jam? On the one hand there are few formal visual qualities beyond colour and texture of jam, type of labelling etc. that can sit alongside the traditional formal qualities we associate with art, (composition, handling, colour, material properties and tonal range etc.) and as analysis is focused on these formal qualities, perhaps a critique would fail or be very slight. If art is made without the background reinforcement of a pervasive community belief that it provides meaning, audiences may well feel disappointed by such art. As Dewey points out, if art is isolated and decontextualised as well as cut off from any sense of community, then the results or benefits of its experience will be diminished. Heide Gottner-Abendroth would argue that art needs to reclaim its ritual roots, which might mean changing our relationship to art, and in order to do so we need to drop Kant's idea of aesthetics being centred on a 'disinterested contemplation'.* The fact that the jam is actually tasty might mean that it helps bring a community together and in doing so the yearly ritual of jam making fulfils a purpose, one that Heide Gottner-Abendroth would argue is far more important than the aesthetics of the judgement of beauty that Modernist art practices have concerned themselves with.
As you return to the university it will soon be assessment time and critiques will once again become important, but remember it is always important to ask questions and one of them may well be, "How are we critiquing the critique?"
References
Feldmann, E. B. (1970) Becoming Human Through Art, Aesthetic Experience in the School London: Prentice Hall
References
Feldmann, E. B. (1970) Becoming Human Through Art, Aesthetic Experience in the School London: Prentice Hall
Ross, S. D. ed (1987) Art and its Significance New York: State University of New York Press.
("Nine Principles of Matriarchal Aesthetics" is found in Ross's collection)
Rowles, S. (2013) Art Crits: 20 Questions - A Pocket Guide: Featuring Interviews with UK Fine Art Staff on the Topic of the Art Crit London: Q-Art London (I was interviewed as part of the research for this book, so you will find my thoughts on how we were conducting critiques at the time recorded here)
Kant, I. (1987) The Critique of Judgment London: Hackett
* Kant's Critique of Judgment begins with an account of beauty. The initial issue is: what kind of judgment is it that results in our saying, for example, ‘That is a beautiful sunset’. Kant argues that such aesthetic judgments (or ‘judgments of taste’) should be disinterested, meaning that we take pleasure in something because we judge it beautiful, rather than judging it beautiful because we find it pleasurable.
See also:
Kant, I. (1987) The Critique of Judgment London: Hackett
* Kant's Critique of Judgment begins with an account of beauty. The initial issue is: what kind of judgment is it that results in our saying, for example, ‘That is a beautiful sunset’. Kant argues that such aesthetic judgments (or ‘judgments of taste’) should be disinterested, meaning that we take pleasure in something because we judge it beautiful, rather than judging it beautiful because we find it pleasurable.
See also:
The mark of ritual
Aesthetics Today An interesting blog by Professor Tom Leddy, that comments on all things to do with aesthetics.
Aesthetics Today An interesting blog by Professor Tom Leddy, that comments on all things to do with aesthetics.
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