Two Kinds of Critiques

I went to open BFA open-to-public crits at Pratt last week with a friend who graduated last year. I'm not sure why I didn't take any photos. The work was pretty interesting despite the usual undergrad flavor that comes from sourcing pretty much everything they know about art from academia. That was not meant as a criticism at all. On the contrary, I find it's really interesting to be able to learn so much from one place and one community in such a short span of time. But, as an artist who has been out of undergrad for just about 5 years, I feel like I am wearing different glasses when I see undergraduate art (including my own), glasses that reveal that "undergrad tint".

Some of the best advice I ever received when I was graduating with my BFA was something like, "there are a zillion Megan Bisbees out there. The best thing you can do it to go out and get a life." What I got from that was to go out and get some life experience. I'm not sure if what I've done so far is "getting a life" but I definitely have had some major life experiences that have influenced my work: touring with Glitter Chariot, living in Florida, Biking in Europe, teaching in Japan, etc. Even NYC has had a huge influence on my work. The more experiences I have, the more I realize that the way I see the world is just that: the way I see it. Other people see it completely differently and make art, behave, practice religions, and observe traditions from those perspectives. Literally, if someone does something that you wouldn't do it's because they see the world differently. Just knowing this has fostered a serious amount of compassionate thinking and a much less defensive way of talking about and viewing art. If I don't understand something I wonder what the artists perspective is.

The other thing that happens to all humans sometime before they're 26, is the development of the prefrontal cortex. You can read more about it if you go to that link, but basically, studies show that our brains don't fully develop until we are around 25. Correlated (maybe not caused... but maybe) with the changes in my brain came more of a settled feeling. I was 24 and 25 while living in Japan and that was a major time of realistically planning my future, becoming more realistic about time management and seriously questioning myself and the ways I make meaning. I became much more serious about yoga and began a regular meditation practice when I returned to the US last year. That is particularly interesting to me as I had tried to meditate during undergrad but just couldn't sit. I believe I didn't have the brain development for it. Whatever the cause for these changes are, I am a much different artist now that I was 5 years ago.

Anyway, this isn't a scientific article I'm writing. I'm offering observations that seem to indicate the fact that there is a certain artistic development that can only happen outside of school. What I really want to talk about is critiques: how they can be amazing educational tools but more often get muddied with mixed intentions and lack of witness consciousness.

The reason I love art crits so much is because they are times when other people can act as our witness consciousness. This means that they look at our work with fresh eyes and tell us, the artist, what they see, without judgement. This helps us to see what our work is actually doing out there in the world and compare it to what we think it is doing. It helps us as artists develop our own witness consciousness and in doing that we are able to observe the hang-ups we get stuck on at a distance-- worries that people won't like us, worries that our work is not good enough, beliefs that there is one way to make work and all others ways make "bad" work. Whichever thoughts are relevant to you, we all have some thoughts like these that, if they go unwitnessed, paint the color of the world we live in individually. By not practicing this witnessing, we are literally choosing to live in the world that tells us that we aren't good enough or that "that art is total crap". BUT, if we can't find some space within us to observe them and decide "yes, I'll stick with that thought" or "no, that thought is destructive" our brain literally reorganize itself (this is called neuroplasticity).

This where I find a discrepancy between what I believe can happen in crits and what actually happens. The biggest indication to me that crits have confused purposes is when I (often!) hear critics saying, "I just wish it was bigger/smaller/more dangerous/more elaborate/etc." This is not addressing the artist or the art at all. It is only addressing something which doesn't exist and literally telling the artist that their work is wrong but if they made it bigger it would be right. You may want to be a millionaire or to live in Thailand, but if you don't stop and observe your life at this moment nothing will improve in your life. An artist can't grow if we are telling him or her that, "sorry, this isn't the product I would buy. What I really want is..." My question is "What is already here? How does it make you feel? What is the work doing? Where does the work seem alive and where does it seem dead?" There are literally a zillion questions to ask in the moment of looking at the work and it isn't helpful at all to an artist to know that their product/artifact of creativity isn't what someone else wants unless they are doing market research.

So maybe the question is: Are we educating art students to create marketable products or are we teaching them how to BE artists? I think we are doing both and confusing one for the other, muddling up the way we look at work as we hop from one perspective to the other, sacrificing the benefits of each perspective. I could have used more of a dose of how to market my work and the business of being an artist, AND I also could have used more tools on how to really LOOK at work, how to be in the process of making work, etc. These are two different perspectives.

I propose that art education consciously practice two different kinds of critiques: one for process and one for product. By consciously I mean that the educators are go into the critique with enough witness consciousness of their own to steer the conversation in a direction that can fully benefit the artist. This can not only allow the artist to see their work in both the process realm and the product realm with fresh eyes, but by the very act of steering the conversation to directly and clearly deal with one inquiry at a time (process vs. product) models for the student how to do that for their crits in the future.

Anyway, more on this another time. Have a great week!