Art and Design Critique Week at UIC

The past week (Tuesday to Friday), I attended the art and design critiques
held at UIC. Tuesday was the first of four days of Studio Arts MFA
critiques. Wednesday was for Electronic Visualization MFA and senior
graphic design thesis in the afternoon. Thursday and Friday were graphic
design MFA critiques.

One of the advantages of my meta-disciplinary role is that I am encouraged
to gain a wide view of what the School of Art and Design is doing for its
students and its reputation. To see the similarities and differences in
perspectives is such an enlightening experience. The key concepts that
hold the week together are (1) the various relationships to
"indeterminacy" in art and design, (2) the communication of the specific
and/or the universalistic in creative intentionality and decision-making,
and (3) the contextualizing discourse of the critique.

1.
Indeterminacy, the state of not being clearly ascertained, described, or
calculated

I was surprised in the critiques by the way in which the students handled
or did not handle indeterminacy. In the art critiques, the students
embraced indeterminacy like a safety blanket. When pressure to provide a
reason for either their work or curatorial decisions, they would say, "I
want to leave that up to the audience." This was not accepted by me or the
other critics, who again emphasized that art needs to communicate, even if
it is communicating no particular message.

In the EV critiques, the technical learning curve made them be more
calculated in their intentions from a tool perspective, yet their subject
matter for their technical concepts were indeterminable. Meaning, there
was nothing specific about whether they used 3D stereoscope for a black
and white graveyard scene or a fly over the New Mexico desert. Leaving me
and others, the feeling that they tried things (motion sensors to activate
films, Cubist cinematic effects, robot-like shrimp) because they seemed
technically cool to do as opposed to pushing some conceptual statement
about the world.

Graphic design students on the other hand struggled with the two classes
that afforded them lots of indeterminacy. My class in research methods
and, my colleague, Jorg Becker's graphic design conceptualization course.
It is my belief that graphic design positions itself as a problem-solving
field and less as a problem framing or generating field. Both courses
required lots of research to frame and/or generate the problem. My
course's research was by nature more systematic and rigorous while Jorg's
was more impressionistic and inspirational, but the intent was to force
the students to define a problem before seeking to solve it through their
formal design skills. In the student presentations, they talked poignantly
about their frustration and confusion with designing from positions not
their own and coming up with an actionable problem statement(s) by which
to derive a conceptual solution.

Thus the challenge of an art and design education is managing
indeterminacy so that their is enough mystery to find the approach and
solution compelling, yet enough description or calculation to enable a
clarity of intention to the audience.

2.
the Challenge of Communication, the successful conveying of feelings and
ideas

The ability for a painting, sculpture, interactive piece, film, poster, or
narrative to communicate successfully is the evaluative criteria of all
critiques. It is the delicate dance between creative author's
intentionality and audience's interpretation of the work (which can be
completely separate from the author's intentions).  For me, the goal of
the creative author is to have enough awareness of the interpretive
possibilities so to be able to guide the audience to interpretations that
have the highest spiritual, emotional, and intellectual payoffs, in others
words, that create a moment of communion with the world. The challenge is
dialing up or down the specificity or universality of the ideas until they
result in a gestalt moment of specific universality or universal
specificity. This challenge was present in all of the art and design
critiques, but it hit home with me in the art critiques.

There is one art student who had done a series of painting of gem-like
mountains and then a drawing of Snow White with the words "Puta" and "Run"
on it. The key painting was this large canvas with layered white paint,
but a grey box that looked like a screen or mirror with a pink gem-like
mountain reflected in it. In his statement, the artist made it clear that
it was tied to his heritage (without stating what it was, for I had to ask
him 4 times what is your background).  His heritage was Cuban, thus his
antagonism to Disney images of childhood, and the meaning of the mountains
being those of Cuba. This was not at all accessible in the work itself, so
the discussion became about how accessible should his narrative be,
whether that is what he really wants to convey (because it seems most of
his statements is about being known for his aesthetics), and how much does
the work have to speak for itself. In other words, his work was unclear in
terms of the message being one about the sadness of leaving behind one's
history (very universal) or one about the specific relationship between
Cuba and the US as it relates to his childhood memories (very specific).

Separate note: There is an interesting narrative about the art and design
work of people of color in terms of an anxiety about reveling of one's
ethnicity in the work versus being about aesthetics (i.e. formal
principles of art and design). The Caucasian students' whiteness is never
brought up as being contrary to aesthetics, so again the normativeness of
art and design "whiteness" is marked in the absence of discussion about
white ethnicity's impact on the work.

3.
Discourses of art and design critique

Doug Ishar paid me the highest compliment (for an anthropologist) at the
school holiday party. That my comments in the art critique were like that
of another art colleague not as someone from another discipline. This is
high praise for an anthropologist because we are evaluated by our skills
in culturally passing for a native. Although problematic at many levels,
the idea is to learn the language, behaviors, assumptions, and beliefs of
the group you are studying to such a degree of detail that you can mimic
or "pass" as a native. So I attended the critiques to specifically learn
the discourses (in the Foucault's sense of practices, institutions, as
well as language) of art and design. There seems to me to be three
intentions embedded in the critique:

   1. To provide a variety of interpretive possibilities to help the
student clarify their meanings and sharpen their decision making. Every
phrase begins with a version of  "I think it means..." Students are
able to refute this interpretations, but often they restate their
positions "I was trying to do..." or cop out with an "I leave it up to
the audience..." But this exercise in providing interpretive
possibilities is again key to sharpening the student's skills.
   2. To contextualize the students work within the larger art and design
"literature" and institutions. Critics offer a lot of references to
other artists and designers work with whom the student's work
resonates. This is more so on the art side than in the design side,
which I think has to do with a more established critical body of
knowledge in art as opposed to design. But this is the one area that
opens the possibility of interdisciplinary dialog. What if a designer
in an art critic offers up a designer's work that the art student
should visit? What if I suggest for them to read anthropological or
social theory texts relevant to their work (actually I do that)? At
UIC, we need more of those interdisciplinary conversations.
   3. To investigate the curatorial decisions of artist and design
students, so that they understand that the move from "intuitive"
creation to strategic presentation requires precise editing and
decision-making. Many students focus so much on making the work that
they forget that the work will have to live in a context (perhaps
ephemeral like much of graphic design but sometimes more permanent like
an outdoor sculpture).  In many cases the critique would consist of a
1/3 focus on the technical form of the work, 1/3 on the content and
message, and 1/3 on the presentation and set up. If there were problems
in one area or another, more time was devoted to the problem area, but
if everything was pretty much okay, that was the relative split.

I really enjoyed the learning I gained through the week. It helped me
contextualize my presence in a school of art and design and what role in
need to play as the anthropological participant observer.