Years ago, I was tasked with curating and critiquing a textile art exhibit. I had no problem with the curating aspect. I love curating exhibits, pulling disparate elements together into a cohesive whole is so satisfying. I was not enthusiastic about critiquing the submissions but it was required. I felt like such a fraud looking through the images of other’s heartfelt creations and analyzing them, deeming them worthy or unworthy, good or bad. I muddled through the process and made an attempt to do a clinical critique while still being encouraging and supportive to each artist.
When, I was immersed in the life of a studio artist in an art center I participated in many critiques both formal and informal. I never shook that feeling of discomfort that accompanied me both when receiving and giving a critique.
One day in a casual conversation with my friend in the studio next to me, I received the most incredible unforgettable critique. I was showing her one of my latest pieces and she asked simply “where are you in it” ? That 5 word sentence was life changing for me. Yes, I had created an interesting thing using an interesting technique that included my joyful making of it but there was no ME in it. It was fun but had no soul.
That was truly the only critique I ever heard that ever got to the crux of creating art.
Where are you in it?
I never went to another critique session after that.
Years later, while immersed in research about the differences between our left and right brain hemispheres I really understood why that sentence is so powerful and why I always felt that critiques were somehow not beneficial.
Critiques were not a thing until 1719 when Jonathan Richardson attempted to create an objective system for ranking art. It is interesting to me that critiques emerged at the same time as the industrial revolution and machine age were taking hold. The beginning of an age where analysis, measurement and concreteness, all functions of the left hemisphere, became more valued by society than the harder to describe right hemisphere way of deeply knowing, often called wisdom.
Art critiques are a left-brain analysis of something magical, indescribable, and soulful that emerges through connection with something whole, complete and outside of thought delivered through our right-brain hemisphere. Art is filled with wonder, awe, wholeness and emotions that can’t fit in the tiny world of words.
Art critiques are no longer a part of my world. No one outside of me can know my intention because it is emerging through the work.
I trust only myself to put ME into my work.
3 comments
This is just what I needed to hear at this time. I have been taking a couple of yearlong classes online and lately they have started to bother me. For a while I could not figure out why but as I have been doing my morning pages it started to dawn on me. These classes show you what you are to do on each page. One is showing you what might be or might not be a new technique and then you are supposed to take that technique and create something similar. Anyway, I have just been feeling stuck in it. I have learned, for myself, never to take a yearlong class again. Once these projects are done you show them online. I don’t do this because frankly I do not care what others have to say about it. I am doing each project for me and that is the only one who needs to be happy. Your blog hit me square in my little brain and I am going to look at my and others creativity differently. Thank you for the wake up!
Those five words have left an impression on me, too…somehow, long ago, I decided that I wasn’t formally interested in getting my work “critiqued” or “critiquing” someone else’s art. I tend to do what I like, the way I like doing it, and just keep going. “Where are you in it?” is very much what I tend to do, not giving much thought to how others see it. I believe my innate goal is to express myself through whatever I’m doing, because my bottom line is that I want to be happy with what I’ve done. Maybe that’s a selfish way to work, but I guess it’s in my DNA – it’s what I’ve always done. And to read your comments, Liz, makes me feel pretty darned good about it! Who better than ourselves to understand where our expressions of art come from?
Music to my ears! The meaning is what it means to you. I often don’t discover the meaning until years later when I see myself in a different light