Having recently completed an M.F.A. Program, the group critique figured prominently in my education. Most graduate students in the arts spend a considerable amount of time in critiques. Given their prevalence in creative education, they are worth reconsidering in light of a few observations.
Graduate school is a place where most artists try to discover at least some of the boundaries and purposes of their work. If they are going to be successful in this regard, they will need the help of forthright peers and professors whose only concern is for a free, regular and responsible exchange of ideas.
The exchange depends upon everyone having a shared stake in the honest articulation of questions, problems and praise regarding the work under consideration. Interdisciplinary critiques sometimes flounder here as participants realize that the requisite levels of trust and extent of the shared vocabulary is thinner than desired. This does not mean that artists should avoid learning about the work in different mediums by other artists. It does raise questions about rather or not critiques are the best opportunity for this kind of exchange.
Language plays a prominent role in critiques for obvious reasons. Expectations about critiques tend to turn on one’s understanding of language. In the final count, no art speaks simply and entirely for itself without language, nor can language ever entirely speak of art. Artists who believe the former but disbelieve the latter, tend to approach critiques with a dogmatic, hippy-like disavowal of language. They insist that the work stands apart from any language about the work. In doing so, they fail to notice that words are not merely foisted onto our experiences but enmeshed in our perception. Critics who believe the latter, that language adequately speaks of art, ignore that there can be no exhaustive, fixed lingual account of a visual work, though there may be any number of authoritative accounts. Good work evades a thoroughgoing subjugation to language by rendering all accounts illegible and limited.
Good critiques have curious, prepared and thoughtful individuals who are unafraid to speak clearly about what they see and think. They are generally a lot of trouble for everyone involved. Just like making art is.
