Critique
This fall 2020 draft builds on the work of artist/designers, educators, and linguists/sociolinguists. I am deeply indebted to the following people and projects: Allan deSouza, James Elkins, Terry Barrett, Triple Canopy, RISD students’ Room of Silence, Color Theory, I Like Your Work: Art and Etiquette, Stuart Hall, Kate Kinsella, Norman Fairclough, Theo van Leeuwen & Gunther Kress, and Jan Meyer & Ray Land, in addition to many conversations with students and fellow artists/designers/educators.
Four Statements on Critique:
Critique is a genre that is primarily school-based, interactive, and speaking/listening focused.
Critique has multiple and contradictory purposes.
Critique is a place where meaning is created.
Critique has unequal power relationships.
And now the detailed version:
Critique is a genre that is primarily school-based, interactive, and speaking/listening focused.
Speech in critique is largely spontaneous or extemporaneous, meaning that most, if not all, of what people say is generated during the critique, not composed ahead of time.
This spontaneous/extemporaneous speech style means that revision happens as an addendum or amendment to speech that has already been shared; therefore, the communication style may at times seem rough or impolite, but the content of what people say might still be valuable.
Critique requires attention to feedback and interaction at the same time, and speakers use verbal and nonverbal cues to achieve these language functions or purposes.
Feedback language: observation, interpretation, suggestion, reference, judgment
Interactional language: holding the floor, interruption, extension, questioning, agreement, disagreement, acknowledgement, pivoting, summary, pausing/buying time
The speech of critique is multidirectional. It is not a series of comments from a single viewer to the artist/designer that progresses one viewer at a time. All speakers can engage the comments of any other speaker.
While critiques can take place outside of school setting, this is where they primarily happen.
Speakers use specific language in particular ways to demonstrate their membership in an art/design speech community. This language and the way it is used is sometimes referred to as artspeak.[1] Artspeak can include specific vocabulary such as language that describes a work’s formal elements (elements of art/principles of design), discipline-specific language, theoretical language, and metaphorical language; however, knowing, or even using, this vocabulary alone does not create speech community membership. Rather, speakers’ show their fluency when they use these vocabularies within the functions of feedback and interaction (1c). Because multiple vocabularies are interacting with multiple functions, and because speakers each have their own preferences and tendencies with this language, learning this language takes time and the learning process requires more than lists of vocabulary words.
Critique has multiple and contradictory purposes.
These purposes include the following:
artists/designers present their work
artists/designers hear what other people think about their work
professors assess, or grade, the work
professors assess, or grade, students’ participation
speakers (artists/designers, viewers, and professors) use their speech to assert their power or authority
During the process of developing the ability to critique, students may have the following experiences, which can serve as helpful signs to recognize they are experiencing a contradiction.
Speakers may feel restricted in what they can say because some of these purposes contradict others. For example, they may have something to say but think it might have a negative effect on the artist’s/designer’s grade or their own participation grade.
Speakers, therefore, may choose to remain silent or say something they think will “sound good” to the professor, which may result in speech that seems inauthentic or disingenuous. All critique participants may feel dissatisfied or frustrated as a result.
Developing the ability to critique means developing the choice and control over one’s own engagement with these multiple and contradictory purposes.
Critique is a place where meaning is created.
The artist’s/designer’s intention for a work of art/design is not the only or the most correct possibility for the work’s meaning.
Critiques do not have right answers and wrong answers. Meaning is created in a critique when the viewers look carefully at (or watch, or listen to, or otherwise experience) work and speak with each other and with the artist/designer.
Critique feedback is not exclusively for the artist/designer. What is said in critique might also be relevant to other critique participants, even though the critique is not directly about their work.
The things that people say in a critique are influenced by their experiences, preferences, values and beliefs, which can change over time and according to who the participants are. This means that, the same work presented in two different critiques will result in different interactions because each critique will occur at a different point in time and/or with different groups of people.
In order to allow for meaning to be created, the process of speaking is often prioritized over the product of speech. This means that people may be thinking through their ideas as they are speaking, or thinking aloud, rather than composing exactly what they want to say before they say it. As a result, it is not unusual for people to speak for a long time and for their speech to wander through their thoughts rather than being clear and efficient.
Thinking aloud speech often requires listeners to filter or try to identify the content or main ideas of what a speaker is saying. Learning to do this filtering is an important part of critique.
While artists/designers can’t completely control the meaning of their work, they do have the ultimate decision-making power over how they make their work. This means that they can choose what to accept and what to reject from the critique. In this process, it is important to remember that the content of a comment may be useful even if the communication style was rough or impolite (see above). Therefore, applying a filtering system (ditto - see above) can allow the artist/designer to find usefulness in speakers’ speech beyond only the comments that they like.
Critique has unequal power relationships.
Each critique prioritizes certain experiences, preferences, values and beliefs over others. Which experiences, preferences, values and beliefs are prioritized often depends on who holds the most power in the critique—this is often the professor, but it could also be a student/group of students who speak a lot, especially if this student/group of students shares similar experiences, preferences, values and beliefs with the professor.
Speakers can use the language of artspeak to show their knowledge and/or authority over other critique participants.
Work that does not meet certain expectations of white, heteronormative, colonial, and/or western ideas of universalism and neutrality may be met with participant discomfort and resistance that take the form of silence and/or accusation.
[1] Artspeak can have negative associations.