Critiques and Dialogues
Let's have a conversation about your art…
Facilitating critiques and encouraging dialogue is part of a contemporary art education and critiques play an important role in the new course. “Dialogues” (criterion C for the The Artist Project HL) for example, asks students to respond to the feedback they have received from peers and teachers on their project. Critiques and dialogues have value for ALL art-making endeavors in that they bring self-awareness, encourage growth and often suggest new ways to move forward (or sideways)! Engaging in dialogues with their peers also teaches students how to speak about their work and the work of others in a kind and constructive manner.
In this section, we share some strategies for critiques, dialogues, and giving and receiving feedback that teachers can easily implement and integrate in the art studio:
Critique Guidelines
Any time is a good time for an IB Art class critique and certain moments are more obvious: the end of a marking period, or when work is being gathered, collated, selected, but I believe work in progress...
Sticky Note Critiques
Sticky Note critiques are an accessible option for students to give feedback to their peers. This strategy can be used for students to give one another feedback mid-process or through a more formal critique...
Processing Feedback
Whether your teacher has provided you with feedback or you've participated in a long-form critique or a quick peer-feedback session in class, taking the feedback you've received and putting it into action...
Beyond Praise
For most of us it's that time of year when students need some words of encouragment and and maybe a little push to bring studio work towards "resolution" and the final exhibition. There is still time...
Why Critique?
6 good reasons
- Critiques provide new points of view and can help students pinpoint technical problems, make more appropriate material choices and pivot when needed.
- Critiques are an opportunity for encouraging the use of subject language, especially if teachers model and prompt it.
- Critiques motivate and set deadlines for work. If students know that there will be a group critique every month and they are expected to have work to show, or work in progress, it is a strong motivation to prepare work.
- Critiques help teacher to assess progress. Regular critiques are a good way to keep on top of student progress and your periodic marking.
- Critiques are a chance for students to check in with each other and learn more about what their classmates are doing. It helps the overall feeling of unity in the group. Students witness each others progress, observe how ideas feed other ideas, how technical obstacles are dealt with and material solutions are found.
- Understanding which works are stronger and form a coherent body of work is helpful when selecting Resolved Artworks and writing the rationale.
How to discuss artwork
Sarah Urist Green, from the Art Assignment (PBS), offers a thoughtful, quick 6-minute video, 
How to Critique, that offers up important rules for Critique engagement. While her videos speaks to her project, The Art Assignment, the video is entertaining and offers a provocative introduction to the concept of a critique: why it's useful, who it's for, and what to keep an eye out for. In short, her guidelines are:
- "Be attentive
- Don't be lazy.
- Be generous.
- Find your point of entry.
- Don't be a jerk.
- Put yourself out there."
Avoid Judgments
In the book Why Art Cannot be Taught, by James Elkins, the author gives a funny example of an imaginary critique of a famous artist where every comment is loaded with judgement! Imagine if teachers treated students like this :(
It goes like this….
Well Rembrandt, these are really wonderful paintings. But you know, I like the backgrounds as much as I like the faces. What would happen if you just left out the faces?
But I am interested in faces
But I think you say a tremendous amount in those backgrounds. In a way they express those faces. I think you could do without those faces. Those backgrounds are very, powerful.
I like faces
I think you should try more things. get away from that gluey paint. Use more turpentine. Use more color. I want to see bright colors. And bigger paintings. And smaller painting. And sculptures. Why don't you do sculptures? It wouldn't hurt to experiment. That's why you're in school.
Okay
You know, in five years you won't be doing this same stuff, nobody works the same after they get out of school. So you might as well change now.
Judicative vs. Descriptive Criticism
This fictional conversation above illustrates the dangers of judicative criticism. The imaginary teacher is not seeing the virtues and expressive power of Rembrandts chiaro-scuro or the depth of his psychological portraiture. This teacher is focusing on what the work is not, rather than what it is. Descriptive criticism on the other hand focuses on describing what is there. That pink is too bright, (judicative) or that is a very bright pink (descriptive).
Be gentle
.
Be curious
Empathetic Critique
Of course there are other gentler models for a critique as well, Marvin Bartel, distinguished in the field of art education, discusses empathetic critique on his website Bartel art
Green, S. U. (2014, October 9). How to Critique. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9neybpOvjaQ