Moff's Law

I'm a little late for this but I ran across this fantastic 2009 rant and had to share.

Moff's Law: The tendency of art or film criticism/analysis to draw commenters who whine, "jeeeez, it's just a movie/picture/joke. Don't think so hard. Just enjoy it, gosh." [Image: Wayne from The Wonder Years makes a "wtf" face.]

Critique

"OMG you are such... a good... drawler."
"Omg no, are you kidding me? Yours is so... much... better than mine."
"What? No! Seriously, yours looks really real."
"What-EVER. Mine looks like crap."
"No, MINE looks like crap."
"Mine looks like vomit."


That was my high school art class. At my all-girl's school, that was basically the only way to take and receive a compliment about your art. Trust me: nothing makes me more uncomfortable than these sorts of exchanges, so eventually I simply tried saying, "Thanks!" Wow, the looks I got. It's like I'd grabbed the complimenter by her collar, shaken her and screamed, "THAT'S RIGHT BITCH! TAKE THAT!!!!!!!!"

So I stuck to the script-- even when the other person's was not always so much better than mine. Or I came off as obligingly fake-modest, even when I was frustrated that mine really looked like crap. Or when I just wanted to be left the hell alone so I could draw. This was in the South, by the way-- there is no "being left alone," or opting out of the compliment competition. There is also no being straightforward and no rocking the boat.


Imagine, then, when my teacher decided to hold a critique. Get in a group, put the drawing up on the bulletin board, go around and say one good thing about it and make one "constructive criticism." No one vocalized anything, there was certainly no formalized plan; but there was an innate understanding, unanimous agreement. The first drawing went up on the board; it belonged to one of the bow-heads (if you're unfamiliar with this classic clique, they are not the Mean Girls, the uber-popular elite; they're not the nerds, either. They are well-liked, reasonably book-smart, well-adjusted, often religious, and they play team sports and volunteer with underprivileged kids after school. Typically wear pastel colored clothes and ponytails with ribbons tied in a bow around them.) The teacher could have selected an unpopular girl's piece and maybe someone would have come up with a criticism. Or maybe a popular mean queen's piece; people might have been ready to bring her down a notch. But she didn't.

"Bow-heads" volunteering in a team. My friend also named this clique, "Pastel People." I know it seems like I'm making fun of them but they were pretty cool-- I just couldn't relate to them at the time.

The first girl called upon started with the good: "It's really... pretty."
"Ok, good! It's pretty! Ok. So do you have any constructive criticism?"
Long silence. Finally,
"I can't."
"Oh, come on, you can think of something!"
"No I can't."
"It's perfect?"
Sigh. Eye roll. "I can't think of anything." The teacher takes a deep breath.
"Ok, let's go to someone else. Katie? Something good?"
"I agree it's pretty."
"Pretty how?"
"Like... I don't know."
"Come on."
"It's got like... nice colors."
"Ok! Nice colors! Yes! And what is your constructive criticism?"
Stony silence.
"Katie?"
Silence.
"Katie. Something."
Stonier silence.
"Anything."
"I can't."
"Katie--"
"I can't."

At this point I should mention that, while the drawing was fine-- I vaguely recall it being a landscape-- there was clearly room for improvement. We were high schoolers, not pros.


"Ok. Ladies. We are talking about constructive criticism here. Not a personal attack. Somebody needs to come up with one item of constructive criticism before this class is over." She surveyed the room and landed on another Katie, a teacher's pet.


Katie, like many sixteen-year-old Southern girls, aimed to please (and appease). She must have been genuinely torn between teacherly noncompliance and saying something bad about another girl. I probably would have been, too, as I was a goody-two-shoes, but thankfully she hadn't called on me.


Katie was silent. Her eyes darted back and forth, searching for help from the other girls. Everyone looked down.


"Katie!"

Publicity shot for the movie, "Mean Girls." [Image: the three main popular girls. The one on the right smiles at the camera, one stands slightly behind the middle girl making a smirking face, and the middle girl glances sideways at the smirking girl she cannot see, looking extremely uncomfortable.]

Katie took a deep breath and maintained her silence. She was the weak link but her decision to remain silent set the tone. By this point no one would speak, good or bad. There was literally nothing the teacher could do. She was powerless in the face of social pressure. She could have failed us all, but it was understood: you cannot say outright negative things about other girls in public to their faces.



Ten to fifteen minutes later the bell rang. The classroom was vacated in under thirty seconds.


Writing about art criticism reminded me of this incident. I've also been thinking recently about hosting a group critique, inviting some artists I like, since critiques were a favorite part of art school for me and I miss them like crazy. But then there is the memory of that one critique from high school (the teacher never tried to make us do this again). What if it devolves into girl-compliments and critique-fear? It would be absolute hell. But I'm still thinking about it....

New York Magazine article

I really enjoyed this article by Emily Nussbaum about modern feminism and the Internet. When people ask, "where are all the feminists? Guess feminism is dead," while completely missing the 'blogosphere' (ugh that should not be a word), it reminds me of people in the Art World who are constantly pointing out the death of art criticism because they can't find anyone being published in print media. Ahem... we're out here. On the Internet. Criticizing.

Sister Wendy, art critic extraordinaire. She pops up occasionally on public television.

Another big difference between now and twenty years ago (or how things seem to me to have been twenty years ago, since I wasn't exactly aware of... much at all then) is that artists themselves have much more of a voice in the literature published about them. Most artists run their own websites, which makes it much more likely that people will actually read the Artist's Statement (as opposed to Xeroxing a few copies and scattering them about at a gallery opening). And many more, such as *ahemahem, hem... hem* myself have blogs too, where we can spew forth all sorts of ideas. Of course, just as being a critic doesn't make you an artist, being an artist doesn't make you a critic either.

Raoul Hausmann, "The Art Critic." [Image: antique magazine collage. Man stands in front of black text on yellow background holding a pointy stick, wearing a three piece suit. Woman peers out from behind some tiny text I cannot read and a black & white photo in which the man has been cut out and replaced with small black text on a yellow background. Hausmann has removed the eyes and mouth of the oversized head of the main figure (the man in the suit with the stick) and replaced them with cartoon pink mouths to make a grimacing, sneering expression.]

 One of the most surprising things about checking the primary sources of art history-- aside from the actual art-- is that the shit artists say about their own art is usually vastly different from what critics and historians say about that person's art. Did you know that Piet Mondrian often described his art as being about Eastern-influenced spirituality (what was sometimes defined as The Occult in his day)? Or that the idea that incidental, unplanned spontaneity played a role in his drippy paintings pissed Jackson Pollock right off? Or, according to his vast and rambling writings, Duchamp actually thought... well, I'm still working on that one.* But while this huge discrepancy between recorded artistic intent and general critical/historical consensus seems to me to be a problem, I don't think that it means criticism has failed these artists.

While plenty of artists are both searingly articulate and artistically expressive, many other artists express themselves better through art than through words (or sometimes, tragically, better through words than art). That's why they're artists. It is simply unreasonable to expect that all artists, after creating a piece that expresses something, will then step back, examine their piece within society/the universe/the ivory tower from several different points of view, express it succinctly, and hand it in writing to the public on a silver platter. That is a separate skill, and the two need not always match. It is like a conversation, where the same idea needn't be reiterated: different but related things are uttered between people.


*You know, I would provide sources for this information but I'm going on memory here and that shit would take forever to find. But I am certain.

Art Criticism and Politics

I just wanted to share this awesome post by Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon. It's a simple look at how the "this isn't art because my kid could do it" people fit into the larger conservative/liberal social context. Bonus points for bringing art criticism into music criticism; there needs to be so much more crossover!