sara gevurtz' blog 1

While reading the first two chapters of The Critique Handbook, I was reminded of one of the first things I learned as an undergrad in the very first art class I took: you have to think about everything you do in art, and have a reason for it. As I have matured as an artist, I have run into many critiques where I will be asked why I used one material versus another. This especially has become problematic for my paintings. The first chapter discusses painting, and how for many painters they have simply accepted the rectangular canvas as a “neutral ground on which to hang a painting.” (page 13) The next section starts to ask various questions about the logic of painting. How big the work, is it painted on a canvas or on something else. As an aside, while reading this I remembered a conversation I had about one of my paintings I did my first year of grad school. I had painted a pile of burning bottles on a large canvas in oil. The scene was from Afghanistan, and was taken by my friend in the army. It was showing where the army dumps the hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles that the American soldiers stationed there go through. A question I received about it was why did I paint it on a canvas? Wouldn’t it have more meaning if it were painted on say, an army backpack? The form and the meaning of a piece of work are often tied together, and the book discusses.

The first chapter covers form in terms of painting and sculpture. It raises various thoughts about looking at a painting, and how the artist approaches the painting, representational versus abstract, etc. When discussing the sculptural object, there is a section that discusses the problems of presentation. Canvases are hung on the wall, and framing or not framing, leaving the sides exposed or not exposed all come into question for a painting. However, with sculpture, the problem of how to present them within the room, and how to deal with elevating them or not elevating them on a pedestal comes into play. Does the pedestal create a discussing with the art, or disappear into the background? Should the piece stand on its own? Should it hang from the ceiling? All of these issues create dialogue with the piece and can change the meaning.

In the second chapter of the book, it discusses meaning. Meaning is never exactly fixed and can be open to interpretation. Meaning is molded by the choices that the artist places in the art from content, form, materials, etc. It also discusses how similar content can have different meaning if presented in different forms.

As an artist it is hard to anticipate how all your choices about what to include will affect your audience. People will often get different meaning from the same object. The section discussing the pedestal got me thinking about my current project that I am working on. I have yet to resolve the issue of what I will place one of the major components of the project. The part of the project that needs to be propped on something is a map of California that will most likely be made out of vacuform plastic. The problem is no matter what I place it on; it needs to be functional and yet not distracting. It was a lot simpler when I stuck with works on paper or canvas, since as the book point out; they are often just taken on face value and not overly questioned.