INTRODUCTION: WHAT Is A CRITIQUE?
The words criric. criticism, criric(I/, criterion, and critique all come down 10 us from a family of words in Greek that refer to judging. distin guishing, and selecting. While art professocsoften - the critique purely as a place for constructive evaluation. to many art students. the critique is synonymous with judgment day.Tn,e to its Greek origins, the critique is seen as the place of reckoning, where the classroom authority blesses or disparages an object in which 1he student has become personally invested. The professor's job is to give useful criticism. to deconstruct the object and evaluate its parts with an eye to offering the student prac tical solutions to perceived deficiencies. The student's role is to distance himself enough from the work so that he can constructively participate in its demise.Thisdichotomy of the evaluative and the judgmental, already inherent in the critique's linguistic history, seL up the predetermined conflict that is played out in the formal art school critique.
This ri1ual, which occurs in the artificial setting of a classroom art studio, among students and art faculty. often becomes an end in itself, a goal toward "'hich each student' production is aimed. But the critique is not a singular goal or deadline. Rather, it is one of many. part of a series of cadences that partition the semester into sections of creative productivity. Thus, the critique is both a deadline and a marker of a per petual beginning, a freeze-frame moment in the context of a continuous stud.io practice. In a sense, this is curried beyond art school into profes sional practice when the critique i replaced by the curator's studio visit (another ritual of judgment and selection), the subsequent exhibition. and finally the press review.
The idea that the critique i, really a small marker in the larger con tinuity of an urtis1's practice allows l>oth student and teacher to think of it as a useful tracking device rather than as a courtroom drama. It becomes a kind of cross-sectionnl look at an ongoing activity rather than a place where items are ranked. This favors process over product. the means over the end, and arguably a belief in a ncce;,sary fluidity between the art.isl, the creative ac1, and the possibilities of a particular final product.
ix
x lmroductio11: \Viral I.< a Critique?
Nevertheless, as useful as it is to frame ii as such. the critique has traditionally operated as a proceeding. where work (and perhaps stu dent) is judged within the often subjective parameters derived from a professor's own art school experiences, aesthetic principles. and even taste. This becomes easy 10 see in incermediate and advanced scudio classes when several professors (or ocher arc professionals) focus on a single work and begin 10 offer vastly different assessments. While this can be confusing 10 studencs, it at lease sends the healthy message chat Che interpretation of arc is subjective, and 1ha1 often winners and losers alike do 001 necessarily deserve eicher the censure or !he praise they receive. lodeed. lhe cri1eria themselves are fluid and comextualized wichin a hiscorical and current network of conversations about art that occur between the works themselves and the critical voices that sur round them.
Kendall 8uster and Paulo Crowford
The Critique Handbook
The Art Student's Sourcebook and Survival Guide
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Chapter One
FORMAL MATTERS
FORM AND CONTENT
When a group of students walks into a critique, first reactions will vary. Some \Ludents will initially examine Lhe works of art by looking for narrative contenc. They will ask,"What story does this image tell? What does that object make me think about when I sec it?" Others will try to assess a work through almost unconscious immediate reactions: "How does Lhai painting makeme feel?"
These seemingly natural responses are in fact Lhe direct result of the way a work is put together-the formal operations of a work. Formal choices can suppon or undennine narratives, hideor foreground the mechanics and materiality of a work. empha ize or ignore its relation 10 history, and, in general. guide a viewer's reception of the wort. And so we begin with formal rna11ers and with the related terms fom,and content.
We are tempted to think of form simply as a container Lhat holds conrem. But there is slippage berween the two terms. Form not only refers 10 the material delivery ponion of a work. as in Lhe physical form of a sculpture, but ir also refers 10 a set of visual elements (formal elemenrs). such as scale. shape, siu, composition. and color, whose relationships become the form and srructure of a work.
One way of looking at the form/content relationship is to visualize a line with form a1one end and content al the other, and 10 imagineany given work of an as being located somewhere along that continuum. ln some works. we immedia1ely see form, and content follows. A monochromatic red painting or a large organic mass of clay will be read first as color or mass. In other works, where the message praclically shouts, we are con scious of the formal elements only larer, as in a Renaissance crucifixion painring or a sculpture !bar depicts a group of dead soldiers. l.ocllted beiween these are works in which form and materials are foreground d,1 sometimes tosuppon nnd sometimes 10 undem1ine a narrarive message.
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4 Chapter One
What you see is not always wha1 you get, though. lf a red mono chrome painting is titled Untitled Pai111i118 #3 or Red Recra11gle, you will likely see the painting as a fonnalist. sclf-rcferen1ial work tha1 we could placeon theji.m11end ofourfonn/contcnt continuum. Bue wha1if you were to learn that the red monochrome painting is titled After the Massacre? How would that affect your e periencc of it? Would the red suddenly becomae symbol ofblood? lf you were then to learn that the red pain1 was really the blood of the artist. would you again see the picture differently?
This isall panof the slippage tha1occun. between form and contenL
lrnaginea grouping of stones armnged in a circle on a gallery Door. They have been neitherca1"ed norcu1. •mpl) arranged on thefloor. Now also imaginea stone carved to look exactly like a boy holdinga stone in his hand, which he is abou1 to throw. The stones arranged ina circle, although embodying an abstract geomellic form, slill maintain their iden tity as stones. Indeed, their stoneness i an imponan1 component of the image. In the case of the carved slatue, ionc i. a raw material, which has been transformed into sornethi ng ocher chan itself. Here, physical form servesa narrative content. And even where the stone material is trans formed into the stone, held by che boy, ii reads as a represemation of stone, rather than a real stone found by thesideof Ll1e road.
ln critique, we will likely talk abouc the uccuracy of the proponions of tbe stone ligure, how it looks from various van1age points, and the artist's technical ma tery over the material. In other words, we will eval uate the carved figure a5 mimetic2 image. and make judgmenis based on how well the fom1al elements imilate Life and chus how successfuUy the artist transfom1ed the materials into a likeness, which functions asa na"ative. The narrative is the story we imagine around a boy about 10 throwa stone. Depending on formal choices made by the artist, we might imaginean angry protesteror a child skipp1ng rocks bya creek.
But when we come to the arranged \tone,,, we will discuss their positioning in relation 10 each other and 10 the space, what ldnd they are, what size, theshineof theirsurface.5, and their relation togravity. Any dis cussion ofnarrative meaning becomes secondary: anexercise in decoding thefonnal elemenis in a search formeaning. And even if the way they are fom1ally presented suggests a primitive ritual or evokes a memorial, they
also might be read as fonnal-thac is, empty of any narrative meaning
such that the experience of them is largely derived from the relations of thefonns toone another and to thespace chey occupy.
In both cases, we are assessing the works formally, but the ques tions change in relation to whether the muterials keep their identity or
Formal Matters s
are transformed into narrative image. Thus, when we ialk about fonn, we are talking both about whal is materially in front of us and about ideals of structure and design that exist outsideof the work.
ln the cru.e of the carved figure, the ideal is the human fom1 and the ways that we have seen it represented in an before, as well as a complex sy,tem for creating a likeness that also conforms to an array
of abstract ,deus about things such as symmetry, balance. proportion, weight, and so on. ln the ease of the circle of stones. the ideal is perfect geometry, the essence and identity of the material. and the formal oper ations of the stones in space.
Contml, in a sense, is that which is upressed or made manifest through form, or even as form. Al the utreme end of this-especially within the traditions of abstraction-form actually is content and vice versa. An untitled black square painting, for instance. can be seen as a complcle conllntion of form and content. What it depicts and what it is are indistinguishable.
Overemphasizing formal concerns in the critique of a work that has a compelling message may seem absurd, as does looking for complex narratives in a black square. These are thefar ends of the continuum. But for now let us take a risk and exclusively consider fom1al matters on their own terms!
Defining Form
For the sake of convenience, we'll define form as the means by whiclt one give., sub.1tat1ce to an idea. Fonn operates in ways that are as numerous as there are formats for work. 1t·s easy to see form in scu.Lpturc, which has obvious weight. density. mass. propoltion. and three-dunen\lonal shape. ln two-limensiooal works, form is apparent in compos11ion, texture, palene, and line quality. But formal matters are also in operation in the length of a performance or video project, in the way a site-responsive installation is positioned in a specific place, or even in the volume of a sound work. Adding LO the com plexity of the discussion are the porous boundaries between media and the tendency for most contemporary studio practices 10 cross over into other disciplines.
A three-dimensional fonn might feature a two-dimensional pattem on its surface. A canvas might becomea photograph by the useof liquid light or be a construction that comes off the wall. Acomplex ins1u1Ja1io11 might be constructed with elements that combine sound, video, built
6 Chapter One
structures, and silk-screened panels. Critiquing this endless array of fonnal and material possibilities can be overwhelming, to say the least.
So what do we mean when wesay that we wa11110 consider a work
formally, and how does this operate in critique? A critique that begins by examining how fonnal elements support or undermine a work might sound something like this: ;'The story that you present in this scene is interesting, but your figures are badly drawn." ..1 am interested in the subject of your photographs, but I am bothered by the poor print quality, and the scale of the prints is all wrong." "Your installation of letters
from war refugees conveys compassion and you present them without any hint of a patronizing attitude or voyeurism, but I believe that you could have been more inventive with the way the images are displayed."
Yet again, the complaint might be that a well-executed drawing or a perfectly modeled sculpture feels so academic that it does not move us. First responses might be something like, "It is very well drawn but it leaves me cold. Do you even know what this is about or why you drew it in the first place?"This might lead to a discussion of possible visual devices that could be used,even at the sacrifice of accuracy, for thesake of composition or expressive content of some kind.
What if a work's form and content cannot be distinguished, as when formal choices are strictly guided by the inherent qualities of an artist's materials, or when qualities such as shape, color, and spatial rela tions operate with such primacy thac these actually become the content of that work? In other words, how do we look at an that is nonreferentialor truly self-referential?
This leads us to consider the terms formalism and modernism, whose ideas and traditions still inform much of what goes on both in art studios and in critique rooms. It is worth looking, then, at what is meant by these terms and some of the ideas surrounding them.
Looking More Closely at Form
Formalism and Modernism Even though all works of art have formal qualities and clearly arefonns of some kind, not all works are thought to be formalist. Formalist works tend to be intentionally limited to, or highly focused on. their formal elements, such as, shape, color, and materiality. The term formalism, which shares the same etymological root as form, refers to an approach to art and art making that emphasizes these elements. often seeing the work of an as a self-referential object as opposed to a vessel for a message of some kind.
Formal Maners 7
Formalism has been criticized, by artists and critics alike, because of its penchant for being self-referential.The disdainful remark, "This work is just formalist." coming from a figurative paint.er. is an accusation
that the work is Jacking in narrative substance. As one original member of the NewYork Ten3 put it, speaking about Rothko in the old days, "We all thought he was just doing tasteful paintings about nothing!" Whatever
your view, it is still useful to examine a work by looking carefully at its formal elements, whether they are pointing to a narrative content or simply pointing to themselves.
All works b.ave formal qualities. Consider how the gesture of a
hrushstroke can suggest strUggle in a painting, whether U1e image is an expressionisticabstract composition or a bound figure; how the delicate transparent layering of a brushmark-free paint handling might allow for a seamlessness of surface, whether that surface is a milky white color field with gradual tonal shifts or a window into a realist painter's imag• inary world; how a filmmaker might assault our complaceney with a fast-paced montage and jarring soundtrack, or seduce us with muted palettes and soft fades. Whether you are looking at a painting of a dog by a pond or an abstract field of color, from this perspective, it is the formal qualitiesof the work that produce an aesthetic experience for the viewer. Thus, formal matters matter. For formalists, it is U1e most important aspect of a work.
If we accept the formalist proposition that the aesthetic value of a
work of art lies in its formal qualicies, then any given medium is best judged by iL5 trumess to the formal qualities inherent to it. Tb.is means that a work produced in a given medium might evolve toward a more and more rarified articulation of itSformal particulars. And a work of art could even ultimately be just about its formal qualities. Following this logic, works of art become disconnected from representation and increasingly abstr.icted to the point of becoming entirely self-referential. In other words, a work of art no longer represe11ts something out in the world but presents itself. The most successful works are those made according to the natural inclinations of the medium out of which they
are constructed.
Formalism and Modernism go hand in hand. Modernist thinking about arL is predicated on che assumption that art history is a progressive movement toward greater purity in each medium. A painting is judged not by what is happening in an imagined space beneath the surface but as a tltillg, essentially flat and made of physical paint. A sculpture is about space. volume. balance, modeling, materiality, and possibly color.
8 Chapter One
The idea is that the raw material the artist uses ha, inclinations of it own, an essence, if you will. It is what it is. The transformation by the artist of the maierial into something other than itself becomes a trnns fonnation from something honest to wmething dishonest. 'The rock no longer looks hke a rock. The artist's craft was so good that now when I look at it I see a boy. TI1e mckness of it has been subjugated for the sake of a narrative image.The viewer has been deceived.
One critic associated with this strain of thinking is Clement Greenberg.4 For Greenberg, competence in each an discipline comet with the unique nature of its medium. Standards of quality are found through purity of the form. nnd purity occurs through self-definition. What had been for the Old Masters limitations 10 be overcome-the Oat surface, the shape of the suppon, the natural properties of pigments-became to Modernist painters the essential qualities of the medium 10 beembraced.
Abstracting and Abstraction In critique, the tcnns abstra('t and abstraction are often lhrown around and applied toa range of work> from d1s1oned drawings of the figure to sculptures fonned from steel tnangles. The tem1abs1ractio11, often replaced by terms such as11onrepreseJl/atio11al or nonobjective. is used to describe forms that don·1 resemble the real world. But its root. the Latin verb abstraltere, from which the English word '·abstmetion" is derived. literally means "to pull" or "draw away." Thus, abstraction, in the purest sense. begins with realiry and draws ttway from it,revealing the underlying lines anti geometric hapes. tramforming a figure or potied plant intosomething hardly recognizable.What isimpor Ull1t to remember is that you can think about abS1roc1 a.,a \'erb (something
!hat you do) that leadsall the way to pureabstraetion. In thesame way that we used a line to visualize form and content, think of representation and abstraction a.5 located on far ends of a line. If you stan on one cud of the line, with an image that looks just the way n camera liCCS it and then begin to abstract it intO lines and 1ory in which he was working. With this comment, the artist was revealing a problem, as hesaw ii, not just with represenu11ion but also with associatio11. The very idea of a sculpture (or painting) that resists "reminding oneof something else" is the essence of the self-referential work.a work that can only be assessed fonnally, and wherethecontent is its shape, color, material, weight, and arrangemenl of its parts in
composition. '
There is an old joke about a psychiatrist who gives his patienat
Ror;ehach test. As the therapist present card after card of inkblot abstract shapes. the patient insists over and over again thnt what he sees are images with explicit sexual content. When the doctor reports that this indicates a dangerous obsession, the patient replies, "But doctor. you are the one with all those dirty picture,!"
For many studentS, there is still a tendency to approach nonrepre
sentational work by first trying to create associations. What does this sh11pe remind meof?That abstract shape looks like a duck or is it a fist? I seea head.The poc;sibilitics are limited only by the number of partici
pants willing to play the Rorschach game.
Perhaps this comes from the long hiqory of an at the service of
the mimetic (or imitative) function. Or maybe it says much about the power of even the most reductive fonns to evoke emotional reactions, about the mysterious ways in which our brains function. and about how we humans aresymbol-making creatures compelled to make meaning.
The danger in making such free associations in critique is that they
can lead to so many subjective opinions, and so many irreconcilable and divergent paths,!hat it becomes impossible to sustain a critical dialogue. The association game in cr11ique is like the childhood experience of
10 Chap1erOne
discovering rabbits and dragons in cloud formations. It reminds me of this. It reminds me of that. Although useful, even imperative, to a complete examination of theexperience of a work, if taken too far,subjective associ ations can dissolve into a full breakdown of discipline.
That said, associations occur and need to be recognized in cri tique. When looking at work with a formal eye, the shape of a form or the uprightness of a figure may embody a likeness, which becomes tbe "content" of a work. Here, form slips into content. A shape or form that doesn't really look like anything but that reminds us of other things adds those identities to it. This slippage of identity can be called the poe1ics of meaning.
Thus, association is not necessarily a thing to be avoided either in making art or looking at art. Indeed, a play wilh the possibility of com plex associations in abstract forms or shapes can be a substantive part of many artistic practices.
Realism ,·ersusAbstraction:A Real Issue? In critique, there is often much discussion about realism. Does the drawing "look" like the still life? Did the student manage to model the light in a way tl'.at clearly articulates the model's torso? Is the figure modeled accurately in clay or proportionally rendered in cast fiberglass? Does the wood or Styrofoam carving present an accurate representation of the object? Often, achieve ment is measured by a student's ability to make a drawing or painting that approaches the accuracy of a photograph. Jn sculpture, a figure that can be read as a real person in a room gets an enthusiastic response. Many students equate craft with the ability to imitate nature.
The esteem associated with accurate rendering comes down to us through the history of painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture traditions that began in a prephotographic age. Jn these disciplines, accurately rendered human figures often operated a characters in narra tives.To function as effective oarr.itive, sculpted and painted images had to convincingly look and feel like real people, much the way a character in a Tolstoy novel is crafted with detailed physical attributes and a com plicated psyche. The three-dimensional figure, like its two-dimensional counterpart in a painting, operated in a pictorial manner like an actor in a
scene. Realism was able to convey a readable story. It wa not about the
marble or the bronze but, rather, the creation of characters and narrative, much the way a novel works.
What Is Realism? It is worth considering how we define realism. Is it
what we can see wilh lhe naked eye?Througb the Jens of a camera? Can
Formal Matters 11
what wesee through a microscope or a telescope be considered realism? Vision as we know it is an interaction between a limited portion of the electromagnetic spectrum and our own perceptual apparatus. Does the fact that we can't see most of the electromagnetic spectrum make those portions of the spectrum any less real? Are the seemingly abstract shapes of the blobs under the microscope less real than a potted plant on a nearby table? Questions like these have been changing how artists have viewed "reality" since the early twentieth century. They have prompted some artists whose images may appear to be abstract to still think of themselves as realists.
It is also interesting to consider how many contemporary realist painters work not from life but from photographs or even projections. Rather than observing real people and objects. where the eye and brain become translators from three-dimensional space onto tlat space, new realists often work from flat to flat. How important is the source? If David Hockney's recent theories are true and that some of our most revered ma ter painters used mirrors and lenses, does that alter how we think aboutcraft? Many portrait artists work from multiple photographs. Many painting students are more comfort2ble using photographs as a source than they are working from life. And yet, it you offer them an opaque projector. they feel that would be cheating.
Self-portrait assignments are the staple of traditional figure and life classes. But self-portraits must either be done from a mirror or a photograph. Both of these methods require the artist to transfer a flat image on a tlat surface onto another tlat surface. What makes realism realistic in all of this? What gives ii the mystical aura of the magician's craft? Where does the craft reside? And how relevant is process to the integrity of a finished work? What about sophisticated mold-making techniques used to replicate a three-dimensional form, or computer soft ware and prototype equipment that can scan an object and carve a replica in a variety of materials? How do these differ from works mod eled through eye and hand?
The sculptor Constantine Brancusi once said, "When you see a fish, you do not think of its scales. do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through water....If I made fins and eyes
and scales, I would arrest its movement and hold you by a pat.tern, or a shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirit."6 Rather than seeing the work as abstract because it doesnot resemble the way a fish looks to
the human eye, Brancusi's realism resides in the way the fish is-alive and in motion. One can think of artists like Brancusi as expressing the
12 Chapter One
object as a verb rather than a noun, that is, theswimming of a fish or the growing of a flower, rather than the traditional dead nature that the French term for still lifesuggests.
Nevertheless, drawing from life, whether it be human figure or potted plant, remains a mainstay in most college art foundations curric ula. Figure modeling, though not the staple it once was in art schools and college art depru1menL . has in recent years enjoyed a resurgence, in part because of the figure's seemingly inexhaustible narrative potential.
We s1ill have bodies and are surrounded by material objects. In !be
context of a basic skill-building class, tbe s1udent's work in critique is usually judged by Ille accuracy of the reproduced figure to !be real-life model. A class with the shared goal of gaining technical proficiency in representing the figure will likely conduct a fonnal critique centered on how well a student has reproduced the model's complex form.
The challenge in critique in a more advanced course with a wide range of artistic practices is to determine whelber this standard of verisimilitude or another standard is appropriate to the work. In other words, in looking at the work fonnally, we ask how critical it is to the success of the piece that these forms imitate reality.
LOOKING AT A PAINTING FORMALLY
What Makes a Painting a Painting?
What makes a painting a painting? Faced wi1h the diversity of practices within the discourse of contemporary painting, is there a common language for discussing the many forms painting takes? Are there spe cific ingredients that a painting has to contain in order to be a painting? Does it have to hangon the wall? Contain pigment of some kind? Be on c,invas or board? Have a picture plane? Be rectangular? Be made with brushes? As you read this, you are probably thinking of many well known paintings !bat aren't made this way, that specifically lack at least one of theseelements. Are there particular elements that a painting must contain to hold onto its identity as painting? Can we talk about an acad emic figure painting in thesame way that we discuss a suitcase sprayed wilb l<.ryloo enamel? Or a raw canvas pinned to the wall in the way we talk about a color field painting? What about several piles of brightly colored dry pigment on the floor? Or dried latex applied and then removed from a canvas support and then laid out on the floor? Or a video image projected onto a framed canvas?
Fonnal A1atters 13
Are disciplines converging in such a way that painting is at risk of continual slippage intosculpture. into photography, or into the digital art , video, or performance? Does paintingstill even havean identity of its own?
Painting as Its Own Context
Ever since painters lef1 the architectural frames of ca1hedrals and chapels 10 make transportable oil paintings on stretched canvases or wooden panels, they have tended to accept the four sides of a canvas as natural borders that frame a discrete pictorial space. The real world beyond tha1space is accepted as extraneous. Thus,1he white canvas is a built-in context for a painting, in that it houses, frrunes, and fom1s a dia logue with what it contains. In this sense, the white picture plane is to the painter what the gallery space around a sculpture is to the sculptor. Many painters-representational and abstract alike-have accepted the stretched canvas surface or primed board as a neutral ground on which to hang a painting. This view is based on an underlying assumption that a painting occurs on the surface of the canvas or board. The stretcher and the sidesof the support are functional necessities and remain, for all prac1ical purposes, invisible.
While we are ignoring the physical aspect of a painting, we might also ask if there can be such a thing as a neutral or ideal picture plane that isn't associated with anything outsideof itself.What shape would it be? A rectangle placed horizontally suggests a landscape. Placed verti cally, it suggests a portrait. Even so, artists have consistently accepted 1he rectangular format as relatively neutral, conceding that any implicit meanings have been almost extricated by the pervasiveness of such paintings wilbin the tradition.
A Painting's Internal Logic
Beyond its relation to things outside of itself,such as its place in art his tory, where and how it is presented, or even the other works of art around it, we can speak of a painting as having an internal logic. When this frames our discussion we can begin our formal assessment by first asking a series of basic questions. How big is the work? What shape is it? How far from the wall is the surface? Are the edges painted or framed? Have the edges been ignored? Are the s1aples visible? Is it a stretched canvas, a board, a panel, or something else? ls the raw surface beneath the painted surface visible? Is it treated with white gesso or a transparent sizing? Has Ille surface been altered in some way, cut into,
14 Clwprer One
sewn onto? Is the surface made out of paint. or is it some other nontra ditional painting material such as tar, beetroot, or shampoo? Is the paint thin, unifonn. or thick? Is it smooth or textured? Are the brushstrokes visibleor hidden? Do the brushstrokes present physical evidence of the ai1ist's gestures? What kind of gestures are they? ls there color, and what kind? Are the values close, or are there large contrasts of value? ls the painting high key or low key? What kinds of marks can be seen on the surface? Are they about line? What kinds of lines: are they thick, thin, or varied'/ Are they about gesture? Do they have a physical pres ence? Did the artist use brushes, and what size? Were a variety of brushes or other tools used'! Are there other elemenis: collage or found objccis? These questions all address actions going on withi11 rhe frame.
Line Line is the most basic mark-a stick pulled through sand. a burnt ember scrawled across the wall of a cave, the tracks of a snail, or fine filamencs of a spider's web. Line is considered by many ai1ists to embody the direct channel between the brain and the hand, a means itself of thought. And line is content depending on what it is made of, the gesture that created it, and where it resides. A fast-moving, highly pressured line feels angry or aggressive. A thin wobbly line has a tcnla• tive message. Think of a large scrawled confident signature as opposed to a small hesitant one. What does it tell you about the signatory? Line can be ordered or chaotic, fast or slow, Lbick or thin. It can be the prod uct of an emotional outburst or a machine. It can make ilSelf almost invisible at the service of illusion or flaunt its identity as a mark on the page. Line also occupies and divides space and, thus, influences how one reads everything around it.
Color Color is to painting what line is to drawing. Color carries with it emotional content. and the perception of it changes depending on the othercolors nearby. Indeed, color is an effect rather than a real propeny. While studenis learn the nuts and bolts of color theory in foundations courses, suffice to say that an analysis of color is integral to any formal critique of a painting.
Is the painting high key or low key? Is the palette limited, or are there many seemingly unrelated colors? lf it is limited, how so? Were only eanh colors used, saturated colors, or a combination of the two? Is there an obvious logic to the color, such as the use of complements or triads? Does the painting have a temperature--hot reds and oranges, or cool blues and greens? Is the painting limited to analogous colors? Is it a monochrome? How are the colors distributed across the picture plane?
Formal Matters 15
Is it a harmonic distribution; that is, has the anist considered color extension in relation to saturation within triadic or complementary rela tionships? Or is it unbalanced, thus creating an evocative or emotional space? All of these are fonnal elements and have a bearing on how we perceive a painting.
Composition Composition is generally thought of as the arrangement of lines and shapes within a pictorial space. As withcolor, there are books on the rules and regulations of harmonious composition that have come down to us from the masters. These are usually covered in foundations courses and quickly forgotten. To many students, thinking about compo sition in tenns of triangles and the golden rule feels like being forced to learn a dead language that no one speaks anymore. Nevertheless, many c,ompositional traditions are based on shared human percept.ions. For instai1ce, a composition that forms an equilateral triangle centered in the picture plane feels stable as opposed to one formed from an isosceles triangle. whose longest side runs diagonally from the top right corner of the canvas to the bottom left.The one is static, the otherdynan1ic. A circle in the center of a picture plane, as in the Japanese flag, feels balanced, while one at the bottom edge feels pulled down by gravity. A large shape dominates a smaller one. As the number of marks or shapes on a picture plane increases, each one loses significance, much the way a child who is one of twelve has a smaller presence in a family compared to an only child. Or lhe general on a battlefield stands out against a mass of uni fonned soldiers. In critique, we analyze how the arrangement of shapes, lines, and fonns works on us. We also ask how this arrangement affects other fonnal elements and is affected by them. We can talk about compo sition in purely formal tenns. And we can also look at how it affecis the way we make meaning out of the painting. We will take this up again in the next chapter.
Fields Fields in painting are like fields in nature. Imagine a field of green grass. Now evenly distribute purple flowers over the green grass field. Or let us envision a field of red, yellow, and white flowers popping up through a blanket of snow, or a scattering of white flowers coming up through snow. Picture the night sky on a dark night away from city lights, or the flecks of light on an expanse of ocean.These are all fields. Fields are composed as alJ-ovcr patterns across the picture plane. The composition operates not as juxtaposition, as in a painting of a scene or a figure, but as layering. Imagine a graph with an x and y axis. Fields can lay on the plane of the x and y axes, or can be layered. one over
16 Chapter One
another, on the z axis. In painting, fields might be made of flung paint, carefully repeated motifs, buttons sewn to a canvas in a grid, a tangle of lines or brushstrokes, or a single color. Fields spread out to the edges of the canvas so that the pictorial space becomes a fragment of an imagi• nary larger field that exists beyond itsedges.
A Painting's External Logic
Whereas a painting occurs on the surface of a support, it also becomes a part of 1hat support. Thus, aparl from ils physical surface and the image Iha! occupies its surface, 1he painting is also an object. As an object, it occupies space io rela1ion to the other objects around ii. I1 stands away from the wall 10 a grea1er or lesser ex.lent. It has weight and volume. Formal choices that the painter makes can highlight or obscure a paiming's abjectness.
If the painting's edges are thick, causing it tos1and away from the wall, itsabjectness isemphasized.The eye moves from thefrontal surface to the edges. The surface becomes part of a larger organized whole. The artist is now obligated 10 think about what the edges mean in relation to the surface of lhe canvas. Are 1hey an ex.tension of it? Does the image wrap around thes1retcher? Should theedges be painted as a continuation of the surface? Do the edges fonn anolher relaled sel of surfaces? And if theedges of lhe canvas areof a standard depth, is the artis1obliged 10deal with them?Some painters accept thestretched canvas asa neutral ground for painting. which !hey seeas occuning exclusively on the surface. Are they nolonger obliged 10 deal with theedges'?
What does ii mean if the edges of1he canvas become holdersof 1he spillover from 1he painting process, or if they are covered with slaples lhal fasten the canvas 10 the stretcher bar? A paiming, with untouched edges and of a standard depth. gives the message thal painler and viewer agree thai the "world" is the surface of the painting. It is its own context. Does this become an active s1a1emen1 by 1he artist that the painting occurs exclusively on the surface? That she views thestrelcher as a neu• tral place to hanga painting? Thal she is not in1eres1ed in the painling as objec1? The moment a painter calls allention 10 the support, and the painling reverts lo being an object in space, the viewer looks not just at thesurface bu1aroc,nd it.
A canvas can also be seen as a plane or membrane, and a ruplure in 1his membrane calls auention lo the painting as an objec1. The canvas can haveobjecls auached 10 ii or be punc1ured with cuts. These ac1ions undermine a seamless reading of its surface. When a painting begins 10
Fomral Ma11ers 17
foreground its identity as objecl rather than surface, ii starts to inleracl with the space that ii occupies. It becomes an object in space. The fore• grounding of the painting as object changes the reading of the surface, which is now in dialogue with ils own constructedness and identity as an object.
Paintings may also showcase their relationship to the exhibition space. Shaped monochromes appear 10 be floming in the typically vasl, white wall space that comains them. In this case, the paintings lhem selves have become figures on a larger ground, that of 1he gallery wall. They operale primarily in relation to the wall space1ha1 contains them and secondarily as discrete painted surfaces. A group of shaped mono• chrome paintings by the artist Ellsworth Kelly, for instance. seems almost IO become a composilion of colored shapes on the picture plane of 1hegallery wall.
Shape changes the dynamic as well. Once a painting shifls away from 1he space of the rec1angle (painting's mos1 neutral lerritory), it moves furlher toward the province of the object. Shaped canvas con structions, while still poinling primarily to themselves, also address 1he space1hey occupy by projecting in and out, no1only,on the x and y axes of the wall, but also on the z ax.is, which runs perpendicular 10 the plane of the wall from any given poim on the painting's surface.
Edges The first edge is the physical ouleredge of a painting.This edge separates the work from 1he res1of Lhe world, marking off the world within the pictorial space. 11 establishes agreed-on borders that mark off the painting as a kind of autonomous terri1ory. The nex1 frame is made ou1of1he relation of theimage or worked area to the physical outer edge. Consider these edges within 1he frame. Are they negotiable? Was the painlingexecu1ed on canvas slapled 10a wall and then glued omoa larger surface? Whal if the artist painted all the way lo Lhe edges of a raw can• vas, causing the ou1er part of the image lo be wrapped around the edge, when the work is finally stre1ched? If the edges are painled over, in this case, the image becomes cropped. If the image isleft10 wrap around !he edge, what happens? Now the pictorial space has been expanded into lhree-dimensional space. What if a drawing was begun on a huge expanse of paper so that it could expand as needed? ln all of1hese cases, the artist has made compositional decisions based on a pic1orial space that nolonger exists. One way around !his is to begin a drawing or paint• ing by first marking off lhe edges of a piclorial space and work within that. Al thesame time. expanding and contracting the piclorial space can besolutions to composilional impasses and create surprising resulls.
18 Chapter One
Edges alsoseparate discrete areas of color or shape within a paint ing.They are the transition from one space to another within the piclUre
plane. Are the edges in the work in front of us so clean that they seem factory-made? Are they blurry to the extent that you cannot tell where one area begins and the next ends? Do they look like they were taped or
scumbled. carefully painted or accidental? How the artist dealt with the interior edges is all part of the reading of a painting.
&ale Scale weighs in, Joo. A large canvas tips inherently away from object toward pure surface because the depth of its edges is much smaller. The edges of a large painting are slight compared to itS surface
area. It's hard to imagine holding it. It approaches the domain of archi
tecture. Nevertheless, if we increase a painting'sdepth or let the painted surface extend over lhe edges, the work can shift toward object. The edges become foregrounded and cease to beneutral.
Scale refers both to a work's size in relation 10 the world around it
and to the relation of its parts to one another within the internal logic of the whole. The firstcould be called a work's absolute scale. The second, its relative scale. Large works seem powerful, authoritative, ambitious, and have a seductive potency by their magnitude alone. It is much like the difference between seeing a movie on the big screen, where the close-up shot of an actor's head is eight feet tall,compared to seeing the same shot on a small video screen. The one is larger than life--.i vast landscape-the other is pocket-sized. Note also how much less material movie screens are compared to televisions. which are themselves objects. Relat.ive scale can be thought of as the same kind of difference but operating instead within the picture plane itself. Imagine a scene of a small child, perhaps made to seem even smaller by a bird's-eye cam era angle. Onto the screen comes a towering bad guy.The relative scale of the two supports the narrative message that this child is weak and vulnerable in the face of a much greaterpower.
In painting. a large work carries with it associations with the works of that scale that came before it. It seems museum size. Heroic. It already seems important. If it is larger than the viewer, it feels more like an environment or a wall than a picture. One has to stepaway from it in
order to see it. A small work hasan intimacy about it. One must be close to it to see it. It seems to belong in a furnished room in an intimate set ting. It is an object that can easily be held. It's thesize of a lamp, or book, or small mirror. A small painting is naturally a window into an illusion. One feels the frame, even in the case of an unframed work.
Fom,a/ Matters 19
Format Format refers to the shape and proportions of a pictorial sur face. As discussed earlier, most paintings are rectangular in format But many are not. Thus, if we are looking at a rectangular painting, we already know one of the following: Either the artist is accepting the rectangular format as a kind of neutral ground on which to paint (and this is precisely the right shape for what the artist has in mind) or he hasn't really thought about it. On the other hand, if we are presented with an odd-shaped canvas, or even a rectangle with extreme propor• tions, we know right off that the artist is considering the relation of the picture to the picture plane. For instance, an artist might choose an extremely long horizontal support on which to paint a landscape, thus emphasizing the horizon line and a sense of panoramic expanse and tranquility. A nonrectangular support immediately contextualizes a work among the many other works that have challenged the horizontal picture plane. A nontraditionally shaped support becomes a primary carrier of content that immediately assertS the painting's identity as object over its identity as painted surface.
Painting as Image, Act, and Thing
Mimesis and Improvisation In Book TVof the Poerics,1 a fifth-century
B.C. handbook of sorts for playwrights, Aristotle talks about two natural instincts that motivate the writing of poetry. He argues that poetry sprang from two causes, each of them lying deep within human nature. The first was a natural instinct for imitation (mimesis) and the second. an instinct for harmony and rhythm, which through a kind of rude process of impro visation gave birth to poetry. One might easily place the Lineage of paint ing that comes down from the Renaissance in Aristotle's construct as operating from the first instinct, motivated wholly by the desire to imitate nature. The modernist painter, however,came to painting largely from the second instinct, as a kind of improviser.The part of poetry which is rhyme and rhythm, meterand movement, is much like those fonnal connections, which orchestrate the whole of a canvas, outsideof any referential mean ings. Where painting has relinquished its instinct for imitation, this second instinct has seemed to motivate and become the full content and experience of the work.
Many figurative paintings operate in both arenas of activity. Although concerned with getting the figure right, the figurative painter may well improvise within the totality of forms. often sacrific ing accuracy for expressive distortion or pictorial integrity. To many
20 Chapi,rOne
modernist and contemporary figurative painters. process cannot be detached from the final image.
Surface, Gesture, and Process Early modernist painters abnndoned the traditional ide" Ll1at a painting had to be a seamless retinal image. Instead, they began to explore a p11inting's flat surface, turning it imo a kind of rcoord of itSowncreation. 1be painterly surfaoe, asa result, could be seen as a record of an act and the door was open for relocating the place of aesthetic meaning from the image itself to the activated surface, and ulti
mately to the momenroftheaesthelicact.Wesee thisasearly asCeunne's layered patches of color and Van Gogh·s directional brushsltQkes. where
the gestures of theartist's hand have been tied to the implied gesrures of a
depicted natural landscape orobject. as perceived by the artist.
We see this in American abstract expressio11ist painting where the act of painting is foregrounded to the extent that a painting's success or failure rested curiously on itsability toconvince the critic that the moment of ilscreation wasanauthentic one. In this way, theartist becomes integral to the equation. no longer <,eparated from the art objecL As a result. the artist's croft is asconcerned with the development and assertion of 1/te self as it is about the skill of mixing color or modeling light and shadow.
When process drives u painter, 1he painting takes on u voice of its own asit be<:omes formed.11even begin. to have a say in the choices !hat culminate in its final form. In other words, the painter discovers what the painting is or will look like as she goes. Process is often self-driven by formal and material choices as they are made. The painter. tuned into an emerging structure of relauonships, gui andis guided tow:trd an elu• sive end. Thus, the painting is. in a sense, discovered lhrough the act of pninting. The skillor technique for making such a painting then becomes more about a frame of mind. and an ability tosee and respond, than about techniques for rendering accurate proportions or mixing color. In formal critique, we look at the painting asevidence of this process.
Hesitation
A student Pt and somecaUIJl'aphk black lines that $ecmed to loosety ttrucwre the picture plane. The ln.strua.or, who was a dte--hard abstract-exprenk:,nlst of
the Califun¥a ,choo[.,t>Rltt!M there." The student blushe11in1ing, while the other is pointing 10 them. Without a relevant framework for discussion, weend upsampling oranges 10appraise apples.
A formal critique of a work lllilt hus either moved away from pure representation or transgressed the frame requires us 10 move our ques tions away from image and toward ohject. Focus will be on the physical surface, as opposed to an image that overpowers it. Nevertheless, many of die formal questions remain the same. In the m1is1's quest for stnoc• tural integrity, fomial elemenLs, such u, color, the arrangement of shapes, bnoshmarks, scale, and surface application. may be at the service of dif. ferent outcomes. The ove1Tiding qucMion in any critique that focuses on fonnal matters will be to determine ir the fom1al choices that the artist has made are serving her purpose, whatever that might be.
LOOKING AT SCULPTURE FORMALLY
The Object in Space (Figure and Ground)
Agood place to begm a formal as'nd pop sur
pos-.. Tho of dlO box has bffn attl\,lly in red velv".
Tho ou....S. cC <"4 box has bffnur,l uly puued wro, • W3$h ol ft•• b4clc
paint. A fonnal dlM:uuion of the work includes observac.aons tN.t the: sculp ture hu a dt°'1,i.front and bade. but sever-11 ,wdents object to the poorly painted b.ack and a few suggest that the artistdevelop the outside of the box with a.s much care a, the in,ide.
A sculpture and the space around it are adjoining volumes. TI1e sculpture operntc, a, a figure in the '"negative space" (or ground) of the room. If you ,mnd m ony given point facing the sculpture and draw an imaginary line connecting the outermost pointsof the work. you can get
26 Chap1er011e
a sense of the dynamic of 1his figure/ground relation,hip that is so par ticular 10 sculpture
First obsel"\·c ,. helher you are drawing a relau, cly symmetrical box or one with extreme convex or concave lhrusts How does empty space within !his outline of lhe sculptural form operate (if at all)? How does the empty space surrou11di11g thesculpture alTcct ou.r view of it? Is
!his imaginary solid shape larger on the bottom or on the top? If it is
larger at the bottom, is a stable pyr.imid-likc shape created? If it is larger at the top, docs it seem unstable?
What happen, when a form b leaning at un ngle? Does the extremity of the angle affect our reading? If the angle creates a wedge like negative space beneath the fonn, what is theshape of that wedge?
Imagine:
ft fry fla1 s1e,I plate,1har create a path on a gal/tr\' floor. fifty pillows /hat createa pa1hon a gallery floor.
stacked steel plates that form a column up 10 the ceiling. stacked pillow, rhat form a colum11 up to the ceili1111.
What arc the proportions of height to width? Arc we looking at a long, flat. horizontal work !hat pulls our eye down and across 1he room? Does the empty space of the room seem now more no1iceable, even hov ering above the Oat object? 1.;, ii a tall, narrow worl. that pulls the eye up? Does the form almost touch the ceiling? The di,cre1e sculptural object and lhespace thatcontains it are part of a symbiotic whole, much like shapes arranged on a picture plane.
Fooq,rints
Ina sp,ccsal day1oo& project. each studl!tlt begins with a galloo bottle of glue, One student dips pieces of thick string Into glue. She attaches one end of each string to th• 11me spot on the waif and e>ccause of flimsy construction. or if suspension is integral to the design uml concept of the wock.
28 Chapter One
Next. we should look carefully at the hanging mechanism itself. Is the hanging device a noticeable feature of the sculptural object, or does the suspended sculpture appear weightless? ls the hanging device made of a material that makes it seem like an extension of the sculptural form? Is any hardware used? ls it visually prominent or is it hidden? ls the hanging device rigid or elastic? Is it noticeably thick or thin? Does the sculpture connect 10 the ceiling at several poinL5 or only one?
Notice the relationship of thesuspended object to the tloor and ceil ing. Is the form hung insuch a way that it hovers above one's head, or is it at eye level? Is it so !lush against the ceiling that it appears to grow from it? Is the hanging appamtus extremely long in proportion to thesculpture, so that thesculpture is hanging only a few inches from thefloor?
Suspended sculptures can be positioned in dynamic ways and put in places that freestanding and even pedestal works could not inhabit. Critique of suspended sculptures requires a careful look at thesculptural fonn, the suspension device, and the uniquely dynamic position of the sculpture in the space.
Pedestals Similar issues come into play when we look at sculpture bases. The conventional pedestal is a device that allows the artist toele vate the work off the floor-anywhere from a few inches 10 eye level. While the work is seen as ending where the pedestal begins, just as with a hanging device, the pedestal must be considered as part of the formal equation. When we talk about works displayed on pedestals, we have to ask., where the work begins. Is it only above the pedestal, or is the pedestal part and parcel of the whole? ls the pedestal fair game in our discussion? Or can we see it merely as a presentation issue, of concern only when the work is too large for iL baseor when tbe paint job on the pedestal is noticeably bad?
Indeed, if thesculpture is to beconsidered in its entire spatial con text, we might see the pedestal as an extension of the tloor-as if a chunk of the floor has risen up to make the work more readily visible. The most successful pedestal, like the perfect mat selection for a print, must either disappear or operate as a conscious part of the work. In either case, the pedestal is no longer neutral.
Seeing the Pedestal as Art Is the pedestal merely a conventional means of display, or has it been custom fitted to display a work? From what is it constructed? Is the choice of color or material so close to that
Formal Matters 29
of the work that the base bee-0mes an extension of the work? Or is it painted to contrast with the presented work? Does the pedestal visually interfere with the work?Are its proportions unusual? ls it solid or open? What color is the pedestal? Is the color of the pedestal coordinated with the sculpture in some way? Is it transparent, or painted white, black. or gray to echo the color of the gallery walls?
If the work displayed is a series of small sculptures. are they presented on a single large pedestal or multiple small ones? Uthe work displayed is large, is the pedestal hetiy or bas it been e-0nstructed to be small in relation to the displayed sculpture for possible comic elTect?
How high is the pedestal? Does it raise the work to eye level or intentionally force the viewer to stoop in order tO sec the work? Is the pedestal impossibly high, roquiri ng various sculptural props 10 allow the viewer to actually see the work? ls it impossibly thin (and secretly weighted at the bouom for stability), making the work feel precari ous? Is it so bizarrely broad and flat that it operates as a false floor? Are there so many low flat pedestals in the space that they almost fill the room and allow only a narrow channel for movement around them? Does the pedestal have legs. or is it solid lik a wedge. a plate rising from the gallery floor? ls the pedestal a shelf that attaches to the wall or might it be an alcove cut into the wall? How is the shelf attached or the alcove formed? What about size. shape, color, and positioning of these?
As we can see, the common pedestal is infinitely variable and should becarefully considered in critique as integral to the whole expe rience of any work.
The Room within the Room Some sculptural forms create an empty interior space. Box.es and vessels are familiar examples. But, unlike a conventional box or a vessel, a sculpture with an interiorspace can beso large that it seems to be as much architecture as it is object. We might think of these as room-withi11-tlre room sculptures because the sculp tural object becomes a room within the gallery room-perhaps a literal room or some other interior space for a viewer to experience.
Jmagi11e a silver bowl:
tire size of the palmof your luuul.
the she ofya11rbody. the size of your room.
30 Chapter One
How do we talk about such interior spaces? We might first ask, What is thescale ratio of the interior space of the sculpture to thespace of the room? Can weenter it? Does it feel tl1eatrical? ls there a sense of front and back srage? Is the exterior surface of thesculp111re treated dif
ferently from its interior? Is the outside of the inner room operating in the work like the back of a painting?
How do we read a series of hanging scrims that create a maze in a gallery space? Here the room within the room multiplies and fragments. The sculpture begins to moveeven further away from object and toward architecture.
The Decentered Object Another way that an object can reach equi librium with the space around it is through fragmentation and expan sion. Individual parts that make up thesculpture are still discrete shapes, but are now combined into a large composition that fills the space or even meanders outof the room. Here the sculptural form is decentered. Such groupings may be made of pans varied in scale and shape, or of identical units. The decentered sculpture may appear as a seamless whole or as a less coherent groupof fragments.
Objects and Field5 It is tempting to see a painting as either a portrait or a landscape, depending on the vertical or horizontal orientation of the canvas. Just consider the page setup window on your computer. The exception is the reclining figure, itself a landscape of sorts.
But let us consider for a moment the operation of the horizontal and the vertical in sculptural form. For most students, the vertical (asculpture that is taller than it is wide) brings with it inevitable associ ations with the upright human figure. Is this merely a function of width being less than height? Not entirely. For a sculptural form that is pro portionately the same but oriented horizontally will likely be read asa reclining figure. Indeed, the folkJore surrounding certain mountains sees them as sleeping giants because of a rough rcsemblanc,e to the human figure. In sculp111re, anything loosely constructed with human proportions seems tocarry that association.
But what if the proportions of our elongated object are made more extreme? At what point does the proportion in relation 10 the human form stretch so far as to lose all relationship to the original ref erent? How far could it stretch vertically? If the ratio of width to height is l to 100 or I to 1000, what happens to the figurative refer ence? How far could it stretch horizontally? More important, at what
Formal Mauers 31
point does the object's width expand such that it becomes a field-like a huge puddle, a spreading mass? When does a work made up of indi vidual parts create a field?
Unlike painting, sculpture seems to become landscape when it is read as environment rather than object. When we speak of a field paint ing, the repeated figure or motif has a uniform relation to a painted ground. At the extreme, figure and ground fonn a seamless continuum, as in monochrome color field paintings. In the case of a sculp111ral field, the object either spreads or multiplies to the point that the relationship of the object to the space (the figure/ground relationship) shifts radi cally. Fields are often realized through a development of the horizontal axis. If vertical sculptures seek todefy gravity by seeming to extend up from the floor. horizontal sculptures seem to hug the ground and expand by spreading across the floor. A small field on a large floor operates as a figure on the ground of that tloor, even if within its own parameters it operates as a field. But even then, it carries with it the potential to expand to the edges of thespace and beyond.
ln looking at a field sculpture, observe the edge where the sculp ture ends and the room begins-both in terms of the edges around the field and in tenns of its depth. (lo field sculptures, typically length and width are grealcr than depth.) We must consider the ratio of sculptural mass to floor space. Is thefield of objects so dense thatit begins to over whelm and became the floor? What happens when it is so dense that it begins tostack up on itself and fill the room? We must also consider the na111re of the field. Is it constructc(I outof a single unit or an accumula tion of multiple unit ? Are the multiple units identical? If not, what do the units fom1ally have in common, if anything-color, scale, shape, material? What is the size of each unit in relation to the overall size of the field? Arc the units connected, and. if so, how?
Many as One
Thousands of tiny figures cover a large gallery floor.
Lavemter buds spread across an area eight feet wide, twelve feet long. and four inches deep.
Hunt/reds of pink baby toys fomr a sickle shape on the sidewalk.
The Expanding, Exploding, or Meandering Form A field in sculp ture is a kind of decentered object that can expand, explode, or meander. But whereas fields tend to appear as seamless wholes, other decentered sculplllres are made up of less coherently related parts.
32 Choptt•r One
When ti sculpture is made outof p.irts, configuration and reconfig. urntion are possible. A form con swell LO till a ,pace or even spread
beyond the room. A dccentcred sculpture can also appear a, a seric, of ruptures or,l, fragment, from a larger whole. Pan, might he connected
visually but not physicully.
Sculptures made of multiple pan., can be structured lile atom,or
molecules. where a li1tle mas, can create a lot of volume. If. for instance, we were to get a thousand Tinker Toy seLs and create 5mall
Fomwl Ma11ers 33
Whether field or exploded ohject, if the sculpture is cons1ruc1ed out of multiple parts. we should observe how these pa11s arc integrated and aua hcd10one another If these parts arc connected visually but nol structurolly. weshould ob,crve how these paris are placed in the room. If we accept that no object is perceived in isolation, and that any given part is attached to the whole. then it follows that the relationship of parts to the whole. in a given sculpture, and the sculpture·s relation 10
itssite need to be considered in critique. In much the same waya. figure
construction, that we then scattered acm" the noor, we11,ould create a
field. If we were 10 get millions of linker Toys and comrletely fill the volume of a n>om with our constructions. we would also be creating a field. We have multiplied a sinite construction unit to the poim that it
lose, iL, boundaries a., object and become.s a field.
However. what if we took a single set of these same Tinker Toys and magically magnified the part> so that each of the tiny discs was five feet ,n diameter and tlie connecting sticks as b,g as lamp poles? And whm if we then tilled 1he room with gi,1n1 interlinking co11struc1ions? Whal if thestructure wu,so big that we were unable toenwr the room? Would our enormous Tooker Toy construction operate as a field? Whal about the inaccessible spaces tlrnt would be formed? Are these not part of the sculpture? If we were to use found ohjects connected by wooden dowch.cancll foam body paru. connected by s1eel poles, or bagg1e, of colored water connected hy Plexiglas rods, Lhe formal dynamics of our huge linkerToy sculpture would be1he sarne.
Parts IO Whole
Bucl.,1s of white ri1·er stones mark p11th1 that Jr,u/ through the ,·arin11< ga/{erieJ ,md lw/fo·aJs uf 11 l>ig museum. 111e allerie.t mu/ hallwflys l1tl\'e darA "'"oden.f1onrs.
flundr,d, <>f piec" of funutull frag11i,ms, u.ml plumbing pom, 11/d bicycles. and orhrr found objects art' looselv J,ound together with heovy-gau.r:e wire mtoti swirlingfonn. The fon11Jeems to dimbupthe wt11I a,u/ then tlucbthrough" windn"--' and c:onwrues 011 the outsid of the bwldmg.
ftlemical chairslire tied together with bungee cottlsto cre(llr a group nf irr,gulllrJim11s. £ad,of th"t·isthen(II/ached 1111l1e side t,f c, railrot.id 1res1/e at w1rfous(Himt.t. Sonw art connected a,ul \Olne1101.
Long roll., of bright pt1per are pim,ed. twisred, and re11i1111ed to all fo11r walls of a small room until the,·fi/111.
ina painting operates very differently if it re,ides at the edge of the pic•
ture plane or occupies its center. A i,culpture, 100, can change radically with shifts in placement in relation to a r0<.ml, a ba c. or in relation to other forms in a ,pace.
Formal Considerations within the Object
We began our formal critique of the sculptural obja:t b) loolong at it, relatio,wl formal quatitie,. We considered a sculpture's relation to the space around it and to otJ,er sculptural fom,s. We then considered how positioning, orientation. and displa) inform the dynamics of an object in space, and how sculptural objects. by means of shape-and accumulation. can opcrute like fields. But what about the objecl itself: What it is made
of. and by what means1
Mass and Sha11c Let u, begin with a singular form. We can look at it from an infinite number of , ie11,,. Imagine if we circled around an object taking snapshoL and reducing the images lO ,imple silhouette,. This would beone way 10observe how the shape of 1hesculpture shifl• with changing viewpoint Our silhouette, would also mark the edges of the sculpture. Ouce again. we would consider where 1he sculpmrc end< and the space around it begins from multiple perspectives.
To consider how mass comes into play in sculpture. we can go
back 10 our high school physics hook. Mass is defined as..a quantity of matter in a body. and i• a measurement specifically of lhe inertia or
,tuggi,hncss that a body. in the ab,ence of friction, exhibits in response
10 any effon made lO s1.ir1 it, stop it, or change in any way its state of motion."10 Mass and weight arc easily confused because they are directly proportional to each other. Mass is not the same thing as vol• ume. however. bven though we might commonly refer 10 something large :L< being massive, a massive object is not necessarily large at all. A solid lead block, plaster block. and a Styrofoam block vary widely in
34 ChaprerOne
mass even if they are equal in volume. Density is the relationship of mass to volume, and it is density that most often comes into play in the formal language of sculpture.
A sculpture built with a hollow shell may look like a solid form but is really operating with maximum volume and minimum weight. A form made with an armature that has been surfaced renders a hollow object that appears to be solid. Other examples include inllatables. which are skins, but likecast bronze figures are perceived as solid. Inflatables allow a sculptor to work with very large forms that can operate a solids, but without the problems of unmanageable weight. Large-scale traditional bronzecasting is hollow for this reason. A hidden hollow interior reduces weight. expense, and is more compatible with the requirements of the
casting process.
For some sculptors, mass and weight arc critical to the work and lighter weight, large elements are not acceptable. Indeed, for those sculptors who insist on a certain truth to the materials, the very idea oaf hidden volume or faux finish on a light material is objectionable. For others, materials and processes that allow for large volumes with little weight offer fom1al opLions that would not be possibleotherwise.
In critique, these questions will inevitably come upas we question an artist's material choices, both in relation to how well the artist has realized the illusion of solidity and how the use of illusion impacts our reading of the work. If the artist's intenrio11 is to depict a solid form and the underlying support is showing, this could become a reasonable for mal complaint. We might well ask if part of the sculpnne's power is in its sense of weight and density. ls this lost when we see the evidence of the chicken wire pattern beneath the surfacing? Are there unintentional holes in the surfacing that allow a peck into an interior that has not been
considered? Most people do not like to think of the bronze hero in the park as being hollow.
We should note here that a hollow space can be celebrated and explored in a number of ways. A form can be ca t in a transparent mate rial. An armature can be covered in a transparent skin. In this way, the interior space becomes an active part of the sculptural form whether it remains empty or is filled with various materials or objeccs. Remember
the series of imacs that were encased in transparent plastic, so aJJ could see LO the computers' inner workings.
Materials and Process A mmeritJl is typically thought of as the matter out of which a sculpture i made. And any given material in sculpture
Fomu,l Matters 35
brings 10 the equation its particular physical properties, which become central to the work. (That materials also carry their own meanings is something that will be considered in the next chapter.) A material behaves, or can be made to behave in a particular way, as an artist works with it. The artist's process is directly informed by the physical proper ties of the material being used, whether by following its natural tenden cies toward a final fonn or by subordinating it for the sake of an idea.
Thus, material and process are often linked in an improvised dance ofcallsand responses, resistance and submission.Sometimes the material drives the process in the work. Clay is malleable, stone is hard, steel will bend in a way that is different from wood. Some materials can be ca5t as liquids and hardened to solids. Others can be tied, ripped, or poured. A material can be chosen because it is the best choice for the artist to realize an imagined form, but material and process can also influence the concept.Thiscan happen when an artist hasa personal affinity for a mate rial or process, or when the artist starts with a raw material that guides the sculpting process and, ultimately, the resultant form.
Modeling, Casting, and Carving For many contemporary artists, sculpture still is modeling, casting, and carving. Artists continue to employ traditional materials like clay or wax because of the plasticity these materials offer and the ease with which they can be modeled into a range of forms. Since prehistory, soft clay has been modeled and sun dried, or hardened and fired, to produce sculptural forms. Fired and unfired clay remains a viable material. Oil clay, which does not need fir ing, can be used to make molds or finished works. Clays that can be fired in home ovens and easily painted have been brought into the artist's studio from the world of kids and hobbyists. The modeling process has been expanded by contemporary sculptors to include pliable materials such as bubble gum, bread dough. and even feces.
If modeling is traditionally thought of as an additive process, then
carving is subtractive. Wood and stone have been used traditionally because of their availability or longevity, but carving is possible with almost any material, including laminated Styrofoam sheets, soap cakes, graphite blocks, and even ice. The surface of a carved form can be left as is, the identity of its material exposed; or it can be treated to resemble someother material, such as cast plasticor metal, or justabout any other illusionistic surface imaginable.
Modeled or carved forms can be used to make molds. These can be cast LO make sculptural objects out of any number of materials from
36 Chapter One
bronze, to plaster, to clay slip, to plastics. One can cast and freeze or
refrigernte almost any liquid material to produce a solid-water, Jell-O, Kool-Aid, even blood.
Ifa work that we are looking at has been modeled, cast, or carved, first note the material employed. ls the material readily
apparent? Or has it been intentionally hidden? Is it foregrounded or treated as a given?
Jn critiquing modeled or carved work, we might first ask whether this is operating as a carrier for an image or as a material or both? A simple ball of bubble gum might be more about the material than the particular shape. Would another shape be better? Should it be bigger or smaller?A wooden head, carved with auention 10 the grain, might lead toa discussion about the way the undulations of the surface operate with the pattern of the wood. The same wooden head, painted and
sanded toa smooth surface, would be less about the wood and more about the form and the paint handling.
What about crati? If a sculpture shows evidence of having been skillfully modeled but is so poorly cast that much of the detail is lost, we may take issue with that. If the mold-making process goes well, but poor modeling skills have undermined the original and thus the final product, we have a valid complaint. In looking at works that have been modeled or cast direcUy, consider how both processes come into play.
Has each process worked independently, and how have they been orchestrated toward the final product?
There are as many things to consider in a critique as there are processes open to artists. Was the mold taken from a clay or wax posi tive, or was it made directly from a live model or a found object? Was the mold made from a found object altered with clay additions, or has it been cast in order to reproduce the original object but out of another material? Ts the work in front of us that looks like a kind of crude cocoon made with plaster bandages that have been laid wet over an object or human model, or did the artist model an original positive? Is Lhe work that has the appearance of an authentic artifact made froma mold taken from life? Depending on the artist's modeling skills, there is great potential in the modeled original, not only to ir1vent form but also to play with verisimilitude and scale in disturbing ways. There are no hard-and-fast rules as to which approach is likely 10 yielda success ful work. Thus, a critique, which begins as a formal look at what is in
front of us, often becomes a fact-finding mission as to the artist's process and materials.
Formal Ma11ers 37
Construction Construction is a relative latecomer in the Western lrn dition of sculpture. Many of the concepts that we covered earlier in our d.iscussion of object in space are relevant in discussing the constructed object. Inshort, when we think of a constructed object in the most basic way, we are talking about building and joining.
The list of potential materials and processes that fall into the category called construction is endless, and we are as likely to use materials from the world of industry as from traditional art suppliers. Steel fabrication has joined and often replaced the bronze foundry. Wood, once carved, is now used to construct. Thin strips of wood are laminated into complex curves. Fial sheets of plywood, foam, and plastic are cut from patterns and then glued and stacked to create forms that look modeled. Dowels are tied, taped, glued, drilled, wired, woven, and more. The list goes on. Anything that can be used to build is used-sheets of rubber, felt, fabric, copper, Plexiglas, metal, plastic pipe, wire, rope, and shredded paper. Cast. carved. and modeled parts are often used in constructions.
Given the dizzying array of possibilities, how do we look at con structed works in critique fom1ally? First. list the materials used. ls one material employed or several? Is one construction process employed or several? Next, note theshape of thesculptural object and its relationship to the space around it. Describe this. Consider shape: are there areas of density and open space?
Because each material or process brings itsown set of standards to
a critical discussion, weshould consider each on its own terms and try to determine whether a problem comes from a lack of mastery of that. mate-rial-the welds are bubbly, the wood is split, the duct tape has hair in it. We should also ask whether these are the most appropriate or only possible materials.
Material and Process as Form With any sculpture, the physical properties of the materials used to make it have an impact on the way ii is built and seen. Indeed, the materials themselves seem to drive the process of construction emphatically, for some artists, and they are int.e• gral to the final form.These are sculptures in which, for example, wood is not sanded and surfaced to look like plastic, fiberglass is not painted to resemble flesh, steel armarures are not covered in screen and paper pulp to appear as stone, and Styrofoam is not faux-finished to become marble. Rather, the weight, color, texrure, plasticity. orother qualities of the material are revealed and even empha. ized.
38 Chapter One
An anist working this way is less interested in using material in the service of an image (even if this image is an abstract form) than in letting the material lead co the final form and thefinal meaning. The integrity of the materials is as important as the surface appearance. For all practical purposes, in works like these, the material/process is the form.
Consider a conventional art macerial like plaster. In traditional sculpture, plasteroperates almost completely at theservice of image, such asa three-dimensional hand or bust. But what if a plaster sculpbue's sole purpose were tocommunicate its plastemess? What if theexplorations of the plaster's physical properties-smoothness and texture, the time it takes to set, and its inherently subtle variations in color-are fore grounded in such a way that the sculpture exhibits all the marks, actions, and stages of its construction? To formally assess works like these, we
might find ourselves describing scraping, gouging, smoothing, pocking, and pouring.
Indeed, sometimes in critique. the materials play such a dominant role in our formal assessment that we are led naturally back co descrip tions of process. Thus, in addition to adjectives that describe material properties, such as transparent, dense, large, small, heavy, weightless, colorful, dull, textured, or smooth, we can describe the work as stacked, twisted, pinned, poured, tom, ripped, bound, splashed, spread, or woven.
Integrity and Illusion
When we look at a sculpture in critique, we should consider if the artist has transformed one material into the illusion of another. Aie we seeing apparent weight or real weight? Does the sculpture in front of us have the appearance of density or is the form actually dense? Does that steel plate really lean against the wall or is it attached with hidden brackets'/ ls that massive bundle of sticks solid or is there an armature hidden inside that gives the illusion of density?
For some artists, the avoidance of illusion is not just an aesthetic choice, but one that is inseparable from the integrity of the work. A sculpture like this formulates its own rules of authenticity. What you sec is what you get. Nothing is faked, and there are no disguises. The color of the sculpture is the color of the material. Pansare supported by their own accumulation. not by armatures or frames. The artist allows
the properties of the chosen material to take center stage rather than a supporting role.
Fomial Matters 39
WEIGHING FORM AND CONTENT
We have seen that a formalist critique is one that limits itself almost entirely to a discussion of structure. The conversation revolves not around what the work says, but how it is said.
There is value in beginning a critique with a focus on formal mat ters. Indeed, some works may be so politically or personally charged that objective analysis is almost impossible without first bringing to bear 011 the work the cool eye of formal assessment. However, any criti cal discussion that limits itself to form.al concerns to the exclusion of relevanc content begins to seem absurd. How can we describe a painting in tenns of palette and composition if we fail to mention that the paint• ing is a depiction of horrific torture. and that it was painted by an eyewitness survivor? How can we describe the sublime lighting and beautiful sound score of a video installation if we fail to acknowledge that the footage is from night vision shots of aerial bombing? How can we limit ourdiscussion to proportion and light source when faced with a female nude in a clearly pomographic pose? With this in mind, we now turn from formal matters in a work of art to consi,der its meaning.
NOTES
l. Foregrounding. originally coined by the Ru sian fMmalist Roman Jacobson for analyzing literary works by breaking them down into linguistic func• tions, also can be a useful tenn for talking about art. We use it to refer torhat which stands out as unexpected in an aesLhetic system-that is. an artist's general emphasis of one element overothers. For instance, if a highly realis tic pain1ing of a land c-.ape has a surface that isco"ered wit}, energecic and thickly gestured brushstn>kes. the surface is beingforegrounded. It isgoing against our expectations for transparenl il_losion and calling attention to itself. Uy noticing what is foregrounded in a work. especially at the begin ning of critique, we c.an begin lO discover the meanings embodied in ilS formal structuring.
2. M;mesis issimply the Greek word for"imitation:• Plato and AristotJe bothuse the term extensively in their writings about lrt. in thesenseof to rtprt.ttnt by means ofimi1a1ion.
3. la the 1930$, agroup of New York artists fonnedan avant-garde group.calJing themselves lhc Te11. The group in<:luded Marl( Rothko, Adolph GotLlicb, Ben Zion. Joseph Solman. and others. Disagreements over Polilical issue as well as f1bs1roctio1, versus tigur-at.iQn caused the group todisperse in1he late 1930s. Rothko split off from 1he Ten to join Pollock and other artists exploring
abstraction.
40 Chapter One
4. fn his essay Modernist Painting (1961). Greenberg cchoe,; Bell's assenlon chat form is of primary importance rnJudgingevcn representational work. He pointl) out the revived reputations or :,uch painters as •·uccello. Pii:w. El Greco. Georges de la Tour, and even Vermeer," going on lO say. '"buc Modernism ha1, not lowered chercby the st,rnding of Leonardo. Raphael. Titian, Rubens. Rembrandt or Watteau. What Modernism has made clear is thar, though the paq did appreciate masters like these justly, ii oflen gave wn.,ng or irrelevant reasons for doing so." Clemen1 Greenberg. "Modernist Painting·• (1961 revised 1965). in Clement Greenberg: rl,e Collect tl Ess11ys
and Critic:ism, Vol. 4, ed. John O'Brian (Chic.ago: University or Chicago
Pre,ss, 1993). Also found in Arr in Theory /900-1990, ed. Charle; Harrison and Paul Wood (Cambridge, MA (1992] 1996), 760,
5. Masters of Modem Sculpture ftm Ill: The NewWorld, diree1ed by Mfohael Blackwood. written by Edwant Fry and Nancy Rosen (Michael 81.:tckwood
Pmduc1ions, Inc.. I978).
6. Malvina Hoffman. S<.:u/pture Inside and Out (New York: \V. W. Norton,
1932). 52.
7. Arisror/e's l'oeri,·s,Trans. S. H. Bu1chcr (New York: Hill and Wang. 1961),
55--56.
8. Kirk Vantedoe. the late and eminent curator and rut historian. organized lhe 1998-1999 retrospecrive (lf Jack. n Pollock's work a1 New York's Museum of MOOcm Art This anecdote comes from Jeffrey Brown's interview with Varnedoe in a news story about the Pollock relrospective. "Jack the Oripper," News /lour with Jim Ulm!r. PBS, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, January 11.
]999.
9. Clement Greenberg. "Abstract, Representational. and So Forth," Art and
Cu/tun: Critical Essays (Bosioo: Beacon Press, 1965), 133-138.
10. Paul G. Hewilt, Conceptual Physics: A Ne11,. lmroducli<>n u, Your £nvim11numt
(San f'rnoci,;co: Lillie, Brown. and Co., 1971), 21-22.
Chapter Two
MEANING
Meaning Is Not Absolute
Meaning can never be completely contained in any work of art or in any one of its parts. Although we immediately think of meaning as some thing that resides comfo11ably in a work's narrative imagery, it is really a slippery, shifting thing, informed also by a multitude of fom1al choices made by the ru1ist-when and where a work C){iSlS, what it is made of, how it came into being, who made it, and what is carried to it by the viewer. Meanings can change as a work ages, as a political con troversy swirls around it, or as information emerges about the artist's life, earlier works, intentions, process, or even personal habits. That is not to say that a work of art is beyond interpretation, but simply that meruiing can never be finite or stable.
Signification When you hear people using the term sigr,ification in relation to works of art, they are ,·eally talking about mear,ing. Signification derives from the Latin word sig11are, to make a mark. The words sig11, signal, and signature are related to this root. The lerrn meaning comes down to usfrom an old English word and carries with it che idea of intemion. The one emphasizes the mark. itself; the other points to an intent to make it. Words such as significa1ior1,signifier, and sign have been made popular by theorists of structuralism and post s1ructuralism and have made their way into many essays about an, art courses, and even critique rooms. For convenience, we will use the two terms imerchangeably.
The idea that meaning is something that is carried around by a work, like a passenger on a train, is more complicaced than it first appears. This can be illustrated by looking at spoken language, where seemingly clear and unambiguous statement can have vastly different meanings. In his book Uterary Theory: An Introduction,Terry Eagleton elegantly illuscrates this in the following passage, using a simple linguistic command, "close U1e door."