On Wednesday evening I attended
an Early Career Researcher roundtable at the Hawke Research Institute, University
of South Australia. The roundtable had the title of ‘See No Evil, hear no evil,speak no evil’ and had the aim of discussing “the past, present and future of
“criticism” in art, architecture and design”. The roundtable was convened by Dr
Chris Brisbin and the panellists were Dr Alexandra Lange, Professor Ian
McDougall, Andrew McKenzie, Dr Naomi Stead and Robert Leonard.
After introductions the roundtable
began by discussing the current state of criticism in art, architecture and
design and there was an early need to separate ‘bad’ criticism from ‘good’
criticism and to define the meaning of criticism as being not opinion, but writing
coming from an authoritative voice. My initial concerns were that this might
result in a negative view of social media as the vehicle for criticism and the
gatekeeper model. With much of design and art now being shared on the internet,
it would make sense that criticism also appears online rather than only in the
traditional mainstream media.
As someone from the visual arts
the differences between art and architecture practices of criticism were
interesting. From the panel, there was a sense that the visual arts are written
about more than architecture. Dr Alexandra Lange (from Brooklyn, NY) described
how in the US architectural critique is moving away from ‘starchitects’ and big
iconic projects to writing about local communities, streets and bike lanes. I
found this interesting as it parallels with current discussions about urban
living in Adelaide, what we want our cities to do, the lived experience of
people and how they use the city. Architecture criticism seems to only come
after the building, the vision, has been realised. As Dr Lange pointed out, the
feedback loop should come earlier in the design process to make a difference to
the plans of the building and the needs of the people using it. This method
would also call for thick skin by the designer.
Robert Leonard spoke mostly about visual arts
and the lineage of writing about art from the moment of Duchamp’s “Fountain” in
1917. Discourse became the “stuff of art”, with the writing about the art
object being equally important as the artwork. With my training in art theory
and history and an arts writer, this really stood out for me. A common complaint
is that too often artists write their own criticism. As Robert alluded to, the
cause of this is the university and the need for the visual arts to conform and
fit the mould of research. Can the painting (or sculpture, or photograph, etc.)
exist and be judged as good or bad on its own, or does it need the exegesis
(the writing) to support and provide the research context for the making of the
work. In my own experience the studio artists were often more interested in
making art, rather than writing about it. As a theorist I wish there was
linkage between the studio artists and the history and theory students. It
would have been mutually beneficial for me to write about the work other
post-grads were making and for my writing to be used by them in the promotion
of their work (another point by Robert, art only exists when it is written
about).
The panel agreed on the need for better
criticism and perhaps even a new model for critique such as using Tumblr or
Pinterest as a form of visual criticism (Dr Stead and Dr Lange mentioned
Unhappy Hipsters as an example of this). Professor Ian McDougall made the
analogy between the niche publications of performance arts criticism and described
it as a “pathological” need to write. This goes to the core of the issue, why
do we need to write about art, architecture and design? Is it to make a
historical record of the event, of writing the object into history? Or is to also
provide informed criticism as a dialogue with broader cultural values?
