Just like you, I’m a sucker for reposting an Instagram post that seems to support some idea I agree with. We both know that there’s also data to prove the opposing view, but we smile, share the post to our story and hope our viewers see the exterior validation for ideas they know we hold dear.
Recently, the algorithm has been showing me some of those social media teachers who are supposed to be excellent teachers and social media savvy at the same time. Many are art teachers and many share funny stories, good ideas and their hot takes on how to teach art. Only a few are university level studio art teachers, but I still consider their posts and their thoughts on all things art teachery. In the past week, I’ve noticed a few posts about studio art critiques and what those should and shouldn’t be. Specifically, these teachers have called out negative critique experiences and proposed that critiques should be positive experiences for students. I politely disagree.
Forgive me for my sarcasm, but students don’t always know best when it comes to their education and often times, true education can come from uncomfortable experiences.
Flashback to the fall of 1990. I had my very first critique ever at the university level in the basement of Roddey Apartments. The art building was closed for major renovations during my freshman year and our Foundations classes met in a dark basement with exposed plumbing just a few inches from your head when you were standing. During our class times, every time a resident on the first floor flushed a toilet, we heard it loud and clear and you could even trace the flow of water from the source to the edge of the building.
My professor for 2D Design was Paul Martyka, who to me at that time, was a total stranger. I actually thought a nontraditional student named Billy was my professor on the first day of class. Turns out he was just as lost as I was when the small framed, scraggly man walked in an announced that this was his class. Mr. Martyka quickly became an enigmatic and legendary figure in my personal art school journey and you can find a whole post about him somewhere on this blog if you’re interested.
At the first project critique, Mr. Martyka told us to pin our compositions up on the wall in a straight line. He vigorously mocked us for not creating the straight line he asked for and then called on individual students to go back up and properly align their projects with the others. I was sweating already. The critique was brutal. That’s the word I’d use to describe the experience. Mr. Martyka would ask us to talk about each one in order from left to right and he’d ask very specific and thought provoking questions to each student. He put each one of us on the spot. When he shined his spotlight of attention on you, there was nowhere to run. You were going to answer his questions and bear the brunt of his laser-sharp attention until he decided it was time to move on. Make no mistake, he knew you were uncomfortable. He knew that discomfort was good for you.
Back then, we didn’t have anxiety and Mr. Martyka wouldn’t have cared if we did. If you couldn’t bear the weight of attention on your artwork or you couldn’t sufficiently answer questions about your artwork, you needed to find another place to be. It was a three hour hell. A three hour hell that was punctuated by his infamous final act of critique: the moment when he walked up to the wall and silently arranged all the projects in order from best to worst. This took several minutes and you just had to sit there and endure it.
I thought of Mr. Martyka’s critiques when I read a teacher post about how critiques should be a positive experience and that if students leave a critique feeling down, the teacher has failed. Yeah, I beg to differ.
The reason that logical conclusion isn’t so logical begins with Mr. Martyka. I fully understand that Mr. Martyka’s critiques and teaching led some students to feel unsuccessful, to question their career goals and to (in some cases) change their majors. I see this as him doing the students a favor. You may disagree, but please hear me out. Art is hard. Careers in art are competitive, stressful and….brutal. Mr. Martyka would not be doing you a favor if he didn’t prepare you for that in his classes. I also know that many students, like me, accepted the challenges issued by Mr. Martyka and worked ever harder to rise to meet his ridiculously high expectations. I made a C on the first project he graded of mine. By Thanksgiving break, I had worked my way up to a B average. The blood, sweat and tears I puddled up between Thanksgiving break and final exams earned me an A-.
A bit of a side track here, but in 1990, we didn’t have the ease of email to communicate with our professors. If you wanted to ask a question outside of class, you had to leave your dorm and walk across campus to the professor’s office. If the sun was still up, you didn’t find Mr. Martyka. You could leave a note on his door or you could just come back later. In this calmer, less technologically intrusive world, Mr. Martyka offered us a cool option if we wanted to know our final grade for his class after our final critique. We could leave him a self-addressed, stamped postcard or envelope and he’d write our grade and drop it in the mail. As a creative art student, I opted to make my own postcard collage to leave with him and when I got mine in the mail, there was nothing written by him in the designated postcard area. After a bit of an investigation, I noticed he had cut into my postal creation and then sealed the incision up with tape. I carefully cut it open and found simply “A-“ written in pencil inside. He was always three steps ahead of me.
Of course, feeling the burn of the Instagram teacher claiming that all critiques should feel good, I had to think about my own critiques. I’m no Mr. Martyka but I like to think that my critiques are serious, thoughtful opportunities to learn even more from a just completed project. I agree that critiques are not excuses to negatively slam students and simply criticize their work. I understand that many have that impression, but I believe they have that impression because they had bad professors and teachers. I believe a critique should offer the opportunity for peers, teachers and the artists to all have a time of accurate analyzation and contemplation about a work of art. Doing so effectively, requires this one thing that also gets labeled as negative. Honesty.
Yeah, a real dirty word it seems.
You can’t have an effective critique without honesty. I teach this to my students on the first day of critique. If the teacher/professor cultivates and manages to maintain an atmosphere of honesty during critique, your resulting feelings may have much more to do with how you feel about honesty. Everyone thinks they want honesty until they get it. That’s when you realize that honesty isn’t just people saying nice things to you. Sometimes the truth hurts.
An effective critique involves careful consideration of all aspects of a work of art from the most basic to the most complex. It should be evidence-based and it is definitely not about opinions or feelings. Critique language is professional and thoughtful. This is like a medical procedure. We go in, do what we need to do and we get out. Emotions are not needed nor are they welcome.
An effective critique does not criticize the artist. You may have to question some of the artist’s choices, motives and actions, but you’re always addressing the visual and physical evidence in the work, you’re not critiquing the artist. I tell students to separate themselves from the work of art. They are not their work. But I also have to tell them to cry outside the studio.
Tears and emotions are a natural part of the college critique. Just as they are a natural part of every tough exam or project at this level. I’d wager that 90% of the tears shed as a result of one of my critiques were shed because of the build-up of stress and anxiety rather than because of something that was said during the actual critique. Sure, words can bring us face to face with our emotions and it may only take one less-than-positive observation to send a sensitive student over the cliff of tears, but they’re still not crying because they were verbally attacked.
Students may feel emotions over knowing they did not do their best. They may be embarrassed that their lack of time management. They may feel outed when the shortcuts they took on a process are on display for everyone to see. Many students have only ever had to try to meet expectations in their previous educational experiences and now that more is being expected, they may struggle to rise to the new challenge. That realization can hurt.
With emotions like those running at high levels at the completion of a difficult project, honesty can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
I keep the reigns of critique held tightly in my hands as we look at each project and make observations and judgments. I demonstrate how to state something honestly without being insulting. I stop students when they seem to be on a verbal assault. I force them to prove everything they say by noting the visual evidence before them. This usually puts a stop to mean spirited comments and turns the spotlight back onto the person attempting to be mean. I also make sure that students know when they’ve done something well. Honesty goes both ways and I’m just as eager to point out the good as the bad. In fact, contrary to what students may think, I’m more eager to point out the good. After all that manual labor and all my urging in the studio, it’s really important to let students know what they did well.
The information provided in critique is just that…information. Students who want to succeed will take the information provided about their artwork and consider how to apply that information in the future. They’ll use critique as an extension of the project and remember what they need to do better in the future, while keeping and nurturing strengths that were pointed out. Critique is more than just a public viewing of strengths and weaknesses. Done correctly, it’s a powerful teaching tool.
