The ART of Critique

I believe my calling in life is to talk about the ways that art making can be used within society to balance our minds, to truly appreciate our wealth, and become all round appreciative, empathic, awesome human beings. There, I said it!

For years I have been working towards that simple sentence and I have 1000 huuuge dreams to achieve under its banner; books, talks, the next Brene Brown, ya know?

Until recently however, I was struggling to believe that anyone other than myself really cared. That is until I performed a humble instagram poll and I discovered that 100% of people who answered the question “do you want to learn more about the interaction of art and mental wealth?” responded with a big ol’ YES!

SO thank you, if you are reading this as a person who responded, your finger clicking on that digital button gave my heart very real permission to leap forward into the next level of whatever and whoever I am becoming. 

There are a few things that I have learnt through my formal education that have helped me a lot in the general living of life. Spelling, basic maths, typing, critical thought, reading, fundamental sciences, a bit of workshop, even those god-forsaken group projects taught me invaluable lessons about how some people can be shit to work with… But what I didn’t learn, and what has taken me decades to learn myself, fills at least a comparative hole within my soul, and is what I want to spend the next few years working on, and that is, critique.

The critique that I learnt at Uni whilst completing my BA in Fine Art wasn’t that helpful. It was an attempt to get us thinking about the construction of things, but for me it was too subjective, it allowed for too much explaining and bullshit excuses. Critique that separates, hurts and comes to an end is not good critique, that’s simply criticism. 

Critique that holds something up to the light, finds a truth and shows a way to get closer to it? That my friends, is a golden bloody pathway to OZ.

A perfect judge will read each work of wit

With the same spirit that its author writ;

[Pope, "An Essay on Criticism," 1709]

https://www.etymonline.com/word/critique

It is through learning HOW to critique that I believe people can begin to be kinder to themselves first, creating ripple effects all around them, passing it on in ever increasing concentric circles as we move through our lives. Like how comedy allows us to uncover and laugh at horrific truths about our human nature and society, I believe art can perform as a third person, a mediator in the room as we elegantly dance with our egos, uncover hard truths, establish ways to correct them, and then do those things, all in the process of simply completing a sketch, a painting, or a vase. 

Think for a moment about the last time you stood in front of the mirror and looked at yourself naked. I daresay some of you had a great time, but I would bet a vast amount of money that the majority of you felt rubbish. When I stand in front of the mirror my Slug comes out to play, picking me apart like an autopsy surgeon trying to find what went wrong. Every part of me is inadequate and shit, a dismal display of human-ness, not at all a Goddess, and every inch a disappointment that should’ve been better. This, my friends, is not critique, and yet this is what most of us have in our tool box labelled as such. By any other name, and out of anyone else’s mouth we would call it bullying, or abuse, but because it comes out of our own minds we accept it, we expect it, and it forms the basis of most of our interactions throughout our lives. 

After bullying yourself every time you see your reflection, do you truly believe you will notice the other bullies in your world? Or will the bully feel like home? Will being bullied become your state of being?

After saying mean things about your home, your world, your body, do you believe that positivity and gratitude will just waltz right in and feel comfortable? Or will you instead seek the negative, mean, agonised and wretched world of not-enough-ness?

Critique allows us, or at least suggests, that there is truth in the world. Artistic critique (to me) is like applying a little bit maths to simplify an otherwise unquantifiable problem. Critique allows the problem to exist without the problem being ‘ME’. It is not ME that is wrong, it is the line that forms the nose. That line is wrong, it is too long, I need to shorten the nose and check again.  

It is not ME that is wrong, it is that the green is too warm. I need to cool it down and check again.

It is not ME that is wrong, it is that I have been given an idea that ‘hip dips’ are bad. I need to find where that idea came from and check again.

It is not ME that is wrong, it is that I have been given an idea that -insert fault- is wrong. I need to have a think about that thought, and then make a decision as to which one to keep. 

That’s the final little step with critique that is often forgotten, there must be an action after it, and a circling back to the initial fault to see whether or not the ‘issue’ has been fixed. Critique is not static or concrete, it shifts and falls, tumbles and toils, constantly moving, always there, but never personal. 

If your critique never shifts, is always the same, hurts you and is stopping you from living your life with freedom, love and kindness…Then your critique, quite simply, is wrong. 

There is no freedom without responsibility, and it is our responsibility to raise a society that knows how to critique itself with kindness and empathy. That we can do that at the same time as making art is something of a miracle, and it’s what I want to spend the rest of my life doing… Making miracles happen through art and the gift of critique. 

XXXALi