第二講 Art Criticism, Art History and History

- Other concerns: subject of art criticism, what is the purpose of art criticism

I Approaching Art Criticism

1. If Leung Po says her task in the previous session is the hardest one, I would think what I want to do today is the easiest one.

2. My project today is to develop some initial inroads to producing art criticisms, suggesting some practical models that you can work on.

II Art as Communication

1. In many ways the experience of art is not unlike communication, the artist or curator produces works or exhibitions for you to view and enjoy.

2. Here I want to borrow a model from linguistics or communications theory, devised by the Russian theorist Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) to identify the process of communications. Please express your opinion if you do not agree with me.

3. For Jakobson the process of communication is not a simple addresser ― message ― addressee business, it also involves a number of other components. [PP]

4. Applying this model to art, I change the components in this way. [PP]

5. From here we can note that we can actually initiate our criticism from various angles.

6. You can focus on one aspect to develop your criticism, or make use of a number of these components to arrive at your conclusion.

7. In developing our arguments about these components, it is common that we bring in different disciplines so that more profound and in-depth studies can be made, e.g. psychology, aesthetics, anthropology, geography, zoology, religion, etc.

III Art History as a Tool for Art Criticism

1. Making use of this model we can consider how art history has been employed in the production of art criticism.

2. Art history has often been applied in the writing of art criticism, more often in respects of artists, subjects (genre), form, and style.

3. There has not been much art history or criticism that develops from the position of the viewer.

4. The introduction of art history into the critique of the work means a reading of a diachronic point of view, and very often its quality becomes assessed by the ideas of improvement and evolution.

5. Walter Benjamin’s subtle essay points out that an artist/intellect should produce work to improve the current modes of production, in particular the form. Through such improvements he believes the world will be improved or advanced. [ppt]

6. Benjamin’s position is informed by the spirit of avant-gardism, the rapid developments of new media (photography and the cinema), and the Marxist viewpoint that it is the privileged class who now controls the form and its advances.

7. More often art history deals with the aspects of authorship and style. A work is considered good if the artist has improved or developed new advances from his previous work etc.

8. This has been good background for the assessment of art through the history of art styles, as all artists produce their work in relations to the tradition. It has been argued that there are no creations, just innovations.

9. Before I continue the discussion of the idea of improvements and advances, I want to briefly discuss the issue of style in Hong Kong art.

10. In the case of Hong Kong and China, in the last two hundred years one can note the concerns about the preservation of Chinese art styles, and the introduction of Western elements.

11. The concerns here are complicated by the fact that China experiences a low political tide over the last two hundred years, and consequently struggles for strengthening and modernization.

12. So in the schools of Chinese painting we note the introduction of new subjects and colours, from Lingnan School to the New Ink Painting movement. [ppt]

13. For artists who introduce Western elements in their work, for a long time they still try to maintain a certain amount of Chineseness. [ppt]

14. From more recent local works one detects such concerns gradually fades, the locals’ resistance to link with the Mainland? Colonial education?

IV Art History as Canons 1

1. The writing of art history very often involves the creation of an art discourse, a general tendency in art production.

2. This not only tries to explain what has happened in the past, but also what is happening now and will happen in the future.

3. Those work that go along with this line are good, otherwise bad or unworthy.

4. Last time Leung Po Shan has mentioned Dong Qicheong’s enterprise of privileging the Southern School of Chinese painting over the Northern painting.

5. Similar example happens in Modern Western Arts, especially in the postwar period.

6. Clement Greenberg argues that Western painting in the Modernist period has worked towards an emphasis of the specialties of their form, in particular its flatness.

7. By doing this Greenberg has created a history of Modernist art, and promoted a number of American artists through linking them with previous European masters.

8. We can call such an approach of inventing history as historicism.

9. Greenberg’s criticism has been called formalism, actually refers to style, and a continuation of the theory of ‘art for art’s sake’.

10. Their enemies are those who propose that ‘art for society’s sake’.

V Art History as Canons 2

1. Today the theory that art history is an important approach to art viewing and criticism still dominates, as well as the concept of art for art’s sake.

2. This has much to do with the developments of the arts institution that sustain such arguments, including art history books, art museums, art critics and art education.

3. Even controversial or radical works like Impressionism, once they are collected and interpreted by the dominant art discourses, they become tamed and collectables.

4. One major criticism of this discourse is it does not consider the meaning or aspiration of the work in its contemporary contexts, only focusing on how it can be related to the arts traditions. [PP]

5. We are also consistently intimidated by the dominant art history discourse, and may not have the courage to question it.

6. This is part of John Berger’s project in Ways of Seeing.

7. To sum up, we can use art history to develop our criticism, but this is only one of the approach, and can be problematic itself.

8. We should never worship art history, and should instead constantly raise questions about it.

9. One method is to study the art works in its contemporary context. [PP]

VI History and Contemporaneity

1. Consequently we can try to go beyond the gallery space, taking into consideration the work’s target audience etc. to develop a more palpable piece of criticism.

2. We can also make use of history to develop new perspectives of contemporary or earlier works.