Your Voice

Art is not just about making. Thinking, reflecting and discussing are just as important as doing, whether you an an artist or an observer. One important thing to find and develop is your critical voice, which means your individual opinion and special way of looking at, and interpreting the world. We asked critic D.Strauss to tell us how we might begin to find this voice.

Why be a critic?
In the world today we are surrounded by sounds, images and sensations demanding our reactions, if not always our opinions. Surely we know what we like and what we don't, what brings us pleasure and that which drives us away? So why do we need critics to give us their opinions?

Truth is, the terms "like" and "dislike" are umbrellas that cover a wide array of emotions, thoughts and reactions. We may not ever know what they really mean: two people may agree that they like or dislike a work of art, and yet may be having (more than) two very different experiences, even if they can generally agree on the terms of what they are seeing.

The work of Uwe Henneken, one of the exhibiting artists at Frieze Art Fair 2008

A critic is less concerned with what is good and what is bad, what is pretty and what is ugly, what is nice and what is mean. How they feel is not the endpoint but is the start of the idea. In being a critic you shouldn't worry whether you like something or don't like something, you should be concerned about why it is you react like you do.

But what is brought to that reaction? WE are! The whole of us! When we observe a work, our internal world shapes our response. Our skill is then to place this first feeling in the context of our previous reactions, experiences, knowledge and understanding, or in the context of a wider reaction, such as that of society. In this way, criticism is just as personal a creation as art can be.

We can watch The Dark Knight and enjoy it as a story or for its look – but how does our experience change if we've seen previous Batman films? Does our experience differ if we're into the Batman comic and myth? What if we watch the film bearing in mind current events, particularly those in Iraq, does this change how we view the film?

There is no absolute way of looking at art, but there may be a right way for each individual. And the greater the number of approaches we have for appreciating a work, then the further we move from thinking about whether that work is good or bad, and instead thinking about what it is to us.

How do we keep being honest in our responses?

One question a critic might ask of an experience is, "What are the specifics of its effect upon me?" Meaning, what is special about this particular thing that I am seeing at this particular time and place that is creating this particular response in me?

The great experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage wrote, in his book Metaphors on Vision,
"Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.

How many colours are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? How aware of variations of heat waves can that eye be? Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the "'beginning was the word.'"

Brakhage is imagining a response unclouded by prior knowledge, he is suggesting a vision can be extremely powerful when coming from a primal discovery. As critics we must be careful, knowledge can risk dulling us into blindness, language can also limit us as much as empower us. It should be mentioned that while calling for "an eye which does not respond to the name of everything", Brakhage was an extremely well-studied individual.

So we may start by asking ourselves, "What is green"? How many is green." And is "green", in itself, art? The answer will be in how you react to your perceptions of it.

by D.Strauss