Rethinking Art Criticism in the Light of Making Meaning,

Marzano and the Common Core (Draft)

By Marcia Meale

As art educators rethink the curriculum (Stewart and Anderson) perhaps it also time to rethink art criticism. DBAE and Comprehensive art education brought not only a change in theory but also, a series of strategies and activities art teachers could use to help students examine and make works of art. From my perspective, an elementary art teacher, it added positively to the quality of my students artwork and helped make art accessible to a wider variety of children. As we attempt to integrate a pedagogy that emphasizes meaning, the question quickly arises how does emphasizing meaning look in practice. A side benefit is that we can simultaneously use strategies that meet both the Marzano I-Observation elements and the Common Core Anchor Standards.

At the elementary school level this is a particular struggle. In many states, legislative and testing initiatives have resulted in a reduction in the amount of time students spend in art class. One possibility is to examine and perhaps revise our approach to art criticism or at least the order in which we ask questions.

Recently in a book study group made up of elementary, middle and high school art teachers the need for revising the art criticism process became immediately apparent. We were trying out an activity a couple of my graduate students modified from the DBAE based activity called “Token, Response.” In our case, the tokens were given new meanings. The heart for example represented relationships, an envelop – communication, two paper dolls holding hands – cooperation, a tree – the environment, a light bulb – ideas or imagination, a mirror or head – identity, a pointing finger – conflict, a cake – celebrations, and chess shaped queen – social power. The teachers went around the room placing their tokens under about a dozen art prints. We then went around and explained our choices. When a middle school teacher started to explain one of her choices, she went almost immediately to how the elements and principles created, darkness and movement. She then stated, “that’s what I want my students to know, how to create that?” The part we felt she’d skimmed over was that the artist had a reason to use darkness and movement to convey a message. By focusing, in our opinion, too soon on the elements and principles of art, the underlying reason or message that art conveys ideas, feeling, makes social commentary, etc. was deemphasized and could easily be lost. We all confessed that with our DBAE backgrounds we tended to focus on the description first and hit the elements and principles hard and early in the art criticism process and eventually get around to meaning and value.

This was not a surprising finding. When I checked a secondary textbook the step by step art criticism process was the standard DBAE approach of 1). Describe, 2) Analyze, 3) Interpret, and 4) Evaluate. Under describe there was a paragraph that stated, “ When you describe an artwork, you identify the things about the work that you can see, name and describe with certainty. You should not include opinions, evaluations, or possible meanings here” (p. 179). We are clearly on a fact-finding mission. Now lets look at the questions under the first two steps.

a) List the artist, title, medium, and date of the work.

b) What forms do you see in the foreground, etc.

c) Where do you see texture?

d) Are the colors in the trees and hills, warm, cool, bright, dull? e) Are the sky colors warm, cool, bright, dull?

Under Analyze the paragraph prior to the questions stated, “When you analyze an artwork, you tell how the subject matter and elements of the work have been organized by the artist. You tell how they work together” (p. 179.) The questions included:

a) Look closely at the foreground and trees. How were the textures created? Would these be real, or implied textures in the actual painting?

b) Imagine you are creating these textures. What different brush movements would you use? Is there similarity? Variety? Of the six questions listed under analyze only one approaches the notion that the image may have meaning it is, “ What causes the feeling of movement and activity in the painting?” (p179). Finally, in step three of the process, interpret are given directions to, “identify the meaning of the work – what it tells you about the human experience.” (p. 179).

And Etcetera.

By this point in the art criticism process my elementary students are worn out. They wanted to tell me about the meaning, their experiences and what they saw in the artwork at the beginning, when their energy, curiosity, and excitement were high. Not after they’ve bored themselves to death listing colors, shapes, kinds of texture and balance. THEY WANT TO MAKE MEANING FIRST. An article written for School Arts ( Anderson, 1997) by Tom Anderson takes a slightly different approach. Anderson in the opening paragraph of the article states, “Art criticism is talking and writing about art. We do it because we want to know what artworks mean and what their value or significance is.” (Anderson, p. 21, 1997). Anderson (1997) developed a series of “CritCards” for art teachers to use to help guide the criticism process. The CritCard 1 starts with three questions, 1.) What’s your first response to this work? 2) How does this make you feel? 3) What does it make you think of? What does it remind you of? Even if the students lack insight at this point into the artists’ intentions they are starting to at least make personal meaning and becoming engaged in the process.

In the front of the Chapman (1994) version of Adventures in Art (Chapman, 1994) there is a wonderful model showing the “weaving” of the four disciplines of art education, creation, criticism, aesthetics, and history. Let’s consider flowing among the disciplines as appropriate during the art criticism process rather than sticking with an ingrained process. Making certain the revised process takes into consideration cultural context and significance.What I’d like to suggest is that we draw on Anderson’s (1997) work and reorder our questioning strategies. That after the general reaction questions listed above we try a new order. In this way we can use the elements and principles of art as the language of art to support our interpretations and judgments much like the proof in a expository writing. Later, our student can then use the elements and principles in the art making process in an intentional meaningful way to communicate feelings, ideas, etc. taking art making toward students creating meaning rather than teacher designed exercises or “in the style of” works of art.

This approach has an additional benefit. By starting with what students think and feel about an artwork they predict, hypothesize, then look for support. Check, check, check both in the Marzano’ I-Observation and the anchor standards in the Common Core Standards. So let’s start backwards.

1) What do you see/think/feel? And let the students take us where they want. 2) What is this artwork about? Why do you think that? What’s the evidence? 3) What mood is presented? 4) How does it reflect a place, time or culture? How and why was/is it important?

Also See Big Questions Little Kids by Craig Roland

Also Look up Kagan “Thinking Questions” article.