Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice of Culture in MFA Education

Critical Analysis

Chapter 1: Producing Practice

In this chapter, the author begins his exploration into art school, with a focus on the MFA; he notes that graduate students are not taught technique, but expected to bring skill of making with them to school. Schools provide working space in the form of studio, and expect students to use the space to refine an aesthetic style. Faculty encourage students to stray from traditional approaches to art during their exploratory time at school.

Art is about making things; “art demands production.” Students articulate the amount of work they do as a sign of value, connected directly to the amount of things they make. The work prompts reaction, and “only after the work is produced can critique begin.” A student is positioned as an entrepreneur, and they “receive a studio as a site for making.” Learning technique is only a part of the curriculum when needed, provided in a “just in time” fashion.

With a focus on production, school offers the “luxury of time,” which is “what MFA students buy with their tuition and their commitment.” Students discuss working in the studio, “work, work, work,” and continually describe their long hours in studio with pride. The author argues that “this pedagogy makes a virtue of busyness.” Part of the reason for this is that art school exists to “produce artists, rather than objects.” It is offered as a personal learning experience.

Fundamental to the development of personal style and creative identity is access to physical space. Students expect spaces where “they could do what they wish and justify their gritty and critical work.” Spaces “produced community” and are fundamentally spaces controlled by students; students are “residents.” The author describes that “the spatial heart of the art world is the studio, a site of living and a place of making: a state of mind as much as a location of labor. This is ‘owned space,’ serving as one’s place in an institutional system.” This comes with a unique merging of the personal and academic, as students “slept or napped in their studios.” Some students even described living in their academic studio spaces. Administrators see messiness in studios as a justification for the provisioning of the resources themselves. Ultimately, “what [students] do with [the space] reveals their occupational identity,” or at least with their developing identity.

Chapter 3: Painted Words

In this chapter, the author discusses the relationship between language and art. He observes that various forces urge students to discuss their art and the context of the art, and this is at the expense of making the art itself.

Visual art education is placed in a university context, and this is a space intended to separate students from amateurs and to reinforce the nature of a discipline of art, with “boundaries, intellectual control, and legitimate expertise in order to deserve recognition by the mandarins of higher education.” The author asserts that the “goal of serious artists is to produce work that peers admire” and that is largely defined by the university as an institution; the “visual arts have become institutionalized.” This is evidenced by the nature of the phrase visual arts rather than fine arts, as the new word choice denotes professionalization.

The use of language is evidence of this disciplinarity; the author argues that “without dispute, a field is little more than routine knowledge gathering.” This comes to life in art education through discussion, and one form of common discussion is the critique. “In a critique, work is presented to colleagues: a group committed to shared comprehension and to each other as colleagues and as members of a discipline.” Critique is a shared verbal practice, unlike creation which is largely a personal activity. These critiques are emotional, and the author notes that while “much friendship, even affection and intimacy” is found in art schools, there is a passion in critique which is “part of what students pay for and what they treasure. This is a world in which their work really matters, to others and to themselves. Becoming artists, they develop artistic self through the emotional intensity of schooling.”

The author examines critique in more detail. In a critique, “students are encouraged to be authentic and dramatic, and deviance is tolerated.” This creates a tenuous presentation of self, where “fear and anxiety are magnified… especially given the public humiliation of critiques.” These critiques are constant and evaluation continuous and often negative, as “one is haunted by failure, and some students are judged as failures.” Anxiety in a studio is high, and anxieties “are intensified immediately before critiques… stress is common… failure is not merely technical, but a failure of self.”

A large portion of art education (and all education) is established through codes which become representations of how the community works; “cultures of orientation create moral order” and exert control over students. These norms show up largely through critique, and this “involves skill in performance.” Students learn to talk, publicly, about their work. “Critique becomes a linguistic battle in which faculty have the upper hand, and students struggle to articulate a defense.” This is confusing for some students who selected an art school because they are “uncomfortable with academic standards in other classes,” often more comfortable with making things (privately) than discussing them. The author notes that students in art schools work in the context of a cohort, but this cohort is often in competition; there is a “culture of posturing” and a form of respected currency is the quantity of work that is produced. Some are “overwhelmed with the pressure to keep producing.”

Chapter 4: The Reason of Pure Critique

In this chapter, the author examines the practice of critique, arguing that the process is emotionally charged with questionable efficacy and an overwhelming sense of negativity and subjectivity.

The author begins by noting that the critique is a fundamental part of art education, and that “there are several justifications for the critique that, taken together, render the system nearly universal.” It is intended to uphold standards, although those standards are subjective. It forces students to defend their work and justify their intentions (and therefore, know what they did and why they did it). Critique “creates a community of interest” and indicates that “something important is at stake in their activity.”

Final critiques include faculty and guests, and “these public conclaves can be brutal in a way that, under other circumstances, might be labeled a hostile learning environment,” yet faculty continually reference the constructive nature of the critique. Not all critiques are visible aggressive, as some “are more sedate, a stew of praise, disapproval, and questions from those who care about the work and the student.” Faculty draw on their own experiences, as they “have been initiated themselves.” Students find themselves sometimes enjoying the critique, and faculty intend the critique to provide “constructive feedback that helps the student refine, rethink, or reorient her work with renewed resolve to return to the studio.”

Critiques are “stylized performance,” and the author argues that “the critique is theater.” He observes that it has all of the attributes of a show: “it has plot, character, and scene. Crits may be considered performance art,” and “every player has lines.” Professors have the most overwhelming presence in the show, acting as both a participant and as the director.

Students see critique as intimate and entangled with their understanding of themselves as a creative person, and respond with “fury, controlled in the critique space, [that] burns later.” The feelings are intense, and “students do not sleep easily prior to their critique,” getting as little as three hours of rest, as they anticipate what is to come as being emotionally trying. They try but frequently struggle to see feedback as encouragement to improve; it “is a challenge, particularly when the self is on the line.”

A core of critique is the expectation of intentionality, and the ability to describe that intentionality; “this is central to the critique,” and a “discourse of intentionality downplays intuition.”

Chapter 5: Community as Praxis

In this chapter, the author explores the different communities that emerge within an art program.

The author begins by referencing Howard Singerman’s observation that “the goal of art school is to create artists, the objects that are created are secondary.” This is a reference to the “performance of self,” where creative people learn to act “in a way that persuades others that they are committed to the trade.”

Art education is the “central site that fosters intense interaction, describes ideals, and provides resources. Within the school it is the cohort that counts.” Students work through their educational experience with the same group of peers, and some consider this to be the cornerstone of a creative education. It is intimate, and faculty work to establish that intimacy; “building a culture of commitment is central to graduate student life, and as a result, art school permits many forms of intimacy.” Some of this comes from the amount of work students have to do, and the limited time they have to spend on it. “Students often work late, hanging out together and commiserating… a sense exists that students share a common fate.”

Faculty make overt efforts to support this development of unique publics. For example, Northwestern provides “a small kitchen and dining area with microwave and refrigerator.” Even with these efforts, a conflicting culture may arise between faulty and students, and between student cohorts; the “cohorts often establish social boundaries and claimed virtues.” The word “claimed” is important, because even when a cohort is supportive, students often find themselves in competition with one-another. “Professors suspect, perhaps from their own experience in graduate school, that students may be saying what they think their mentors wish to hear.”

The author offers “deviance” as a lens for examining art school: “artists define themselves as mavericks. Sometimes it seems that anything goes.” Faculty tolerate subversive behavior, and encourage students to “perform the artist role, looking and acting the part.”

Schools have unique personalities, and the author references aesthetic styles connected to geography (west vs. east coast) and to historic precedent. Students who emerge from different programs come with associations that they may not control, and “reputation is a mix of persona, network [established from school reputation], and the work itself.” The author concludes, however, that “art programs do not have a single culture.”

Research Value

The value of this work in informing my own research is that it:

• Adds more nuance and detail to the nature of owned space, and the relationship between that space and expectations of working and production
• Describes the emphasis placed on time as an indicator of educational expectations (more time spent equates to a better designer)
• Emphasizes the importance placed on critique as a way of controlling students and inculcating them into a community, rather than improving their work
• Uses emotionally-heavy language, like fear, anxiety, battle, defense, further emphasizing the space of critique as a performance and as abusive
• Reiterates the view of critique as performance
• Further reinforces critique as emotionally trying, and of students taking results personally; drills into the negativity
• Reinforces the nature and importance of cohort across the duration of a student’s experience in school
• Briefly mentions both performance and deviance as communal activities
• Briefly mentions the role of a school’s pedigree or reputation