38 Reading: Critical Modalities
Introduction
From the first forms of art criticism in ancient Greece, the discussion of meaning in art has taken many directions. The professional art critic is one of the gatekeepers who, through their writing, endorse or reject particular kinds of art, whether in style, artistic ability, or message. In fact, a study of the different ways to look at art can tell us much about changing times and philosophies: the role of aesthetics, economics, and other cultural issues have a lot to do with the origin of these philosophical positions. Of course, none of them is completely true—they’re simply different types of discourse. People approach meaning from different perspectives. The artworks sit silent while all around them the voices change. We are in a time when there are several, sometimes greatly conflicting, ways of thinking about meaning in art. Here are six different critical modalities art critics use as compasses to interpreting meaning:
Structural Criticism
We started this course with a discussion of what art is. That discussion was actually based on one of the ways to look at art: what is known as structuralism. Structuralism is based on the notion that our concept of reality is expressed through language and related systems of communication. On a larger scale, visualize culture as a structure whose foundation is language, speech and other forms of communication. When this approach is applied to the visual arts, the world of art becomes a collective human construction, where a single work needs to be judged within the framework supported by the whole structure of art. This structure is still based in language and knowledge and how we communicate ideas. I often use the example of the word “cowboy”.
In your head: visualize a cowboy: then describe what you saw. What gender was your person? What race was this person? Now let’s apply those answers to historical fact. The fact is that upwards of 60 percent of the historical cowboys in the United States were black slaves freed after the Civil War. Did you see your cowboy as white?
Your idea of cowboy might have come from film, which is an extremely different form of reality. The structural idea manifests itself when we look for meaning in art based on any preconceived ideas about it we already have in our mind. These preconceptions (or limitations) are shaped by language, social interaction and other cultural experiences.
Deconstructive Criticism
Deconstruction goes one step further and posits that any work of art can have many meanings attached to it, none of which is limited by a particular language or experience outside the work itself. In other words, the critic must reveal (deconstruct) the structured world in order to knock out any underpinnings of stereotypes, preconceptions, or myths that get in the way of true meaning. Taking the perspective of a deconstructive critic, we would view a portrait of Marilyn Monroe by pop artist Andy Warhol as an imaginary const