Image as Text

Image as Text Response

Critical Response

Art by its very nature has the tendency to be labeled either “good” or “bad”. However there is no bad art, only art that has failed to connect with a viewer. To broadly label art as either good or bad is hypocritical, how could a Picasso be compared to a Rembrandt? The truth is it can’t, and that’s the deceptiveness of art in that it seems on the surface to be so easily criticized when in reality it’s a complicated process to undertake. The piece I chose to write about evoked such a response. People around me either hated it, or loved it, with most going to the former. A good art piece creates this kind of response, and in that respect this piece was doing just fine.

When I look at a piece of art, I let my eyes roam, exploring the surface. I feel whatever emotions the piece evokes, or any parts or techniques that interest me. After all of this, I still don’t dare judge it merely on good or bad. When you label something “bad” art, there is no coming back, it’s cursed with a tag. Even if this tag is incorrect, as it often is, you still have that impression in your head that “oh, I don’t like this piece, it’s bad”.

Another aspect to this is if you label a piece of art “bad” that means somewhere, floating around, is a piece of “good” art, which would imply a comparison. But how do you compare art? Even if two artists have both tackled the same topic, it is impossible and insulting to even claim to be able to compare them. A Renaissance piece and a Baroque piece have their own considerations and couldn’t possibly be criticized. Never is a piece of art better, all art is an island for consideration in its own sphere of influence.

Art creates its own emotions, and the reaction it creates, love it or hate it, is the very point of art. If you fall madly in love with a piece, it has succeeded. On the other side of the same coin, if you desperately hate that piece and want to burn it, it too has succeeded. It is when a piece of art has nothing to say that it is a failure, when it evokes no emotion, no reaction. It still isn’t a “bad” piece of art, the artist just hasn’t succeeded. Maybe they had a point and it was lost in translation, maybe their point is so lofty that you don’t get it, but their art still isn’t bad.

Being an artist myself, it’s insulting to even imagine that someone would ever dare call my art “bad”. Obviously it is, but that isn’t the point. It’s the message in art, and the technique, that breaks or makes the piece. When I look at a piece it’s to see how the artist made it, what they’ve employed to make their piece. This is exactly what has jumped out at me about the piece under review, “Lobby 1984” by Richard Hamilton. The label, which I looked at first, say’s it’s a collotype in 6 colors, screen printed from 18 stencils. Essentially this means he created the piece not with pencils or paints but through layers, adding layer after layer to create new colors and dimensions in the piece. With 6 colors Hamilton created a piece that contained the full range of colors, and looks deceptively simple.

The technique is one of the most