Facing the Abject With Justin Novak

The human body has been an age-old subject in the art world for centuries, but artists such as Justin Novak have taken the human form and used it in a contemporary way to further the study of us. Novak is a ceramic artist best known for his series Disfigurines, which is a body of work he developed from 1997 to 2006. The series is made up of small-scale porcelain and raku-fired figurines that play on the traditional porcelain figures of the Rococo period, which is considered the golden age of European porcelain. 

Novak says, “the ceramic figurine has historically embodied a mainstream, bourgeois ideology, and for this reason, I have employed it in the presentation of an alternative vision, an ironic anti-figurine or disfigurine” (JustinNovak.com, pg. 1) The figurine has historically represented the ideals and norms of our dominate culture, but Novak’s savage and visceral figures are expressly for the opposite purpose. “ The graphic physical wounds of his Disfigurine series are a metaphor for the psychological damage inflicted by a dominant ideology that stifles difference” (Breaking the Mould, pg. 84)

In Terry Barrett’s article Approaches to Postmodern Artmaking he talks about the principle of Facing the Abject.  The abject refers to unsavory aspects in life; it is a concept that accounts for many “ugly” representations in art (Barrett, pg. 8). Novak’s grotesque Disfigurines fit right into this principle, his figurines are hauntingly beautiful, the starkness of them both intrigue the viewer and also makes them want to look away in distaste.

“ If beauty is truth, then it may dare to be grotesque too, for truth may be harsh or horrific. Beauty does not suggest something beautiful in the actual sense of the term, but that, which comes closer to the true expressions of the self and the vision of a generation's psyche, that is fragmented, kitsch-like, complex and beyond the metanarratives of a suffocating conformity.”(Keats, pg. 1). 

CritCards with Tom Anderson

"The purpose of student critiques, whether to focus on the technical, compositional, or conceptual, is solely to improve that work or future projects. Art criticism is the examination of the work of others to find what they can tell us about being human." (Anderson, pg. 24)

            This is a quote from the article Talking With Kids About Art by Tom Anderson, which I recently read for my Theory and Practice class. Andersons article concentrates on a way of structuring a critique in the art classroom, which is a subject that can be very hard to involve students in. Now that I think about it, I never had a class critique of each other’s work in my middle school or high school art classes. We may have discussed famous artists work but the discussion were not very engaging. The major tool in this article is the use of Crit Cards. Teachers are to use these cards to guide the discussion with their students. There are 4 critcards: Reaction, Description, Interpretation, and Evaluation.

CritCard #1 Reactions:

            With this card students are to talk about their first reactions to the artwork they are critiquing.  Students should be looking at formal principles and elements first such as color, shapes and textures. In order for students to look more deeply into the work you as the teacher should consider some guideline questions like: Do you think you know how the artist made his work? Does this piece remind you of anything else? Do you see any repeating themes or topics in the artists work?

CritCard# 2 Description:

            This card is based on the descriptive factors of the artwork. Some guiding questions to address the students with are what feeling do you get from the artwork? What mood does it portray? Has this artwork changed or influenced society somehow? Do you know who made the work? Do you know what time period it was made during?            

CritCard# 3 Interpretation:

            This card concentrates on subject matter of the work, and what the student thinks the work means. Essentially the student’s interpretations should stem from their reactions and descriptions of the artwork being critiqued.

CritCard# 4 Evaluation:

            This is the last and final card that brings all the ideas from the entire discussion together.  This is card gives the teacher the opportunity to ask the students if their views about the artist and there work had changed from when they first started the discussion. Do the students like the work better or worst since the start of the discussion?

Discussing Art With Students

    I was reading Terry Barrett's book Interpreting Art the other day, and he created a formula of topics that could ultimately add up to an art students understanding of the meaning a work or art is conveying. The formula looks something like this
                                                             
                                                                     Subject Matter
                                                                               +
                                                                         Medium
                                                                               +
                                                                           Form
                                                                               +
                                                                          Context
                                                                               =
                                                                         Meaning
   
    These specific areas are where teachers can pull some questions that can get their students thinking about different types of artwork. The subject matter encompasses the content, the narrative aspects of the piece (ex: how would one describe it?). The medium is what the work has made out of (paint, clay, found objects, ect.). The form is the listing descriptors of what the work is, how does it exist in the world? The context is talking about the work in time and space, where does it fit in historically, does it have a design purpose? All of these areas of questioning will help further explain the meaning of the artwork. This formula is very much an extension of Bloom's Taxonomy.
    Bloom's Taxonomy is a hierarchy of question stems that teachers use to guide their students through the learning process. It is broken down into six categories: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Each of the above mentioned areas of Barrett's formula can fall under the categories of Bloom's Taxonomy, for example subject matter, medium, and form can all fall under the category of knowledge. The further along we go the more abstract we get, for example form and context can fall under the category of analysis.
    I think that these formula's are a great way to get students thinking. I have been stuck in many a critique or discussion were no one has any thought or idea of where to start when talking about a work of art. It is a very awkward situation that nobody likes to be in, this list of question starters can help some light bulbs go off in the classroom, if you know what I mean. So the next time you are doing a discussion think of this formula, and maybe you will start a wild fire of ideas!