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?