A Checklist for Looking at Art

Art education at the Terrain Gallery in New York City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most of this is from art educator David Perkins

·      Work to overcome the given passivity toward viewing engendered by television and videos.

·      Engage in active viewing and a lot of it.

·      Understand that viewing art is its own reward.

·      Accept that viewing art is a complex, challenging proposition.

·      Use questioning as the primary strategy. (I would say, “Don’t be afraid to express your uncertainty.”)

·       Look for the things in the work that carry the “kick” or the “oomph.” Move toward the "inner relations" of aesthetic experiences rather than the "outer relations" of art history.

·      Look for motion (or stillness), mood, personality, and surprise to hook into the aesthetic effects

·      Invest “looking time,” at least 3-5 minutes.

·      Find a good distance, where the work becomes a whole.

·      Let your eyes work for you. Remember to have a "hungry eye."

·      Make looking deep and clear. Let what you know inform your looking.

·      Let questions emerge. When the flow stops, look away for a few seconds, then look back. This refreshes the eyes.

·      Make looking organized. Tell yourself when you notice interesting features.

·      Label the features in words to yourself.

·      Juxtapose paintings, etc. to promote seeing.

·      Always look for the "point of entry," the emotional/intellectual hook that challenges the viewer to engage with the work.

Perkins, David N. "The Intelligent Eye: Learning to Think by Looking at Art." The Getty Center for Education in the Arts. 1994

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A checklist for your Movie review - 3.1.18

English: Meryl Streep (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• End your review with a rating and an indication of the audience at which your review is aimed.
• At the end of the review make clear where the movie can be seen – if it can.
• Do some plot summary but don’t bog down in a description of what happens without adding interpretation of what the action means. This is not a book report.
• Do that standard thing of putting the name of the actor in brackets after the name of the character: Billy Brown (Gary Green). Sometimes it’s interesting to note what other productions actors have appeared in, particularly when past casting suggests that they are “types.” Awards may be worth mentioning.
• Be entertaining. Write snappy and/or provocative leads. Write with the assumption your have to quickly win your reader’s attention.
• Write at least 600 words. For the moment, I continue to set no top limit.
• If, while doing research for some basic information such as other roles an actor has played, you stumble upon some provocative bit of specific information that you want to include in your review as a way of setting up a comment of your own, you would deftly work the source into your review. For instance, if you stumble upon a comment that “Meryl Streep is the most overrated actress of her generation,” you’d mention the source. It might be an obscure blog. It might be a top movie critic. The source would matter. Recently it was President Trump. Wow.

In addition: I love to talk about journalism’s “dirty secrets,” and one of the dirty secrets of reviewing is that more often than not you can use a movie, TV show, a book, a play, a musical performance to talk about whatever it is you want to talk about. Gender relations, parent-child relations, life in the city, male bonding, table manners, fashion choices, dating rituals, sexual etiquette, world peace, good dental hygiene – why not? Okay, sometimes you can go too far, and your review will just seem weird. Also, we are not blind to clues about how a movie’s creator may want us to take it, and we are smart enough to have some idea about how the “average viewer” may take a movie. But how you feel about a movie – what facet of it matters to you at a particular moment in time - is how you feel about it. We read certain critics not for guidance but because we are fascinated by how their mind works, the unique and surprising ways in which they react to something.

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Checklist for Your Documentary Review

Titicut Follies (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Checklist for Your Documentary Review

·     *  Include summary of the basic arguments of the film, but that summary should not constitute the bulk of your story. I want your analysis.

·      * Evaluate the effectiveness of how the film makes its argument through selecting credible sources. Specifically, what about those sources makes them seem credible?

·     *  Evaluate the effectiveness of how Kunze uses the techniques of filmmaking to buttress his argument. The quality of the lighting, the sound, the compositions, the editing, the use and quality of graphics can influence the acceptance or rejection of his argument.

·      * As Menand’s New Yorker essay suggests, documentaries aren’t “objective” in the common definition of the term. Many don’t try for even the semblance of “fair and balanced.” However, we might judge a documentary so one-sided, so far beyond fair and so far beyond balanced that it begins to work against itself, to turn us away from its arguments. Where does Mobilize fall on that spectrum? Some documentaries leave us feeling manipulated to the extent we dismiss their argument. 

·      * In any case, I would not much like your coming out of any documentary saying that you are now completely convinced of its point of view and are ready to act on its recommendations without further study. Where does Kunze’s documentary leave you? So indifferent to its arguments you have no interest in further inquiry? Intrigued enough to do some research on the topic? Ready to adopt its recommendations after a little/some/much further study?

·      * Kevin Kunze told the class his is essentially a voice-of-God documentary. That is, he does the voiceover. Consider analyzing how often he, as narrator, tells us what to think and do and how often he merely provides the context for his sources. Also, apparently at least once in this documentary he appears as a participant. Does that affect your reaction to the documentary for good or ill?

Checklist for the Restaurant Review

1)    Do NOT write your review in chronological order. That is, don’t begin with a bland description of the outside of the restaurant or of the hostess taking you to your table. Begin with your most striking idea from the whole review somewhere in the first three sentences. Almost certainly that won’t be the first thing that happens during your visit. That doesn’t mean you can’t begin with a vivid description of the interior – of the cleanliness of the bathroom or the waiter's complexion or the conversation of the couple at the next table, which you will have taken the time to study - if those details support connect with your main point, if it goes somewhere. 

“Support” is an elusive concept, so I struck it through. “Connect” is better. After beginning with a positive statement (with examples), you might include detail on something you didn’t like. The contradiction is the connection. Or after praising the food, you might – without an explicit transition – begin talking about decor, which would be a natural progression as you unpack the whole experience. But I’d like some connective tissue, something at the end of that section like, “But the food is star, not the lime-green wallpaper.” Some writing coaches advise you to stay on course by putting in “scaffolding” – explicit, even heavy-handed transitions, which you remove in the final draft: “I have been writing about the food. Waiters bring food. It is logical for me to talk about the waiter at this point.”

Still, if your lead puts a stake in the ground – that is, makes a strong point – you probably won’t have much trouble playing off that initial point of view in the rest of the review. Here’s an emphatic student lead that I liked from a couple years ago:

At first impression, you might think you’d walked into a glorified soup kitchen, which isn’t half wrong. Tommy’s Joynt doesn’t have any menus or servers, and there’s a sign above a barrel of pickles that reads, “Enjoy the pickles. But please only take what you can eat – when you buy something.” The walls are covered with old beer signs, paintings of horses, and any other kind of memorabilia that has been stuck up since 1947. Yet all these distractions fade when hungry customers lay their eyes on Tommy’s meat.

Tommy’s is a meat market. People line up, look at the wall of meat options, and watch as a guy with a giant knife cuts healthy portions of all types of meat onto a plate. There’s bratwurst, knackwurst, lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, buffalo stew, and of course the bbq turkey sloppy joe. You feel like you’re in a 1950’s school cafeteria. All meals are served on a tray with options of rice, mashed potatoes, beans, and any other side that can be scooped out of a metal tub.

2) At the end, list the basic consumer info: address, telephone number, hours of operation, reservation policy, price range, credit card policy, dress code (if any), noise level and so on.

3) Give me some sort of grading scale and use it to evaluate the restaurant. From another student, here’s consumer information – with additional information interpolated - plus a rating scale.

Out of 4 (Chili Peppers wearing Sombreros)

El Toreador:

50 West Portal Avenue

San Francisco, CA 94127

415.566.8104

Credit Cards: All major

Entrees: $8.75-14.95

Drinks: (Beers and margaritas are about $4.00- a little pricey)

Atmosphere: If you go early (around 4:30 pm for dinner), you can hear your conversation.  After 5:30 pm, forget about it.

Service: Friendly, but a little prompt.  Dishes came faster than I could eat them.

4) Tell me how much your meal costs item by item.

5) In a note at the end, tell me who your audience is even if you think only an idiot couldn’t figure it out.

6) For Wednesday bring a restaurant review to class that you think has something "smart" in it.

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