Tips for Writing a Review on a Single Work of Art
How to Write an Art Review
Last week I made my case for y'all to go an arts writer/reviewer. Judging by the comments, a number of subscribers are at present on their way to starting their art-writing journeys.
Today I want to give you tips on how to write well-nigh other artists' exhibits.
Let's start with the facts.
Find the Facts
Gather equally much information equally possible about the exhibit you'll see earlier visiting. Look for answers to the following on websites, in press releases, and on social media.
Who? Who is in the exhibit? Who organized the exhibit? Who is the curator?
What? What is the exhibit nearly (its curatorial thesis or purpose)? What is included in the exhibit? What is the entrance fee? What practise y'all know near the artists and artwork yous'll exist seeing?
Where? Where is the venue, including the street address? Where tin can y'all park?
When? When does the showroom open? When does it close? When is the best time to meet it?
Why? Why this exhibit? Why now? Why should your readers care?
How? How tin you get a complimentary pass? How can yous secure images to use in your article? How can you arrive bear on with the curator or artists?
Armed with the facts, yous can brainstorm planning your visit.
Plan Your Visit
Phone call or electronic mail the venue to make sure they'll exist open and find out when the best time to come would exist. If the person answering the phone doesn't seem to know much and it'southward a museum, ask to speak to the instruction office, curator, or public relations officer.
Some smaller galleries seem to shut on a whim. I was recently at a gallery that was partially closed because of video taping. Likewise, yous don't want to look at the piece of work when schoolhouse tours or sketching sessions are going on in the galleries. You want the space mostly to yourself. You want quiet.
Plan on spending at least an hr in the galleries.
Venues with entrance fees will give legitimate publication journalists a complimentary pass, but you must be established and prove you have a meaning post-obit. Contact their press or media office.
Bring a pen, notepad, and voice recorder—depending on how you work best.
I used to travel up to an hr to review an exhibit. It was nice to accept the recorder to help me procedure my ideas on the ride domicile.
Get the Lay of the Land
When you commencement enter the space, make a cursory walk-through to look at the large picture.
How is it installed? Is it chronological? By artist? Past bailiwick? By media?
What's skilful nigh the installation? What strikes you as "off"?
Everything is fair game. You might consider:
- Label size
- Font selection
- Explanatory text
- Wall color
- Flooring color or blueprint (aye! even that)
- Spacing between the art
- Sight lines
- Juxtapositions of individual artworks
How has the curator made sense of the large grouping? Use this data to give your reader a sense of beingness at that place.
Select Feature Pieces
What piece of work stands out as worthy of your attention? Select 3 or 4 pieces (depending on the space you accept) and spend nearly of your fourth dimension with them. Sit your butt downwardly in front of each i for long periods of time. Ask for a stool or chair if you need i.
Write down every detail so you can describe information technology for your reader.
Don't run through an showroom with your camera and go home to write. Your digital images can neither supercede the experience you have with the fine art itself nor tin it replicate the relationship of the works to one another.
Why do you similar them? What makes them strong? How exercise they chronicle to ane another and the exhibit equally a whole?
I write almost exclusively nigh work that I like because (1) I'd rather spend more time with work that I similar and (ii) I bask the challenge of persuading readers to my line of thinking. Also, in all honesty, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I don't write to be critical, but to point out strengths.
Take Photos
Get permission to take photos of groupings of fine art to help you remember the installation.
For illustrating your commodity, sculpture or other three-dimensional objects, like benches, add together a lot to an installation image. If there is no sculpture, single artworks might be the best choice to employ with your article. Use your artist eye to frame an image that will attract more than eyeballs.
Ask the venue if they have press images they prefer be used in your characteristic. Accept photos of whatsoever labels for artwork you want to properly credit.
Inquire the venue for preferred credit lines to go along with the images. Make certain all names are spelled correctly. Double and triple check the facts for accuracy.
Select one Thing to Criticize
If you lot like everything, your readers will get suspicious. More chiefly, y'all need to use these opportunities to hone your center. To exist more discerning. Merely you don\'t have to exist every bit disquisitional as you might think.
I have been known to harp near lighting, display cases, installation, traffic period, label text, and label styling. I've also knocked the way a prove was organized (e.grand. the juror was bearding).
You lot might discover mistake with an artist'southward technique, matting (boy, don't get me started on poor matting!), framing, artistic choices and clichés, or craftsmanship. It makes more sense to criticize installation and curatorial choices in a group show and an creative person's individual choices in a solo exhibit.
Pull Your Commodity Together
Become dwelling house and put your thoughts together while they\'re still fresh. You lot'll forget your brilliant ideas if y'all wait until tomorrow. Write What Anne Lamott calls the shitty first typhoon immediately.
Sit on your draft for 24 hours and then look at information technology with new eyes. Revise it in ii or iii sessions until your deadline approaches. If you're working without a deadline, brand i up.
Edit your review for spelling, grammar, back-up, and annihilation that might put the reader to sleep. Be open to suggested changes from an editor. The only fashion to become a improve writer is to get this kind of feedback.
This post was first published on May 2, 2012 and has been expanded and updated with original comments intact.
- by Alyson Stanfield
- Feb 18, 2022
This program emphasizes your limited chapters. It's not nigh balance.
Information technology's near being fulfilled—nearly enjoying the life of an artist. To do that, y'all seek to optimize how you spend your precious fourth dimension.
It's not a social media form and information technology'southward not virtually posting more!
Be intentional with your creative person life.
In 2 hours a 24-hour interval I walk you through steps that volition effect in a plan that merely you could brand because it'southward based on your goals, your current commitments, and how you lot desire to run your art business and live your life.
Get real with your time.
26 thoughts on "How to Write an Art Review"
Source: https://artbizsuccess.com/how-write/
wow wow wow!! is all I can say. I was just going to dig through your site this calendar week to find information on how to write a review and here information technology is in my mailbox. This is exactly what I needed! How serendipitous!!Thanks!!!
Robin: Yay! Glad it is helpful. I think if you actually start writing that you might need more info. Allow me know what you're looking for and I volition endeavor to oblige.
While I am more than an art fan than a sports fan, the hype is there for sports, the kids and families similar to go, and information technology is an outlet they similar. I am reminded of my personal trainer who told me that while people go to college for academics, information technology is the sports that support the school financially. The information for Colorado Front end Range community economics says that the arts offer more new and locally circulating dollars than sports, recreation (ski) combined. I write about this often, still the puzzler remains: why do we see more than on sports than on art? Oddly, we take in our news the politics, disasters, weather, and… sports. Wouldn't information technology exist fun to have the arts news several times a day: "…artist Janet Sellers just made a touchdown with her brush on a new painting that will stone the world…." heheh.
Clever, Janet!
Useful cheers – and Janet I like your idea of arts news several times a twenty-four hours! But arts coverage can be very, very bad at times. In that location are several arts publications local to me (I won't name them) in which the worst excesses of 'artbollocks' get unchecked. If artists kickoff to write more plainly most art, I think it would help anybody. Artists shouldn't feel the need to dress upwardly their piece of work or their persona every bit otherworldly, in my view.
Marion: Is it the "art speak" that makes them bad?
Yes, it'south as if the editors/writers take no business organization for the general reader who might option up their publication. Even equally an artist, I quickly switch off when the writing becomes dense and abstract.
Perhaps y'all could talk nearly the language of art, or the linguistic communication used to draw art. How do you speak/write in a way that as many people as possible tin can chronicle to? Should yous use technical terms? Should you explicate them if you exercise? I have my own arroyo, merely I'm very interested in knowing what others think about this role of writing about art.
Margaret: Yes, I need to do that. In fact, I was going to write a book called "Words for Artists." I'm still interested in doing that, but I'thou not sure how much of a market place there is for that.
I beloved the book "A Brusque Guide to Writing Near Art" (which isn't that brusque) past Sylvan Barnet.
Yeah, apply technical terms to educate. Don't dumb down your text, but know that you will take to explain to an extent.
Thanks for the answer, Alyson – I'll expect for the book you mentioned.
Given the approach I usually utilize on my blog, perchance I'll do a serial (or several series) about different terms, with paintings that illustrate them. Then link to them when I use those terms. That'southward a project for the time to come.
Peradventure you should call up about writing a book for the interested public on "Words Artists Use", or "Artspeak for Anybody"?
Depict a couple of pieces as clearly as you can. Pretend you are a detective looking at the evidence rather than a judge because its meaning. This can let you to slip by the "recognition of the what yous already know" stage and outset to observe what is in the work itself. It may as well assist you to represent the piece with clarity and insight. Use language that is articulate and straight. "Artspeak" is often used to mask a lack of original thought. Write for the interested and informed layperson. Let yourself to talk virtually where the art takes your own imagination. If all else fails, state the obvious. You may be the only one who sees it.
Fantabulous advice, Dana. Sounds like you know what yous're talking about.
hmm grinning
As an artist who constitute himself detoured into being an arts editor for many years, I learned that the kind of writing that gets good grades in fine art history and art theory classes is deathly in the real world. Only saying. (The teachers who gave those good grades probably never took a writing grade either.) I won't expound other than to say that footnotes are a terrible crutch. It's worth noting that the greatest critics of the 19th century were poets and playwrights. They were probably lousy painters, but they knew how to write. Stay humble and passionate and your art writing volition reflect well on you lot and your field of study.
Steven: Admittedly! I don't write anything like I did in grad school or as a curator. It was a good training ground, withal.
I similar warm fuzzy reviews (of my own piece of work!) as much equally the next artist, simply would like something more rigorous, likewise. Practice we take a responsibility to form constructive critiques of each others' work? Is there such a affair as shaping dialogue and asking hard questions that challenge us in a good way? I am not afraid of someone having an opinion, and I retrieve artists are capable of taking an "exterior" (not-creative person) perspective if they wish to. Nosotros demand honest responses to our work. I don't hateful savage critiques either in person or in print – those say more about the critic than they practice about the art. Still I wonder if fear of crossing that line makes usa place deep inquiry off limits. Would love to see any response to this comment, thanks.
Sue: I agree! Warm fuzzy is tiresome. So is the "Jackson Pollock was a hack" type of stuff.
I oftentimes criticize not-art stuff in an exhibit: exhibition blueprint, lighting, framing, matting (She should larn how to cut a mat or rent someone to do it for her!), etc. – stuff that gets in the way of appreciating the work.
What you're talking about is criticism – not reviewing. I believe information technology takes lots of exercise and training to be a good critic. I commend anyone who wants to endeavour his or her hand at it.
Hello, Sue,
Your comment really pinpoints a crucial dilemma: how to be honest without being callous. I was recently asked to write a review of a journal on Dada art and writing. Having checked out other reviews of the same periodical, they were totally positive. But my genuine response was mixed — including the fact that I'grand not completely in the dadaist camp, either as it'southward represented historically or in the contemporary world.
After advisedly looking at the artwork and writing in the journal, I was inspired to write well-nigh my general feelings and thoughts, and to create images that illustrate my conclusions. Within the framework of a letter to Dada, many details nigh the periodical were included. Although it'south true that I avoided comments on specific artwork that I didn't like at all, I hope that overall it's a counterbalanced perspective.
I'thousand not at all certain this is what the editor was looking for, and received only general feedback. Nonetheless, I'm very glad to have had this challenging opportunity. Here's the link: http://catrutgers4art.com/2012/04/29/dear-dada-a-review-of-maintenant-vi/
Your thoughts volition exist welcome!
All all-time wishes,
Catherine
P.Due south. Alyson's comment on "review" vs. "criticism" brings up a very interesting distinction that I hadn't considered before; they're pretty much jumbled together in my post on Maintenant.
Well we here in Orlando are going to do our best to move forward and volition begin to write reviews via a blog that I just gear up up. There's null at that place yet simply a little photo logo- that'southward how new it is. I did come upward with a proper noun I like OAR. Orlando Art Review http://orlandoartreview.blogspot.com/
At that place are 4 people interested in writing. We are inspired past your information.
And you know me – I will of course proceed you and all posted via twitter and fb.
Sort of like all art Alyson.
It starts with an idea, then moves on to a elementary outline, and so YOUR art takes over and the magic happens. Nosotros're all artists, no thing what the medium. We all start from scratch and whatsoever the issue, from cupcakes to a masters thesis, from a tiny haiku ( that only the poet understands!) to a bigger than life sculpture, it all stats with the unproblematic moment of the thought.
Thanks for this introduction. It is helpful. I concur that writing about things we like is good. I think also there is a stardom between a review and a disquisitional review. A review is primarily a description of the result. Critical comments in this kind of review are general in nature, and less technical than in a critical review. A disquisitional review, on the other hand, is making the claim of the reviewer to have expertise in evaluating art. Both positive and negative comments in a critical review need to exist supported by reasons–not just given as opinions. The critical reviewer needs to demonstrate what his/her judgments are based on. While these remain, strictly speaking, opinions, they need to exist opinions supported by expertise and examples. Hopefully, when criticism is offered, information technology is constructive and helpful to readers, the artist and the gallery . Mean spiritism is not expert criticism and is ego based. Just a few thoughts.
A couple of tips from somebody who writes a lot of reviews and likes to include images.
1) Don't presume y'all tin can accept photos in an exhibition. A lot of exhibition organisers ban photography. There's a lot of piece of work to be done Before you lot fifty-fifty get to the exhibition if you lot want to take photos. Y'all exercise demand permission and you tin't assume it.
2) When you lot take a photo of an epitome which you know y'all will use, also take a photo of the explanation. I guarantee you won't be able to remember them all when you get domicile! Guess who learned this one the hard way.
I also write loads of notes for my review in the catelogue while I'm in the exhibition. That way I tin annotate the entries for artists whose piece of work has caught my eye. Plus write downward the master points for the review.
It's rather easy to come up up with a review when the genre and subject matter is well washed, but what exercise you do when the bulk of the work is mostly crap?
I don't want to antagonize the gallery owners considering I accept cutivated a human relationship with them over the years. I also don't want to write a glowing review of a lot of bad art for my regular readers to peruse. I will lose their confidence.
Is there a tactful way to handle this situation which, on the local level, is all too prevalent.
Ignore it!
I don't annotate on bad art except in a very opaque way. The only fourth dimension I get direct is if it'due south but won a big prize and then I reckon the size of the cheque volition cushion whatsoever pointed comments from me
I take a question: I'g a painter, but I've joined a creative writing grouping in my area this twelvemonth (Seattle), and have been developing my skills with poetry, fiction, and creative not-fiction. I'm a beginning writer, but I experience a potent phone call to connect my artistic writing with my painting practice. All the different types of writing I've been doing in conjunction with my art website, creative person statement, creative person's web log, etc, are condign increasingly literary. I even wrote a poem virtually a Gauguin showroom I saw recently, so turned it into a kind of experimental reflection on the artists work. I'g hoping content like this will do something to assistance my visibility every bit a painter (web crawlers volition have more text to latch onto). I besides hope playing with this stuff won't hurt my credibility as a painter. I really want to be a literary likewise as a visual artist. Practise yous feel this is advisable? Is at that place a place for a more literary approach to art writing, i.e. 'belles lettres' form, where the line between fiction and not-fiction is more blurry?
Here'southward the reflection on Gauguin I wrote btw. I'd dear to know what you think! http://www.impactfolios.com/michaelshelbyedwards/page5942.htm
Go for it, Michael! Artists who follow their creative paths are near always rewarded.