Critical Art
Illustration by Ayo Arogunmati
A week ago, I attended a curated art show by a visual artist in an old industrial building. Upon walking onto the fifth floor room, the abundance of space gives the art on display room to breathe. At a distance or within arms reach, the art can be admired. The art, all visual, ranged from colorful to unsaturated, detailed to abstracted, it contained lines, shapes and forms, reflecting blackness, ambition and sometimes sadness. The art on display was critical, of structures, power, ideas and community. At a point in the show, each artist was given the chance to share their reasons and motivations for creating - one after the next, the running theme was art created to be critical, to be taken seriously. Following the show, my mind was unstuck from this principle of criticality and the intersection of seriousness and criticality. I had questions that needed answers. What exactly is a critic? Why is happy art not considered critical? What is art criticism and its historical significance? Why is positivity soft, unsophisticated? Have we ever turned our eye on criticality itself and why not?
What is common, not limited to online communities is the ability to share opinions, without context or evaluation of impact. To suggest that we live in a moment of ever more apocalyptic speak that can be spread faster and wider should not be shocking. Choosing to speak positive in this moment is to be viewed with skepticism. Good thoughts about people, things, and places are paralyzed in contemporary discussions about the world. This imbalance between the observation of good and bad, I think, is influencing the artistic community. Doing important work now means art that touches on ideas of power structures - sexism, racism, and capitalism. An artist that chooses to exclude these moral takes in their work may be seen as not fitting for criticality. If criticality is the thing to deem art important, how has criticism evolved? What is the shape across geographies and is there a taxonomy of criticism?
Criticism is an analytical framework for judging literary or artistic works. This action of analyzing art is common across geographies. African criticism evolved out of verbal evaluation of art, Islamic criticism focused on historiographical writings about art. The west used and uses theory to defend or oppose contemporary ways of art making. The critic emerged out of these different forms of criticism. The critic passes judgment, is partisan, passionate and political in his or her assessment of art. The critic is not required to be maximally a connoisseur, a person with knowledge and interest, but a person who can transport between the objective and subjective. A taxonomy of the critic can thus be formed given its role as one who passes judgment. He or she can be a supporter - biased to the positives of the art, a decoder - interpreting what the work represents, a taste enforcer - informing us of what is avant garde, and a hater - not considered a critic, but more accepted in contemporary times. Critics have forgotten their own taxonomy and often lean towards supporting and enforcing. Consequently, artists react by playing up how they fit in the evolution of art.
As western criticism is the most dominant form of criticism and is dependent on theoretical frameworks focused on the aesthetic, social and linguistic models of art making, the artist that makes art that evolves out of the framework is likely to be recognized as a critical and important. The issue with theory is that the ideas that form the theory are based on general principles intended to explain something and are tested against a defined scope of examples that don't always explore the edges. So, in understanding the critic and criticism, the theories used to evaluate art is often tainted by this need to fit the theoretical framework. This need is no only apparent in the visual arts, but also in the musical and film arts.
The Source Magazine was the prominent critic of rap music in the early to late 90s. It established the five-mic scoring system to evaluate the quality of a records production, lyrics and musicality, while also suggesting to readers what is worth purchasing. The bestowing of the five-mic status was the bar for entering the conversation of the greatest of all time. Thinking back to a time when I purchased The Source Magazine, I recall the five-mic albums consisted of those records that addressed personal, social, political, and environmental issues. As time passed, my own notion of critically acclaimed would only include those records that were more serious. The opposite idea focused on beauty or happiness did not factor into my judgment of important art. I was more interested in an album that was critical rather than one done well. The history of critically acclaimed albums would also be selected based on these important concepts. The language at the time of release of prominent albums by different publications would also mold how I came to view contemporary albums.
Critics use language to describe albums based on their proximity to issues deemed important. The album, The People’s Instinctive Travels and Paths of Rhythm, received five-mics upon its release and was described as "avoiding gimmickry and circus atmosphere". AmeriKKA by Ice Cube was a "social document" and in a retrospective review was said to be "timeless, riveting exercise in anger, honesty, and the sociopolitical possibilities of hip hop". Finally, Illmatic was described as "balancing limitations and possibilities, distinguishing hurdles and springboards, and acknowledging growth from a roughneck adolescent to a maturing adult, criticizing the culture of violence around him". The connection among these three preceding records is that they all touched on issues considered important.
Films are also on the same criticality plane. For example Parasite reflects the imbalance or inequity between the rich and poor. Crash, Moonlight, 12 years a slave and No Country for Old Men are among the others on the criticality hierarchy.
If critics continue to justify important work based on standards of criticality, then leading art will be those under the umbrella of seriousness. This idea is obviously a social and cultural construct, blinding us, and making us think these types of art are truth and unequivocally natural law. However, this form of thinking is not the truth nor does it hold up to natural law. If our spectacles are cleaned and we see the possibility of art, is it not possible to say that expressions of positivity can also be rigorous? Or are artists so concerned by public and critical perceptions that they forgo the uneasiness and lack of understanding that may come from doing positive art?
The critics are victims of this rigid perspective on art forms and the artist a casualty of these ideologies. Therefore, a reorientation of the thought process is needed to create art that is positive, culturally engaged and socially relevant to the same critics and wider audiences.
There will be those that will frown on the idea of theorizing about positive art, avoiding the idea of toxic positivity. However, there is a genre in musical arts, emerging out of Africa that has grown mostly because of its positivity. Afrobeats artists are in direct opposition to the idea of critical music that teeter on moral instructions, captivating audiences and shifting critics back to the centre. Asake, for example, is challenging the way Afrobeats is done through incorporation of heavy drums, percussions, and linguistic fluidity, but most importantly his pattern of communicating ideas of aspirations, achievements, and euphoric experiences through his art. This is the type kind of of happy art that can be viewed as important.
This call to action is not to swing from one rigid fence to another, but to reflect a balance in both heavier and lighter art, distributed and accessible fairly.
Our attitudes culturally on which art is worthy of critical acclaim needs to shift. This will require an evaluation of criticality and how to move us to a future of optimism. Artists also have to continue sharing their perspective on what a better future looks like, giving us art that moves and compels us to embrace uncertain futures.
