CRITICAL FRAMING
Lecture photo department saic, Joyce Neimanas class
Feb 24, 2000

by Claire Wolf Krantz

Writers wish to convey the impression that they are speaking the truth; that the information they are giving you is fact, and that it is an objective and definitive presentation of what is. I don’t think that is the case. If you think about writing as being similar to snapping a photo, you will look at what is written differently. As in photography, you can begin to analyze anything you read by asking yourself about the choices that the writer has made:

What point of view shapes the piece
What is included and excluded from the body of the work
Which details are put into focus and what blurred
How the writer contextualized her information:
To outside sources
Relationships among details

These are broad theoretical issues that are not unfamiliar to all of us, certainly they are a part of the art discourse of the past 15 years. But I think that the specifics, or the details of these issues - how they are put into practice, and how they shape our reading – are important to discuss.

I’m going to talk about two specific articles to illustrate issues about how framing creates the content of the work. They are very different articles, written for different venues, for different audiences, and with different purposes. By analyzing them, I hope to first, illustrate that in some ways art writing is a form of fiction, and that its frame defines its body.

I’ll describe the process of going about writing and publishing an article by talking about a recent article of my own that appeared in the February issue of the New Art Examiner that analyzed the works of Robert Heinecken and Kenneth Josephson. But I’ll start first by discussing an interesting article by Jeff Huebner for the Nov. 1, 1996 issue of The Reader that reported on the controversial “Chicago Show” at the MCA. Titled The In Crowd, it appeared 2 weeks before the show’s opening.

These articles reflect two different agendas by writers with different backgrounds and goals. I am a painter/photographer who writes from the point of view of a practitioner and a theoretician about art. Jeff is a reporter who writes about a range of topics, including stories about artists or the artworld – not as a critic of the art itself.  I want to emphasize here that I’m not privileging one agenda over another, but that the agenda of the writer and publication determines the content of the article or review.

Articles: The Reader Article

The article is a description of the MCA’s development of “The Chicago Show” and a preview of what will actually be shown. It is interesting because its point of view is so strong, its positioning of the writer and the institution as being in the same place, that it well illustrates what I am talking about in general.

Jeff was interested in the stories surrounding the actual show – who did it; why; who was included and who left out; who benefited and who didn’t; who was happy and who angry. He was not interested in the art itself, the installation, or any theoretical background. So his framing took a very particular stance from the very beginning, as any successful piece of writing must.

Jeff has shaped his article from the point of view of the MCA and Chicago institutions. He began his article with a description of the MCA’s major players and their goals for the show, emphasizing their good will and the difficulty of their endeavor. He then presented interviews with artworld personalities who are sympathetic to the museum: major collectors, critics, gallerists, educators and curators like Franz Schulze and Judith Kirshner who have longstanding ties to it and were advisors to the exhibitions. Their criticisms were miniscule and contextualized by their sympathy and support for the show. Some artists included in the show also were given a chance to give their opinions. Other institutions or categories of people that were included were mentioned, but they were clearly “others” in relationship to the mainstream – they were presented as examples of the fairness and inclusiveness of the show.

Then, a few artists were interviewed who were not included, but their testimony was clearly framed by their prior artworld validation and a presupposed sour grapes attitude about being left out. In other words, an artist had to be validated by the system in order to be interviewed at all, and had to fit into a clear category which shaped how were were to understand his or her opinion. This testimony was then taken back to Lynn Warren and reconfigured by the institutional point of view, thus effectively diminishing its message. The article concluded with Lynn Warren having the final say, thus bolstering the case for the MCA and dismissing any objections to its project.

I think it’s important to reiterate that, while there was nothing wrong with the article having a clear point of view, it must be read with the understanding that Jeff presented his information about “The Chicago Show” as though it were not only factual, fair, and inevitable, but his  was the only way to look at it. In fact, it presented only one way, among many, of enumerating and thinking about the issues. The conclusions are developed from its premise, not from any valid claim to truth. Moreover, the gathering and sifting of information through institutions is so ubiquitous in art writing that it is often difficult to think about other ways to think about curating shows and writing about them. Most art publications, if fact, demand that point of view – when I wrote my “Report from Indonesia”, I had some problems in explaining why I refused – indeed, I couldn’t – write from that point of view and focus on the artists, their ideas, goals and relationships.

A final point to be made – the article appeared 2 weeks BEFORE the show, when speculation was running wild, and at the opportune moment to mold public opinion in favor of the show and the museum’s point of view. Any serious refutations could not possibly be assembled to effectively counter its effect until many weeks later, thus making it even more difficult for non-institutional voices to be heard and paid serious attention to.

Stolen, Captured: Robert Heinecken, Kenneth Josephson

First framing device: Proposal

My article was first proposed to Art in America, for whom I’ve written before and established a track record. It was turned down as both a feature and a review because the editors felt that Chicago had had its share of coverage for the year. Chicago’s coverage, as far as I know, consisted of 1 feature describing THE INSTITUTIONS, not the art, and a handful of reviews. In previous conversations about what they are interested in reviewing, Chicago museums showing Chicago artists, older artists, and photographers are not high on their agendas. When I then proposed the article to the New Art Examiner, for whom I’ve written for 20 years and am a contributing editor, I had to make a case – not for the fact that these are museum retrospectives – nor that these artists have worked for 40 or so years and done significant work. The editor was mostly interested in the influence these artists have had on younger people. “Who is making work that looks like Josephson and Heinecken?” The editor had some other agendas, but I’ve forgotten them now. I agreed to take their desires into consideration, and proceeded to write my own article.

Second framing device

My article is framed by questions such as:
Just what is their work: what does it look like; what is it?
What issues to their works address?
Context: What is their connections to their times: education, the prevailing issues at the beginnings of their careers; their milieu – where they lived, impact of their personal life and their friendship

How has their work grown and how has it affected each other and those around them? What larger issues does their work address? What is its significance in terms of the artworld and the larger world? What do I think about the work? How has it affected me?

Third frame: editing    

Length: Keeping within word count is a problem. It also involves difficult choices about what to talk about and what not to. Some writers, like myself, will make some choices about positive or negative aspects of the work in relationship to the length of the article

Clarity: The most important part of an editor’s job is to clarify. Writers simply don’t have the distance to always know when their writing is unclear. Sometimes that means rearranging the parts of a piece so that ideas follow, and sometimes it means adding sentences, or examples, and sometimes just deleting because it can’t be clarified within word count.

Editor’s point of view: Unfortunately, editorial decisions shape everything that is written, and that is done on the basis of power. The editor decides what to accept and reject, and that is on the basis of his/her taste, the magazine’s editorial policies, and its commercial ramifications. Institutions that advertise have a better chance of getting covered. Censorship is a problem, although editors will lop off sections of a piece by claiming that it’s too long. For this article, the editors and I had differences of opinion about what is important to talk about, and they deleted whole sections of my writing and asked me to consider their questions. We had to negotiate what got put back in, and which of their questions I would not address. Some of the factors have to do with making a convincing case for what you want to do; some have to do with how respected a writer you are; and some are just plain about power.

Different kinds of critics and criticism – each has its place, its strengths and weaknesses

Different points of view of the writer, usually reflections of training. A strong point of view and in-depth education can enhance the writing and the understanding of the work or it can be limiting, depending upon the critic.

Journalism – a reporter writing about art

Art historian – comes from a perspective of history, or a larger institutional frame. Places within a framework of history or contemporary ideas. Tends to try to identify trends, to put individual art into a perspective that would identify categories of medium, or ideas, or ideologies. Ex: Linda Nochlin; Energism, PostModernism, Jerry Salz - painting

Theoretician – holds a strong theoretical position and tends to limit writing to those artists who deal with the theories, or kinds of art, that they consider to be significant. Either they ignore all others, or they criticize artists who don’t make art according to their views. Certain feminists, cultural critics, and formalists fall into this category. Ex: Hal Foster vs Hans Haacke

Practitioner – There are a few artist/writers who write from an artist’s point of view.The practitioner may pay close attention to the art itself
Understanding of the process
Pay attention to relationships among artists intentions, whether it is achieved and how, and how the viewer responds.
A good practitioner is informed by theory, but may not sift the art through her favorite theories

I strongly believe that artists can only have power over their own work if they insist on writing and curating, and on determining the parameters of both.

However, the downside is that practitioners may not be skilled writers, they may not understand the editorial process, they may not be strongly grounded historically or theoretically, or have their own pet theories which are tied to their own art-making practices. Practitioners are often held in suspicion by other parts of the artworld because of the danger of a narrow point of view and the possibility of uninformed or narcissistic practitioners only curating or writing about work that enhances their own work or using writing to enhance their position as an artist.

Different outlets for writing: each has its own readership and advertising base. The writing is focused for the audience and really needs to be read with that understanding and expectation.

Newspapers

For a general reader (NY Times is 12th grade). I think the Tribune is written at about a 6th grade level. If a writer tries to write artspeak for a newspaper, he will be fired, or at the very least, his article will be re-written. Generally more descriptive; tends to contextualize the work. Evaluation is more important than analysis because its function is to tell the reader if the art is worth looking at.There are also local newspapers, like the Reader, that allows a longer word count and is less heavily edited, or New City, with a tiny amount of space allocated for a review.

The section where it is published is also a factor – if it appears in the food section, for instance, a picture of food would be more important than what the art is about.

General magazines –like the New Yorker, do in-depth articles which expect the reader to know something about culture, but do talk about art in a way that explains and generalizes. Magazines like Chicago Magazine are more interested in stories about the art rather than an in-depth analysis of the work or the show.

Art magazines – like the New Art Examiner – may be heavy into description, evaluation, and analysis within a more tightly defined area of interest. Their language may use more jargon (although Art in America doesn’t) and may be harder to read if you don’t know artspeak. They are sometimes less culturally sophisticated, however. Magazines like October uses academic and theoretical jargon that almost dismisses the art in favor of the theory, and the way of writing really only invites the initiated to read it.

In the early 80s, Chicago was still divided into the Imagist/Abstractionist camps, which I thought was silly, especially since neither position interested me as an artist. Encouraged by my artist friends, who thought that I was more articulate than they, I decided to try to write about the things that I thought were important.

Art writing as a career is almost as competitive as exhibiting art, and it requires the same kind of scrambling for jobs. It requires developing skills as a writer, keeping up with what is happening, developing a clear theoretical and ideological position, and finding places to publish you work, which includes amassing a portfolio of published work.