So today we're in that Palmer Museum of
Art and
we're gonna talk about a question I
often asked,
"how do you grade art?" and I think the 
reason the questions asked so often is
people feel that art is a form of
personal expression
and
how can one possibly grade something
that's so personal about one's thoughts
and feelings about the world they live in?
One of the first things I often
talk about with the class is the
difference between subjectivity and
objectivity.
Obviously subjectivity is one's own
personal
sort of basis and preferences and
objectivity is
something more sort of universal
truth that
basically everyone agrees on. So it's
interesting standing here in this museum
and wondering how the pieces
got here in the museum. There had to
be some sort of betting system that had
to do with that
quality and who thought the pieces were
worse strong enough to be in the museum.
In talking about grading one of the
things I've used in terms evaluation
came out of a discussion or seller
discussions from a friend and colleague
Charles Grant
and using the four C's is sort of a
criteria
for whether something works or not. And
those four C's
the craft how you make something and
then
the creativity and how innovative it is and
then the content
in terms of the idea or concept and
composition, how things are sort of
organized.
Usually the one this most easily
understood is that
the craft of something how someone make
something with their hands
and often I've heard that as a criteria
when I'm actually in a museum and I've
overheard people talking and someone
will lean and say "Marge, I could do that
why is that here it's just
splattered paint or something."
And they have a understanding of a sort of
technical virtuosity.
But it's more than just technical
virtuosity.
It's also as I said before about
the content,
the composition, the creativity and one could
argue that the the most
significant work of art in the 20th
century in terms and influence on other
artists
was in fact the first ready made or
found object.
Marcel Duchamp's fountain, which was
actually a urinal
that was shown in 1917 in New York City.
People were wondering how why is this in
the gallery and
you had a huge influence on the rest the
20th century art and to this day
and countless artists abuse found
objects in appropriated them in
incorporated and into their artwork. So
those
are the ways that one tries to evaluate
work
and lastly I think how people view art
is basically what you know is what you
see
and so hopefully the more one knows the
more they'll see.
 
