TAKING NOTE
Art Criticism in an ‘Adult-Free
World’
by Jacob Hale Russell ‘05, Harvard Crimson Arts Editor
Cultural crtitic Lincoln Kirstein ’29 once likened the arts at
Harvard to a “playpen for young gentlemen.” Students and
administrators alike cite the laissez-faire treatment by the administration—which
grants near-total autonomy to the hundreds of student practitioners and
dozens of performance groups on campus—as simultaneously the worst
and the best aspect of Harvard arts.
If the practice of the arts is fundamentally about growth—both maturation
for an individual creator and development of the artwork itself—such momentum
is generated by the kind of experiments unsupervised students make. Undergraduates
frequently talk about how they want to “push the envelope” or “do
the next big thing.” For example, nearly every performance in the Loeb
Experimental Theater (note even the name of Harvard’s most popular theater
space) adapts a traditional text in a very unexpected style.
In some sense, student artists are toddlers, and
I don’t mean that pejoratively.
They’re just beginning to find their footing, and have light years to journey
in the development of their professional craft—however talented they may
be, and many are quite talented. Still, they show the same kind of stubbornness
a toddler shows in refusing to be told he can’t do something. Against their
complaints about not enough faculty and professional mentors, many students say
they would reject outright much input from adults and prefer to go it alone.
With the exception of this fall’s much strengthened
Visiting Director’s
Project, students demand autonomy when it comes to the Loeb Mainstage and largely
resist adult involvement. Plenty of students do work with groups under professional
guidance—like the staff conductor-directed bands, or dance classes taught
by professionals—but many students possess a strong desire to take charge
of their own art.
This essentially supervision-free environment poses an exciting challenge to
the Crimson’s coverage of Harvard arts. As the newspaper’s arts chair,
I find the most common complaints are about our reviews and criticism, especially
when a writer has responded negatively to a work. We switched to a columnist
format last spring: three theater critics, a visual arts critic, and a music
critic review all student shows, while the old system assigned reviews to any
arts writer upon request. This new format has promoted consistency in the tone
of reviews and developed reviewer personalities with a distinct perspective.
Based on feedback, the change has been a success.
Yet two questions linger: first, does one student have the authority to lambaste
another student’s work, and, second, how can we balance support versus
criticism, when it is hardly clear whether developing student artists’ work
should be held to an “adult” standard.
Some thoughts come to mind. First, just as a violinist in the Harvard-Radcliffe
Orchestra experiences a microcosm of the world of professional orchestras, our
reviewers practice the art of criticism. At Harvard the study of the craft of
criticism applies to both reviewer and artist. Our reviewers hone their eye and
style; meanwhile, undergraduate artists learn to deal with the media, in terms
of public relations as well as how to graciously handle a review they may disagree
with.
On the second point, I would argue that Crimson Arts by definition advocates
for student art, simply by spotlighting it when no other publication does. And
criticism is a form of support; if correctly done, it raises standards of performance
by promoting self-evaluation.
But our role as critics is to evaluate art for a prospective audience, and that
means holding a performance or a painting to high standards. (Of course, there
must be room for error in student work, which audiences anticipate; growth can
come from mistakes, though I have more than once heard Harvard students criticized
for being far too afraid of failure.) The criteria we use for judging work are,
I think, no more stringent than the standards most students hold for themselves.
There is still more than enough room at Harvard for amateur work—witness
the outgrowth of a capella groups of all levels—and many student artists
have no intention of becoming professionals.
One other quirk of this adult-free art world in which student artists must quickly
grow up relates to the politics behind the arts world. Most artists and administrators
will tell you the single biggest problem facing Harvard arts is the space crunch—students
say they desperately need more rehearsal, performance, studio, and exhibition
space. Though on a day-to-day level the Office for the Arts does much of the
advocating for student needs, undergraduates also do their own lobbying at the
highest layers of administration, perhaps more so than in any other extracurricular
realm. For instance, dancers fighting for a space to replace the Rieman Center
for the Performing Arts have had private audiences with everyone from College
deans to University President Lawrence H. Summers.
Students have found that having no coaches means they’ve had to step up
and learn the politics that lurk beneath the art world’s surface—a
lesson, no doubt, that will serve them in the professional world, whether as
artists or investment bankers.
