"A Short Guide to Writing about Art" by Sylvan Barnet

Amazon

Writing my Landscape essay this year proved less difficult than I had expected, although I prevaricated for months before finally sitting down and writing the first draft.  This should not be too surprising, I have written final year degree papers, a Ph.D. Thesis, numerous scientific papers, and a bunch of marketing crap I would rather forget.  However, to date almost all of my writing has been technical and essentially based upon the idea of presenting a thesis (or theory) and then progressively substantiating that proposition with scientific evidence.

Writing about art is a very different activity, requiring alternate approaches and strategies.  When I wrote about Gursky I tried to imagine myself as a feature writer for a broadsheet newspaper, writing an in depth review of an artist.  I essentially posed a question in almost tabloid fashion and then set out to explain why this was so, ending with another open question.  Evidently this worked, my tutor was quite happy and no revisions were requested, both surprising and very relieving.

So far so good, but I do recognize the need to further improve my writing and in particular my organization of material that I include in essays.  I also need a better understanding of the different approaches to writing about art, criticism versus research, comparative studies versus single artist retrospectives.

"A Short Guide To Writing about Art" by Sylvan Barnet has provided many of the answers I was seeking.  This very well structured and remarkably readable book provides a straightforward guide to all forms of writing.  The book encompasses critical essays, single work critiques, comparatives,  exhibition reviews, catalog entries, and research papers.

Barnet illustrates the text with example phrases, paragraphs, even complete student essays.  This enables a potentially dry subject to come alive and gave me the opportunity to see quality essays written by other students.  A key challenge of remote learning is the lack of an easy path to compare ones own work with that of other students.  With our photographic work we have forums such as Flikr that hint at what other students are doing, there exists no such thing for written work.  I think I heard of a plan by the OCA to exhibit some of the better student essays as a reference point, but see no evidence so far.

In addition to a clear guide to writing the author also provides a brief introduction to the major themes in contemporary art writing, essentially setting out a series of possibilities upon which an essay might be based.  These themes also serve to provide a potted guide to the key issues in art and I have to admit I found them both illuminating and entertaining.

Throughout the the author provides a set of essay dos and don'ts, touching on grammar, punctuation, style, 1st versus 3rd person, paragraph design, and capitalization guides to artistic terminology.  She goes a step further and also addresses cultural issues that need to be treated sensitively such as gender, race, sexuality, and even the perjorative use of the word primitive when applied to Tribal art.

Overall this is an excellent guide to the process of writing about art, in my view it contains the essential knowledge needed for writing an OCA essay.  I can only wish I had found the damn book before writing about Andreas Gursky.  This small volume is set to become a well used reference book as I work towards the 3rd year courses.