Critical Performance: The purpose is to eliminate our "like-dislike" "good-bad" reflex and take the time to more fully look at and respond to the work. This process can't be learned in a day - it's a skill to be developed over a lifetime.

• description (things): lines, shapes, colors, textures - not naming (clouds, hands, trucks)
• analysis (relationships): repetition, depth, focus (sweet spot), alignment
• interpretation (meaning):
• judgment (importance):

Edmund Burke Feldman developed this approach in Varieties of Visual Experience: Art as Image and Idea (1971).

In Class DESCRIPTION Exercise:

1. Click and Look at the above for one full minute. Try not to judge or think in words ;-) Try not to think at all. Don't worry. Focus your attention.
2. For 2 minutes: List the things (lines, shapes, colors, textures) that you observe. Just write - don't evaluate what you are writing. No one else will ever see your list.
3. Set the paper aside.
4. Next we will repeat the actitivy as a group... Leslye will record responses.
5. Re-read your list. Cross out those items that name a subject, or indicate a judgment.

Further Study:

Winter Red source file