The Critique Handbook Reading Summarized

I found the reading very interesting and informational. The reading starts talking about form and content and how they are related and unrelated. Some see form and content as one and are able to put together the complete composition while others see the focus on either form or content. The form is the shape, size, color, etc. while the content is more of the narrative style, what you read and feel when you look at the composition. The reading goes on to talk about abstract and abstraction. You can think of abstract as a verb as in to "pull away" from reality. You can also think of abstract being on one end of a line and representation as being on the other. The composition can be located on any point of that line depending on what it actually is. Using a quote from the reading we can continue on with the summary: "The very idea of a sculpture (or painting) that resists "reminding one of something else" is the essence of the self-referential work, a work that can only be assessed formally, and where the content is its shape, color, material, weight, and arrangements of its part in composition". Its very hard these days to actually create an abstract composition due to people associating your work with something. The reading goes on to discuss realism vs. abstraction and then defines realism. Realism has recently had questions that influence todays realists that differ from previous realists. Then the reading goes on to describe paintings and how they are made and what actually makes a painting. The internal parts of a painting (and all compositions in general) involve lines, colors, fields, etc. as with all compositions in general. The reading describes lines, colors, compositions, and fields in depth and provides us with things to think about that in general I haven't thought about. For example the way a line can be interpreted by the way it is displayed. The reading then describes the edges, scale, and format of paintings and the logic involved in them. Then the reading goes on to describe other things about paintings involving a professor that was able to see a hesitation in the students works due to the values used and the way they were applied in that area. Painting as representation describes the techniques and gestures used to create the effects of representation and then what the representation was made from... photos, mirrors, etc... Then the reading talks about painting as presentation and painting as Flat Surface. Painting as presentation means that paintings can be presented in just about any way they need to be to show what they mean.