A thousand words for your pictures

March 11, 2013 9:16 PM

Help me find excellent writing about visual arts.

I have an English student that is very bright and has excellent ideas, but they are a very visual learner. They really struggle to put their ideas into words, and the kinds of language they tend to use suggest to me that they can visualise the answer but their words fail.

With that in mind I would like to show this student examples of excellent writing from people that are obviously strong in their appreciation of visuals (a strong visual aesthetic sense, I guess), who also have an excellent way with words.

I imagine something like a writer that reviews the aesthetics of fashion, architecture, graphic design, dance, or any other heavily visual creative art. Web-based would be preferable to magazine subscriptions.

My hope is that encouraging them to read more writing in this style will help quicken the synapses between words and images in their mind, and hopefully give them a style to emulate that they can more readily connect with.

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I'll also read with interest any suggestions fellow English teachers have for making 'picture smart' kids more 'word smart.'

posted by man down under to writing & language (10 answers total)

By English student, you mean a native speaker in a literature / language arts class? Colossal often links to decent text explaining art pieces showcased there. I'd bet there are tons of comic book blogs that make strong connections between text and visuals, but the one that leaps to mind is the Forbidden Planet blog, which is spotty. You might also suggest Ways of Seeing, a well-scripted visual arts documentary (also available in book form) by the extremely articulate John Berger.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 10:00 PM on March 11

How about Roger Ebert? And if not his written words, then what about some film commentary? I've heard his lectures on Citizen Kane and Dark City, and they're really excellent.
posted by carsonb at 10:16 PM on March 11

Just to clarify: Native speaker studying VCE English (arts, not foreign language) in Victoria, Australia.
posted by man down under at 10:54 PM on March 11

Clothes on Film
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:55 PM on March 11

The author of "The Shock of the New" is an Australian. It's a fantastic book loaded with images.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:02 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]

Leo Steinberg, Other Criteria.
posted by londongeezer at 5:07 AM on March 12

Also by Robert Hughes...Nothing If Not Critical: Essays on Art and Artists.
Fantastic and entertaining reading.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:24 AM on March 12

Peter Schjeldahl's collection of his New Yorker magazine art reviews; Let's See, might be a good idea. He's a poet and it shows in the writing. The review I linked to will give a good idea of his strengths and weaknesses as an art critic.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 6:05 AM on March 12

This is a different approach than what you're asking for, but maybe it would be helpful for him to do written assignments based on images, if that's possible/appropriate with the structure of the class you're teaching. For example, my favorite short story that I wrote in high school was inspired by this Degas painting. I enjoyed writing to begin with, but beginning with an image as a reference and a point of departure was a complete game-changer for me.

If he has great ideas that he's just not able to organize and express in a cohesive way, maybe there is an intermediate step he can take to create some kind of visual map or diagram connecting parts of ideas, to help him structure his thoughts, and then move on to the writing.
posted by ella_minnow at 10:37 AM on March 12

I was also going to suggest ways of Seeing, but as that's been mentioned, I'll add About Looking, also by John Berger.

As for critics I was thining just the other day about Jerry Salz, who has been writing really terrific art criticism for the last couple years.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:06 PM on March 12