"Say Who I Am" by Maria Fusco
Maria Fusco, in her article/podcast "Say Who I Am," she makes some very good points about reimagining objects of art and writing around them. There is often a tendency in academic writing, particularly about the arts, to unravel the object, and to demonstrate that we understand the meaning or importance of the object. However, what Fusco argues is that we need to insert ourselves into our understanding of the object, and write about it academically by inserting our own biases and interpretations into it. In this way, the reader gets a part of ourselves from the piece as well, rather than a clinical dissection of the art object in question. She places a great emphasis on 'reading and writing the object simultaneously', reasoning backward in order to discuss the factors that led to the creation of the art object and our own relationship with it.
Whenever we write about art, we place a bit of ourselves into the criticism as well - when we like or dislike something so subjective, there are psychological and aesthetic reasons behind it, denoting our preferences or tastes. To that end, the personal is always with us when we write about art. In an academic sense, this must be presented through the lens by which we view the object, whilst not making it about us either. In short, if I do not like a painting because I do not like the sociopolitical elements of its composition, I have to find that framework and write about the object through that framework, not merely reducing it to "I don't like it because (blank)." In the latter form, it ceases to become academic writing and is just an art critic's review.
2. Introductions and Conclusions - from -Academic Writing- by Janet Giltrow In Nam Nguyen's paper, the introduction demonstrates the author's own personal sense of derive, where they use detail and first-person narrative to depict the steps and attributes taken when denoting their own Drift. There is a substantial amount of knowledge and reference to previous authors there; the biggest problem I see is contextualization. By ending the introduction with so many quotes, framed by a desire to enact what is quoted, it comes across as a desire to understand the material, which implies a knowledge deficit. However, their conclusion is extremely effective, as they frame the aforementioned knowledge about art in the public space once more to their own personal perspective.
Julie Beugin's paper begins with a succinct and effective dictionary definition of 'ideal'; however, the followup question (whether or not ideals can exist in the mind) is not given context, as it merely doubts the dictionary definition of the word. The rest of the paragraph also describes her art technique in her painting with great and florid detail, but the last sentence does not sum up the ideas or how they connect to the ideal (in fact, the first sentence of her second paragraph does that job, and should be moved up to the first). The conclusion is somewhat invaded by the previous paragraphs' mentions of novels that she uses in comparison to her work, but would be better served more concretely linking their notion of the ideal with what she does in her painting.
