How to Deal with Art Competitions for Students

jeff zhou

Written After the Scholastic Art Awards Ceremony –
II. Is There A Common Judging Standard For Artworks

Written and translated by Jeff Zhou on 03/1/2017 and updated on 2/1/2021

Edited by Christa Niver, winner of 2019 Scholastic Art Awards National Gold Medal in Fashion Design, and current undergraduate student in class of 2024 at Parsons School of Design

Art students have the courage to display their artworks in national art competitions, some even win awards, which is, of course, gratifying.

However, since participating in the competition, then "victory or defeat is a common matter for soldiers." Winning the grand prize is naturally joyous, but there are still many possibilities for our biggest efforts which do not get the judges' attention….

It remembers me the famous motto the prominent ancient Chinese philosopher, politician and legalist scholar Shang Yang wrote more than 2,300 years ago in The Book of Lord Shang: "the king of soldiers, no arrogant after victory; no complaint after defeat.…"

This is very important for our young contest participants to keep in mind. In fact, it is puerile to depend on art competitions simply for the sake of winning.

Furthermore, does art have a common judging standard that can distinguish artworks, to simply put it, as good and bad?

The answer is, "no."

Therefore, whenever I saw my students’ artworks hanging above the center stage in the ceremonies of the Scholastic Art Awards, I was always very proud of them; however, I always feel dumbfounded about the art competition itself and always have a deeper feeling in my mind.

1.

Art has always been a part of culture in human history. It is a way for humans to understand the world, keep pace with the times, and communicate with the world. In any era, art itself should be difficult to have standards of judgement, and the existing standards of judgement are often far behind the times. Therefore, collecting contemporary painters’ artworks is almost a huge gambling. Almost all great artists were impoverished during their lifetimes, and only became famous after deaths.

Our so-called standards refer to judging the quality and value of artworks. Generally speaking, they refer to whether the artworks properly execute the subject in terms of technique or form. However, these are all within the scope of a very individual, just as there is no standard for beauty itself, different cultures, regions, races, ages, and time periods will have different understandings of beauty.

In art history, ancient people could draw numerous animals on the cave walls in Altamira, Spain as religious or witchcraft rituals. Although the aesthetic standards at that time were widely different from today, those cave paintings, which were more than 10,000 years old, are still the most beautiful and colorful artworks that are appreciated to this day. Could it be that because we understand the painters are from ancient times, we give up our standards of modern art critique and tolerate the ancient artworks?
　　
After the 17th century, the judging standards of Western art were controlled by the royal power. Therefore, Academicism, Court Art, and Aristocratic Art became the dictators’ judging standards. In fact, in those times when there were no cameras, Biblical paintings and portraits of nobles became the highest caliber of fine arts. Therefore, "likeness" is a must.
　　
In the above painting, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780 – 1867), the last master of Classicism, paid greater attention to details. His lines of models on his paintings were always clean and sexy; the shape of his models was always pure and elegant. There was a kind of indifferent beauty outside of real life. The Academy of Fine Arts, led by Ingres, dictated the art standard of the time and scoffed at the various upcoming art schools. There had been several heated debates between the newly French Romantic school representative Delacroix and Ingres. Ingres’ Classicism emphasized the completeness of the outline and the rigor of the composition, while Delacroix's Romanticism emphasized the use of color and unrestrained brushworks. Of course, with the progress of human history, Classicism was eventually trampled by Romanticism, and the standard of art judgement had also undergone yet another newly changes.

The Neoclassical and Romantic aesthetic standards were broken by the invention and application of the camera after the Industrial Revolution. Impressionism painters created a unique aesthetic that eliminated the use of "shape-likeness" as the judging standard. Impressionism fired the first shot at the traditional aesthetic standards that have survived for hundreds of years.

When Ingres’ Academics still “replicated” Napoleon indoors, then Oscar-Claude Monet (1840 – 1926) would have already painted his wife in the outdoor sunlight and studied the colors of the real world. When facing the father of Impressionism’s work, we have to admit that Impressionism is serious about color.
　　
Even today, the aesthetic standards created by Impressionists are still used in art training in the art and design academies around the world. However, from the perspective of historical development, Impressionism is only recognized and believed by only a few professionals in our society. The theory of Impressionism has never been as well-known and as popular as the traditional classical aesthetic principles. Even the average visitors who often visit the art museums will not admire the Impressionism artworks more than the Classicism ones.

Therefore, the aesthetic standards and artworks of Classicism are in fact still generally accepted by society. As a result, there is a disunity between the public and professionals on standards and aesthetics of art.
　　
Although this chaos was not a bad thing for art, the problem was far from over. It seemed that the God of art felt that this was not chaotic enough, so when we entered the 20th century, contemporary art declared that it would exclude all existing traditional art standards. These "traditional art standards" include the Classical and modern art traditions. Frankly speaking, all traditional fine arts and artistic concepts, including traditional art forms, belong to the agricultural society and the early industrial society, which have been completely decoupled from contemporary society.
　　
Since traditional art standards are no longer applicable to modern society, art has to find a way to adapt.

From the point of view of Modernism, contemporary art has no more untouchable standards because art forms are now diverse. They are not only diverse in ideas, but of forms, mediums, and functions. Characteristics of contemporary art are not entangled with shape and form only; there is no rule that binds the creation of art. Contemporary art often uses some new concepts such as multimedia communication and the recognition of common images to sharply intervene in society and shock people.
　　
There are many masterpieces of contemporary art around the town we are living. When relatives and friends come to visit me, I always like to drive 45 miles south from Princeton and take them to 1500 Market Street in Philadelphia to see Claes Oldenburg’s (1929- ) Clothespin. At the same time, we could borrow the Clothespin to pray for the love between us.
　　

Above SEPTA's City Hall subway station, the Clothespin sculpture allows thousands of viewers to appreciate it every day. Due to the sun and dew, the velvety texture turns into a warm reddish brown, while the silver "spring" part is similar to the number "76" which reflects the soul of Philadelphia. This work is often compared to "Hugging Lover" in Constantine Brancusi's sculpture "The Kiss of Philadelphia Art".

Here, Claes Oldenburg transformed a mundane daily necessity into an eternal work of art, turning the worldly things into an environmental sculpture. He called it a "sculpture monument" and hoped to use them to replace the traditional, too solemn and indifferent classical monumental sculptures. He hoped to use this familiar and friendly monumental sculpture to repair the income gaps of urban residents. He wanted to change the history of art. And he did. He did so not only because he was an artist, but because he was a revolutionary thinker.

When talking about his artworks, Oldenberg once said, “I used simple imitations, not because I lack imagination, nor because I want to talk about daily life. I imitate, 1. Objects and 2. created objects, for example, signs, objects made without the intention, but are simply contained with contemporary magical functions, which allows me to further develop these things through my unpretentious simplicity. To enrich their strength and further carefully handle their relationship, I don’t want to make them into art. This must be made clear first. I have a teaching purpose to imitate these things because I want people to feel the power of ordinary objects.” He also interestingly said, " my rule was not to paint things as they were. I wasn’t copying; I was remaking them as my own.”

Therefore, contemporary art is a brand-new comprehensive art form established in the information age, high-tech age, and multimedia age; it is for this reason that we are lucky enough to see dazzling art installation, video art, comprehensive material art, and more.

For many, this is not art at all. Some people feel that the standards of art have completely collapsed, and the bottom lines are gone. "The God of Art is really dead."

2.

Since art does not have a common standard of judging, how can art competition be used to distinguish the quality of the artworks?

It’s similar to not having a judging standard to tell who’s the better musician or artist between Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, or between Mahler and Dvorak, or among Monet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Rothko, Picasso, and more. In their times, these artists often couldn't even enter an official art exhibition, not to mention receiving an award.

Taking ten thousand steps back, if music can still be tested with certain performance skills and dance can still be measured with certain prescribed movements, then fine arts, as Claes Oldenburg said, have thrown techniques away and only played with forms and thoughts of an artist.

Only when art is quantified, such as when it appears to be quantified by actual function; or, when dance appears to be quantified by the jumping height or the number of rotations, then we can have a fair and unified standard to judge, to compete, and to tell which artwork or dancer is a better one than the others with the preset goals.

But, it's a pity that by this time, these artworks don’t seem to belong to pure fine arts anymore. They might belong to, more likely, the categories of design. Or, it might not be dance art anymore, instead, it entered the categories of acrobatic competition.

3.

Student E was a high school student who was a deep thinker with her personal stories and her talents. She started to learn painting from me as an 8th grade student in September 2014. Half a year later, she suddenly found her zone while she was painting a still life fish during a color lesson one night. I could only see her brushstrokes dancing with her body, the kind of free movements on the painting with the happiness of the whole world. Since then, nothing could stop her art learning journey. Many of her artworks and designs have won awards or have been selected for publications.

In 2016, E also participated in the 2017 Scholastic Art Awards with her self-portrait class assignment "Enlighten Me" in the Drawing & Illustration category. In her drawing, E was holding unloaded holiday lights, as if she wanted to smell the festive atmosphere on the lanterns for the last time. From her vivid eyes we can clearly see her sadness and helplessness due to the end of the holiday season. At the same time, it is also a kind of wandering, confused and expecting of her own future...

We couldn't help but ask, in E's world, could the holiday lights only illuminate her heart? I understand the personal story of E. She has a loving family, but her heart does carry much more responsibility than other students of the same age. She is a strong and optimistic girl. So, every time I watched her " Enlighten Me ", it touched me every time...

What a pity! Such an excellent artwork missed the any award in the 2017 Scholastic Art Awards, making people sigh.

Fortunately, E never looked disappointed in her temporary result, but accepted more joy from painting. Two years later, in the 2019 Scholastic Art Awards, she won 6 awards from the Honorable Mention to Silver and Gold Keys:

At the end of 2018, E was admitted by Johns Hopkins University early decisions. Her future is a promising one. I am so proud of her.

Student M is another good girl with multidisciplinary activities. Everyone likes her. The difference with E was that she only studied painting from me less than a year before applying for college. Obviously, she lacked many basic painting skills at that time. However, with her talent and wit, she still managed to find a master artist whom she liked, František Kupka (1871 – 1957). So, for an assignment for her high school’s AP Art Studio course, she created a portfolio titled "Me & Kupka", and she worked on her inner understanding of the master. Then, we gradually developed her own life and dream mixed with the Kupka styles.

Although "Me & Kupka" did not win the 2017 Scholastic Art Awards, her high school, the Stuart Country Day School, conducted a duo art exhibition for her. Her all-around creative talents helped M get into University of Pennsylvania in December 2016, an early admission which was 7 months before her high school graduation:

It seems that at least one thing is certain, since art has no common judging standard from ancient times, that excellent artworks can be completely ignored by the judges.

After all, does it really matter for our students to win awards? Take a look at our students: some of them are school athletes and some are ballet dancers. They spend an hour or two learning art together each week. They are studying drawing, color painting, and designing. Every week, they are learning a life skill; they are gaining treasures from human history; they are not only recording their youthful appearance and lush dreams, but also designing industrial products that can benefit mankind, leaving precious diaries for their own lives with happiness---are not these more important than anything else?

Student I is a born artist. She has her own ambitious long-term goal towards her art learning journey. She enjoyed art contests but never took the competition results too heavily. To the results of art contests, she always had a “poker face”: she was never over excited when she won awards or was very disappointed when she missed the awards, which she was entitled to earn.

Sure enough, I's dedication to art and her artistic talent finally came to the attention of the admissions officers in the national top art & design colleges, such as the School of Art Institute of Chicago(SAIC), Pratt Institute, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and more. In the spring of 2020, she accepted the undergraduate program at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), a world’s top 4 ranked art and design college! I am so happy for her.

E, M, I and our other students are not only the true winners in our art studio, what they did over the years for their own bright future is way larger than trophies could hold.

Written here, I once again hope that all my graduates will achieve academic success and be healthy and happy forever!

Written here, it seems that the aphorism of Shang Yang written in Chinese official calligraphy with rich black ink has been rolled out in my mind with a golden background:

" The king of soldiers, no arrogant after victory; no complaint after defeat.…"