Growing from Feedback – A Handbook for Emerging Artists

How should I engage with and process feedback?

Processing feedback can be challenging; someone’s remarks might have hurt you or left you dumbfounded about what to do next. To process feedback satisfyingly, consider the general three-step approach to challenges: to prepare, to create agency, and to review what happened.

Consider reading the following three chapters:

How do I review a feedback session?

“Reviewing a feedback session” is one of the three important parts you need to care about when having a feedback session (the other two are “preparing for feedback” and “creating agency”).

Understand the feedback to consist of preparation and performance, both of which should ultimately be reviewed by you. You can see the entirety of this as an operetta consisting of three acts, with the final one again being under your control. Review the entire situation and cadence in order to understand your personal key takeaways: your preparation, your performance, and the specific feedback.

This can help you transcend the emotionality of the actual feedback round, and let you come to your own conclusions on how to proceed. Sidestepping the post-mortem won’t make the feedback less important, but risks appropriating the feedbacker’s words, without filtering them properly through your own set of values. Doing so will let you understand and form your own set of values.

Consider the following:

Replay: If you recorded the conversation, take time to listen to it after some days or weeks. You’ll most likely spot parts that you didn’t notice during the actual conversation; undercurrents that your memory might have suppressed. Even if you don’t have an audio recording, the notes that you (or a colleague) took will usually bring back specific memories of the conversation. Retrace the conversation with the goal to understand the intention of what was said; this is important to judge whether the feedbacker’s propositions matter to you.
Look for facts: Find statements that describe the feedbacker’s factual experiences: “Your work obviously references the composition of X, but by removing y, it seems to miss the original artist’s point”. “You appropriate a political cause where I don’t personally see your experience or credibility”. These might be perfect opportunities to dive into the mentioned references or criticisms: the better you know (and can express) your work and the thinking behind it, the more you’ll be able to discuss it at eye level; this in turn will help you to dig ever deeper into your art’s rabbit hole.
- Filter out personal statements: Learn to differentiate hollow from deeper factual feedback (“I simply love your work!”, “I really don’t like this way of work”, “Maybe you should try a different medium, since this one doesn’t seem to work for you” are examples of statements with low actionable value, and thus offer little reason to change your course. The feedbacker’s personal opinion might feel important to themselves (and you), and might actually be important. They might be on to something that they can’t express verbally – yet obviously, specific reasons for their thinking would let you trace their intentions way better (and let you judge whether they are applicable to you).
- Filter out negativity and allegations: Understand that even the worst and most destructive feedback can be turned into a learning opportunity – by stepping back and unemotionally working through whatever “facts” were delivered. Understand which of them might be meaningful to you.
Judge the feedbacker’s performance: Find out whether you, your intentions and reasons were noticed (eg. “Compared to your work from last time, I see that you focused X”, “Could you explain your reasons for doing Y?”, “What references did you have in mind when doing these works?”, “Are you aware of the work of X, and how yours relates to it?”). Judge whether strategies were offered to continue from here (if not, ask yourself what actions you could derive from the feedback). What artists, art works, curators, exhibitions, books or magazine articles were recommended (or are now on your radar without having been recommended) to progress further? What can you learn about the feedbacker and their character that might help you to be better prepared the next time? Will you be able to anticipate their future reaction?
Judge your performance: Judge whether your work introduction and answers were satisfactory, or whether your nervousness, lack of preparation etc might have let you slip. How can you improve your performance for the next round?

How can I create agency in a feedback session?

“Creating agency” is one of the three important parts you need to care about when having a feedback session (the other two are “preparing for feedback” and “reviewing a feedback session”).

Even though your work will be discussed by someone else, this doesn’t mean that you should be passive. Strive to create agency in feedback situations: by preparing for the situation (the previous point), by anticipating the course of the discussion, and by knowing that in the end it will be you who will analyze, and thus judge the feedback’s quality.
Consider the following steps:

Record the conversation: Recording the conversation lets you relive and review it at your convenience. This is easily done with your smartphone or tablet, and doesn’t require dedicated equipment or microphones. Before you record anything, make sure to ask for permission; be prepared to explain your intention: to review the feedback, and to more efficiently progress forward. You can even mention your nervousness, which sometimes results in you forgetting what was said.
If you can’t record, consider writing down your thoughts during the feedback session – this is something that is always possible, and doesn’t need anyone’s permission. You can even announce it upfront. If you feel embarrassed, or simply aren’t good at writing while listening, ask someone else to take notes for you. Instruct them what to look out for, so that they can focus on what you’re curious about. If you can’t record and don’t have anyone who can take notes for you, then write down your memories right after the feedback session is over.

Understand that recording and note-taking can also act as potent filter to proactively shield you from weird, imbalanced behaviors: awareness of being recorded can create a sort of “invisible authority”, a supporting power that might otherwise not be present.
Explain yourself: Use your prior preparations to now give a quick intro and overview on what you do, and how you understand your work. Explain your references, preferences and frustrations; and ask any specific questions that you might have. How you present your work has the power to influence the feedbacker’s focus. Use this to get feedback on what you most want.
Listen: After having done your preparations and introductions, it’s time to let your work speak for itself, to see where it takes the feedbacker. This is an exciting moment that might have seen you worried, giddy, and maybe even sleepless the previous night. Now listen as your work becomes a platform for someone’s thoughts. Learn to listen neutrally, without taking offense or pride. Don’t antedate the feedbacker’s opinion by interrupting them. Refrain from being dominant or shy; let there be space for the work to speak. This can be especially hard when the feedbacker takes a lot of time without saying anything, or if the work demands a lot of time (as in a performance or video work). Trust in the work you created, and listen.
Expect misunderstandings: Since everyone is and interprets differently, your work often won’t immediately be seen according to your intentions. That’s normal, and the reason why you want external feedback: to increase your knowledge on how to create work that’s concise enough to evoke what you want it to, without requiring your contextualization. It’s OK if, in your apprenticeship phase, your work is deemed to be plagiative, lacking art historical knowledge, etc. Don’t worry about these things – they are the reason why you wanted feedback.
Expect harshness: Even though art is a forum for highly individual content, the art world’s protagonists aren’t free of being judgemental. Even mellow, kind people can misunderstand your intentions, or might have an extremely bad day. In the worst case, you might receive feedback from someone intending to hurt you; for all these reasons, consider shielding yourself mentally from abuse: don’t believe everything that’s said. Don’t transfer authority over your work in general, and specifically not to someone who discusses it insensitively.

If worse comes to worse, consider asking questions like these: “How can you know so surely that the work isn’t good? Who defines what’s ‘good’? How can I know that I should listen to you? What would happen if I don’t? Couldn’t worthwhile work emerge from pursuing my voice further? If I would pursue your path only, wouldn’t this create a copy of your work?“

How do I prepare for a feedback session?

“Preparing for feedback” is one of the three important parts you need to care about when having a feedback session (the other two are “creating agency” and “reviewing a feedback session”).

Feedback is most often given for a selection of works (chosen by you), and tends to consider your verbal contextualization – preparations for a feedback session should therefore at least include these two topics. There are various other things to consider:

Understand your intention: The better you understand your intention, the easier it will be to process the feedback’s result; do you care for the feedbacker to offer art historical contexts, to judge your progress since the last time you met, to acknowledge your improvements in craft, or are you essentially looking for praise? If you’re looking for feedback on specific issues, it makes sense to explicitly say so. If you want general feedback that relies on the feedbacker’s free associations, you might want to state this as well.
Be smart about the selection of work you present: Since feedback is most often given for a selection of works, it pays off to curate this selection wisely. Select works that have a high likelihood of letting the feedbacker grasp what you’re doing, in relation to the feedback that you’re looking for. Don’t go for quantity: select work that represents your current status quo, potentially including a tight selection of past work to visualize your progress and history.
Contextualize the presented work: Understand how to verbally introduce and contextualize the selected work, in order for the feedbacker to understand what you’re up to. Eventually your work should speak for itself – but in an apprenticeship phase (or when talking to someone from a different field), this often isn’t realistic. This also usually helps in building a relationship to the feedbacker, so over time they understand your personality and modes of expression increasingly better.
Try to have original works available: Nothing beats original works; even though professionals know that a reproduction can’t reach the original’s physicality, vibrance, volume or duration, discussing work on reproductions leads to all sorts of misunderstandings.
Understand the feedbacker and their preferences: Understand whom you’re asking for feedback by researching their aesthetic and semantic preferences – this will help you anticipate and understand their feedback, and can guide you when reviewing their advice, and how it might matter to you. It might even help you understand their character: are they benevolent, attentive, eloquent and confident – or insecure, passive-aggressive, sadistic, and weirdly incongruent?

Understand that researching someone’s work can lead to the wrong expectations: people can be more complex than their published work – or way more banal. That’s why it can pay off to ask colleagues about their experiences and assessment; ideally, you could ask a feedbacker upfront: “What art do you enjoy? What does art mean to you? What’s your aim when offering feedback? Do you believe in certain aesthetics to be better or worse than others? Do you care about the person behind the work you criticize? If so, do you feel responsible for how you make them feel?”
Expect implicit feedback: People love to offer advice. Since art raises endless questions (on quality, semantics, ideals etc), artists are bound to receive unsolicited feedback and work discussions at all sorts of events: on social media, at studio visits, at other people’s exhibition openings etc. Being prepared for explicit feedback sessions is one thing; it pays off to be prepared for implicit feedback rounds as well, since this can help you to properly present your work, and process what was said.

How would ideal feedback look like?

Ideal feedback would consider the person behind the work, their condition and progress. It would compare the current iteration to their previous work, while putting it into the proper art historical and societal contexts. It would be highly attentive and radically honest, and offer guidance through specific, actionable feedback (“Read up on the work of X”, “Look into the late works of Y”, “Experiment with wood, now that you focused on metal so much”, “Did you consider using oil instead of acrylics?”) – and would explain why the specific feedback is deemed important.

Ideal feedback would offer contextual criticism: “This doesn’t seem to work as you intended, potentially because you did X”. It wouldn’t speak in absolutes, and thus wouldn’t criticize works as “good” or “bad”, “right” or “wrong” – because these judgements only make sense in the context of specific quality ideals; instead of saying “I like how you did this”, ideal feedback would be drastically more specific: “Since you stated that your goal was to counter stereotype X, using this choice of color makes seems to work in your favor – it puts the piece in an unexpected context”.

Ideal feedback would care about both the artist and the state of art, while acknowledging that all opinions ultimately are subjective: yes, a feedbacker might have more knowledge about various fields (than the person who created the work), but that knowledge might not turn out to be relevant for the specific context or artwork – already because it always has to be the producing artist themselves who has to decide on their work’s quality ideals. Ideal feedback would judge without being judgemental. For all these reasons, ideal feedback is rare.

Safe Space Principles for Feedback

Ideal feedback would follow safe space principles, and would specifically

respect everyone and their creations, and be sensitive to individual, societal and cultural differences;
respect and acknowledge individual emotions;
use attentive, active listening that accepts silence in both feedbacker and artist (finished works are “allowed” to be able to speak for themselves);
use trustful confidentiality – both in one-on-one settings, as well as in group discussions (this can prevent participants from bringing guests unannounced, since the group’s trust matters more than the guest’s curiosity),
challenge the work (or the ideas behind it), not the artist who created it;
accept everything as having equal worth, even if not everyone can understand that worth: it would treat all perspectives as valid.

Processing Feedback

You can’t easily influence who talks to you about your work – if people are moved by it, they will do so even without asking whether it’s appropriate or whether you’re ready for it. Non-ideal feedback will happen. While it’s impossible to always anticipate the quality of feedback, it’s possible to judge exactly that after it happened. This enables you to sift through whatever information was given, to find what’s most valuable for you – enabling you to appropriate what has been said, and develop your own opinions about it. Your humbleness, sensitivity and self-worth are key to processing feedback effectively – to discard what’s irrelevant to you, without missing growth potentials.

Processing feedback represents a balancing act, since it connects the two universes: the feedbacker’s and the artist’s.

The feedbacker’s words rest on one side; they either discuss your work without having being asked by you; or have been contacted by you for specific reasons: your appreciation of their expertise, credibility, authority and/or success.
Your own universe on the other side, which got manifested into an artwork, brimming with expectation, mistakes, and hopes for future works yet uncreated.

Being an Expert

You might lack the expertise, credibility, authority and success of the feedbacker, but are usually an expert in your own life and history. While they might be experts in the field in which you want to improve and progress, they probably aren’t experts in your life, and of your work. They often don’t know why you did what you did. They might not even be interested, but rather care to focus on the medium’s history, and how your work deviates weirdly and wrongly from it. Their cultural, societal, gender- or generation-based background might differ too much to understand the potential of your work.

Depending on their subjective tastes they will applaud, make fun of, or even disregard your work.
Depending on their character and humanity, they might even disregard you, or attack you instead of the artwork (“ad hominem attack”). They might choose graceful or derogatory remarks.

An expert interested in offering ideal feedback will not simply talk positively or negatively about your work, neither of which helps you: if you came for facts and advice, someone’s praise or disapproval doesn’t really help a lot: it’s too obviously subjective, and not at all actionable; instead, it can be seen as lazy way of telling someone off. Someone actually invested in your growth would instead offer various references (art historical, political, semantic, aesthetic, etc) and actionable strategies.

All of this shows that ideal feedback is hard to find. To navigate feedback satisfyingly nevertheless, consider the following chapter.

What’s the anatomy of art feedback?

Artists constantly receive feedback for their work, entirely independently of whether they’re looking for it. Feedback comes in many forms and attitudes, and for all sorts of reasons. It’s most often thought about as a tool to increase insights into one’s work practice: a feedbacker offers thoughts about your creation. Depending on the feedbacker’s knowledge about art history, politics, symbols, metaphors etc, your understanding about your work might increase – which ideally leads to you creating stronger, deeper, more focussed and simply “better” work.

The challenge with feedback lies in the multiplicity of art: because art isn’t monolithic, there can be no clear definitions of what creates a “good” artwork. Resultantly, the feedbacker’s knowledge might simply not be relevant to your aesthetics or vision. In the worst case, their opinions and preferences don’t match yours at all. In case of the feedbacker being in a position of power (eg. an art school teacher), you (a student) might be strongly inclined to favor their comments over your own opinion. This can also happen if you feel insecure about your creation: you might be on to something, but might not yet be strong enough to see or believe in it.

That’s why feedback benefits from people who are radically open-minded, and transparent about their intentions; an ideal feedbacker won’t have their advice be formed by their specific aesthetic and semantic opinions and preferences, but will be able to offer meta advice: if that is the direction you want to head towards, this might be able to get you there. This includes knowledge about the creator’s progress: the better a feedbacker understands the creator’s intentions and history, the better they might be able to offer advice on how to improve their work, according to its (and not theirs) inner logic – aesthetics, semantics, materials, etc. In contemporary art, the worst feedback is one that aims towards specific aesthetical goals, and wants to transfer them to a creator.

The ideal feedback setting is similar to a therapeutic safe space: both parties can rely on openness and transparency, aimed to increase enlightenment.

Intentions

Feedback benefits from understanding the intentions of both the feedbacker and the person seeking feedback:

Ideally, a feedbacker would want to help you get deeper into your work, and would be able to do so in a respectful way that considers you, your condition and previous progress. Realistically though, feedbacker’s can have all sorts of intentions; some feedback isn’t given to help but to vent (maybe your work rubbed someone the wrong way). Some feedback is given in order for you to adapt someone else’s artistic principles. Understanding the feedbacker’s intentions will help you in judging whether it might really help you in deepening your own way, and strengthening your voice.
Ideally, a person receiving feedback would want to deepen their understanding about their work; to expand knowledge of its semantics, get insights about the history of the chosen aesthetics, etc. In reality, some people look for feedback simply because they want the feedbacker’s attention and appreciation; they might not actually be interested in growth.

Implicit and explicit Feedback

Feedback can happen explicitly or implicitly:

Explicit feedback is defined by a clear setting, enabling everyone to understand the context in which opinions are given (eg. at portfolio reviews, when talking to a curator, …).
Implicit feedback on the other hand happens without this kind of framing (eg. during a studio visit by a peer, or a chat over coffee). Since it usually happens without introduction, implicit feedback often emerges unexpected and unwanted, and can be harder to spot and digest – especially if it’s transgressive.

In educational settings (art schools, workshops, etc), feedback is used as a major tool to convey insights, and thus to help you learn about yourself and your work. But even in institutions, feedback isn’t always explicit (as in scheduled feedback sessions): it can appear in casual comments by colleagues, assistants, teachers or curators, and isn’t always based on the feedbacker’s preceding analyses or self-inquires. Quite often, feedback is given seemingly as instantaneously as the artwork hits the feedbacker’s nerves. Since implicit feedback surrounds artists a lot, it is good practice to look out for this sort of “impromptu feedback”, and to increase once competency in recognizing it. Some people can register and analyze new work extremely quickly and sensitively – but most don’t have this capacity.

Feedback and Transgression

Feedback doesn’t simply include the potential for transgressions; in extreme cases (depending on the power dynamics, individual sensitivity and empathy) the act of offering feedback can itself be transgressive, especially if it is “offered” in ways that are too offensive to you. Even though often unrealistic, it’s healthy to expect the upholding of safe space principles for any kind feedback, independently of whether it’s given in explicit or implicit settings – whether it’s a family member suddenly discussing your work on the phone (when you didn’t expect it), or your professor during a scheduled feedback session. Feedback should only happen when you are ready for it – a safe space can’t exist if there isn’t knowledge about mutual control and respect. When someone pushes to give you feedback, it can be smart to understand them as an aggressor, independently of their position and power.

Emotional Attachment

Technically speaking, feedback returns information to the source of a signal: your work can be seen as the signal, and you as its source. As creator, you’re probably attached to your creations (your “signals”): you had specific reasons that led to their creation, and likely had to overcome obstacles during the creation process. This might have required all sorts of experiments and frustrations, but might also have shown potentials for further investigations. You might feel unsure about some of your choices, and happy about others. Creating an artwork is a complex, and often unstable process: quality ideals need to be established, knowledge of craft/materials/processes needs to be increased: at first, every artwork is a bold statement – potentially bolder than you. That’s why feedback situations are inherently challenging: your work, and thus your ideas, your intellect, your emotionality, your whole self, is put under the spotlight. Feedback can put you at a crossroads: do you believe in yourself and your work, or in the feedback that might want to see your work transformed?

A Moebius strip without clear distinction between outside an inside

Processing Feedback

Processing feedback requires you to balance trust in yourself with trust in someone else:

Purely believing in yourself likely results in ignoring the feedbacker’s potential valuable advice.
Purely believing in the feedbacker’s words risks disabling your voice – the sole reason why you initially wanted to make art.

How you navigate these topics is both deeply personal and philosophical, and always has tremendous consequences for your work. That’s why it can be a good practice to actually ask the feedbacker: Should I really listen to you? What if I don’t? Couldn’t worthwhile work emerge from pursuing my voice further?

Contemporary art thrives on diversity – your voice might be a relevant addition to it. For this reason, teaching and discussing contemporary art practices often differs from teaching traditional crafts, where quality ideals are predefined and often static. In the arts, quality is an extremely dynamic and personal attribute – it’s a multitude. Feedback and self-esteem are closely related. Feedback and luck are closely related as well: if you’re insecure about your work, and get to be a student of a highly successful, yet sadistic artist-teacher, a lot of your voice and ideas, your hopes and dreams can be erased or diminished before they ever got to exist.

Judging Feedback

Feedback can result in you feeling small and irrelevant – or praise your work to the heavens. Neither helps you to grow. To transcend this, establish a proactive attitude: judge what was offered.

Judge feedback according to its sensitivity to (and knowledge of) your goals, its sensitivity to the work you offered. Judge the feedbacker’s sensitivity towards you, your history and progress. Although feedback seems to imply the transfer of authority (from you to the feedbacker), this must never happen: as the work’s creator, you depend on your sensitivity towards (and authority over) it. Feedback should help you get closer to your ideals, not to subvert or change them.
Feedback can even be challenging when it’s positive: you might want ways to increase your game, but only received praise; understand that good feedback will always offer ways to increase your knowledge. Judge feedback according to the art historical references you received, and the amount of new information you can process.

Feedback and Autonomy

Some feedback settings will feel as if your work gets judged, stripping you of autonomy over it. Never lose this autonomy: judge the feedbacker and their advice’s quality and empathy, and ultimately work on setting up a network of trusted feedbackers: people on whose knowledge and advice you can rely on, and who care about safe space principles. Pursuing this search puts you in control (of the search, and ultimately of the setting and participants), even though you might still feel small and irrelevant.