When art critic William Newton gave a lecture on the decline of art criticism in February, the interest of the journalism and art department students inspired Newton and alumnus Nate Stewart ’95 to create the Kenyon Cox Art Critics Essay Competition to allow students to practice the craft of art criticism.
The new writing competition has a prize of $1,000 and is accepting 800-1,000 word essay submissions until Feb. 2. Director of the Dow Journalism Program John J. Miller and Assistant Professor of Art Christina Chakalova will be the judges. Posters on campus display a QR code for more information.
“Art criticism is not very good anymore,” Stewart said. “It has become very watered down, it’s become very niche, it’s become overly academic, and by that I mean it just speaks to a small circle of listeners or readers. What I am hoping to achieve is that we get people at Hillsdale who are interested in the true, the beauty, and the good to apply what they are learning to art and how to think about and write persuasively about a painting.”
Newton, a former art critic for The Spectator and The Federalist, also said Christian values are not prevalent in the art world, and he hopes the competition will encourage Hillsdale students with a Judeo-Christian background to write thoughtful pieces and uphold their right to engage in debate and conversation with those critical of American and Christian values.
“If this acts as a small encouragement so I am not a secular John the Baptist crying in the wilderness, that would be wonderful,” said Newton, who is currently working on his first art book.
The essay prompt is about The Metropolitan Museum and the Musée d’Orsay’s co-sponsored exhibition, Sargent and Paris. The exhibition covers the early career of American painter John Singer Sargent from his first arrival in Paris to his famous portrait called “Madame X.” Writers are asked to imagine that the museums have agreed to lend Hillsdale College a painting from the exhibition for one year once the show is over. The college can choose from three paintings: “Setting Out to Fish,” “Portrait of Edouard Pailleron,” and “An Outdoors Study.” Students must argue why the college should select one of the three paintings.
Sargent was born in Florence, Italy, to American parents, spending his childhood travelling throughout Europe with his family until moving to Paris as an 18-year-old art student. He became known for his portraits, landscapes, murals, and use of watercolor, leading him to paint portraits of notable Americans and Parisians, and produce mural decorations for several established American buildings later in his career.
“The idea is that by having to sort of think critically about a painting or several paintings, forces the writer to think and analyze why they like one painting over another,” Stewart said. “But then the way the contest is framed is not just about what is attractive to yourself, but about what a painting speaks to you and then speaks to the broader community in which it will be exhibited, and in this case, our own campus.”
Stewart said the context focuses on the work of Sargent because he and Newton thought it appropriate for the first competition to be about an American artist, and it honors the 100th anniversary of Sargent’s death in April 1925.
“The prompt is thoughtful, and we hope it will lead to excellent work,” Miller said. “And the $1,000 prize looks pretty good, too.”
The competition is named after Kenyon Cox, an American artist and art critic, because he pushed back against the modern and postmodern art world, according to Stewart.
“The scientific spirit, the contempt of tradition, the lack of discipline and exaltation of the individual have very nearly made an end of art,” Cox said about the modern and postmodern movement in art in his book, “The Classic Point of View.” “It can only be restored by the love of beauty, the reverence for tradition, the submission to discipline and the rigor of self-control.”
Stewart and Newton said Cox stood up for the values that Hillsdale largely supports, and that they believed it would be appropriate to name the competition after him.
“It’s sort of an honor and homage to his writings and his work on the subject,” Stewart said.
Newton and Stewart said they envision the competition as interdisciplinary and are encouraging all students to give it a shot, regardless of their art background.
“I really hope there is a kind of output from the student body that shows lots of different points of view and lots of different ways of approaching the question that has been posed to them,” Newton said.
