ARTIQUE: An Art Criticism Session through Online Gallery for Independent Artists

Abstract

Studio critiquing that is generally carried out in physical sites should be done at virtual and beyond offline platforms in order to overcome geographic boundaries amongst professional artists, fellow students, galleries and museums. This research reports on a study of the impact of art criticism in an online gallery for independent artists. The main objective is to observe independent artists' development. An online gallery was created by utilizing design and development research (DDR) by Richey and Klein (2004) that involved three distinct phases: (1) Phase One: Need Analysis was conducted using the Visual Culture Model by Mirzoeff (1998); (2) Phase Two utilized the E-Portfolio Model by Barret (2009) to design and develop an online gallery called Artique using Facebook page, and (3) Phase Three (3): Implementation and Evaluation, applied Art Criticism Theory by Feldman (1967). There were 16 independent artists and 3 expert artists who engaged in this study. Data was obtained by analysing their online postings and comments, specifically expert opinion of independent artist artwork. The findings show that the use of online gallery offered wide opportunities via blogs, news, reviews, galleries and forums. Most of the participants reported positively on their experience in engaging on the e-platform ARTIQUE whereby they were able to improve their ideas, creativity, techniques and skills. The findings suggest that independent artists could engage with experts on an online platform like ARTIQUE to hone their skills.

The Development of Artique - Independent Artists and Online Art Criticism

“…The communication that occurs in SNS sited could build and shape educational goals and while simultaneously encouraging individual communication (Kord, 2008). Maaruf, et al's (2020) study demonstrated the advantages of having an online gallery for art criticism for independent artists, students, and art collectors.…”