NYU MFA Art Critique

“AND SO BEGINS ONE OF THE MORE FASCINATING CONCEPTUAL AND CLEARLY PERFORMATIVE ART EXPERIMENTS TO COME ACROSS THIS WRITER’S DESK IN QUITE SOME TIME. WHAT FOLLOWS, AS RECORDED IN THE TRANSCRIPT…IS A COMPELLING GROUP INTERROGATION OF ART CRITICISM ITSELF AND A HYPERAWARE EXPLORATION OF PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ONE’S OPINIONS AND STATEMENTS, ESPECIALLY WITH THE (CORRECT) PRESUMPTION THAT THEY MIGHT BE RENDERED IN PERMANENT INK AND MADE PUBLIC DOWN THE ROAD.”
Kurt McVey, Whitehot Magazine

Self published artist book
Black and white photocopy, tape bound
57 pages
8.5” x 11”
2018

Description from Printed Matter Inc:

Samuel Hitten is a professional courtroom stenographer. On a typical day, he records auto-insurance claims and corporate meetings. But on the morning of May 2, 2018 he reports on something new: himself as the subject matter.

“What is going on here?” someone demands. Speaking over the typing of his shorthand machine, a group of 20 faculty and students from NYU’s Department of Art ask him, “are you part of the show,” and “this is a recording?” Sam writes their every word.

MFA student Thomas Ray Willis hired him to take notes for his graduate school art critique. Neither are certain what the group is more frustrated with: the outsider stenographer or the artist defending 20 watercolors paintings made from his tears. What starts for Sam as a trial of an artist defending his emotional expression––ranging from a family death to childhood nostalgia––devolves into a heated debate about the group’s own feelings of testifying under oath.

The book is for sale at Printed Matter Inc. and acquired by the Museum of Modern Art Archives, the Whitney Museum Library, and the New York Public Library.