Why the “Compliment Sandwich” Critique Technique Doesn’t Work
Picture this: You’re sitting in a group of your peers, maybe six or seven of you, and you’re all getting ready to present your current work-in-progress to the group—a sculpture, a poem, a painting, etc. Your friend, let’s call her Sarah, goes first. She shows the group her painting, describes what she’s working on and what she’s hoping to convey in the piece, and the rest of you take turns critiquing it. Your group has decided to embrace the “compliment sandwich” technique since it seems like that’s what everyone else is doing these days.
It’s now your turn. You think this piece is fabulous, you love the brushwork and the new technique she tried on the trees worked well. The fog looks realistic and the colors are muted and give you a sense of an ominous presence nearby. But you’re the last to go and all of these things have been said already. Multiple times. So, you take a look at improvements, but you don’t see anything that could be improved upon, and there’s nothing with the painting that you don’t like.
If you’re honest, the only thing you would change about it, it would be to add more trees.
So, you sit there. Wracking your brain to come up with something to say. Ultimately, you tell the truth in the format you’ve all agreed upon: you like the brush work, you think there could be more trees, and you think the fog looks realistic.
Everyone around you nods in agreement as you’ve said what’s already been said five times before.
You’re now leaving the conversation feeling as though you couldn’t contribute, and your friend Sarah is leaving feeling like she got one piece of feedback over and over and over and over.
No one is fully satisfied in the process.
I’ve been in art classes for as long as I can remember. Everything from ceramics, photography, and poetry to scriptwriting, acting, and dance, and each one has some version of a critique, a time where you look at another artists’ work and give your evaluation of it. I’ve seen this in not just classes at school, but in writing groups and artist collectives as well.
We want to grow as makers and creators, and the best way to do that is to get feedback from our peers about how our own work fares.
But there’s become an epidemic of one type of critique that has found its way into nearly every circle of artistry called: The Compliment Sandwich.
It’s a simple technique: first you mention something you liked about the piece that was presented, then you mention something you didn’t like or something that could be improved on, and lastly you add an additional compliment about the piece.
And there’s one glaring problem:
It’s not honest.
It’s not.
That’s the short and simple of it.
The longer answer is a bit controversial, but I’ll give it to you: it’s that some pieces don’t deserve to be complimented twice by every person in a critique, and some pieces don’t deserve to have “bad things” pointed out by, again, every person in a critique.
We need to stop teaching people to be so sensitive about the critiques they give when that’s the space we’re in, and instead teach people how to be tactful in what they’re saying.
Artists are highly sensitive people. We’re sensitive about ourselves and our work, which is really just a reflection of ourselves, our opinions, or our point of view. Any critique deemed “negative” in some way, even if the goal is to be constructive or structured as an “area of opportunity/improvement” will ultimately come across as hurtful to the artist because we’re going to hear what about ourself needs improvement, not just the work.
That’s where this whole “compliment sandwich” thing comes into play. It’s a cop-out way to deliver a blow to an artist and disguise it between two nice things about their work, or more accurately, about them.
But this doesn’t work. Because it’s bullshit. It gives the critiquers a chance to say whatever they’d like about a piece between two forced compliments. Or, conversely, it forces the critiquer to make up some reason the piece could use improvement to make their compliments sound like they’ve actually studied the piece and have something important to say when really they’re just pulling it out of their ass.
Most of the time in a given critique, the people surrounding the artist will naturally find different things to comment on, some positive and some less so, and by allowing those critiquing the piece to say what they’re honestly feeling about the work those elements will come out.
What we need in critique circles, more than this fake “compliment sandwich” to protect each other’s egos, is to learn tact. If we can learn how to speak to each other in a way that doesn’t tear the other person down just so we can sound all high and mighty, critiques will feel better for everyone.
It’s not a competition space. It’s a growth space.
There’s nothing to gain by trying to make out like you know more or are better than anyone else. There’s also nothing to gain by forcing compliments about a piece you genuinely don’t like and think could be improved.
Critique spaces are for all artists involved. The point is to look and think critically about whatever work is presented, and deliver your thoughts in a kind and tactful manner for the betterment of both the artist and others in the circle with you. Critiques should be open dialogues about art, not the systemically repetitive fill-in-the-blanks with mediocre feedback that the “compliment sandwich” produces.
We, as artists, have a unique opportunity to garner feedback from our peers before the work goes out into the world. We should be using it to grow and learn from all aspects of the process, both in our work and as people. We can’t do that if we continue to embed ourselves into something that just doesn’t work.
