From: Christopher Lovegnuth (chrisml@pacbell.net)
Date: 10/17/01-10:28:28 AM Z
It seems to me that you are dealing with two separate issues here. The first
is about how you perceive "art" and you work and how "academia" views it.
The second is about academia thinking. Let me first say that I too am
applying for Grad school this winter. For your previous question I am
applying to UCLA, Cal arts, U of NM and maybe some others but don't know
yet. Anyway back to your current thoughts. From what I experienced in the
B.F.A program at Ohio State University, there is this common thought that
things can not be too pretty or "slushy" as I used to call it. But this is a
fact of the academic world. I had a peer bring in to class one day a big
white Walt Disney book and try to pass it off as art. Now before everyone
sends me hateful letters about this let me put it in to context for you. She
walks in and says something like this is my biggest influence. I should add
that she was wearing a Disney shirt as well. I should also point out that
OSU's art program is very much in to critical thinking and a highly
conceptual school. So she walks in and says that this big white book is her
biggest influence in her art. When we ask her why (including the instructor)
she said, "because". Then she got defensive and starting saying that Disney
art wasn't good enough for us and that we were too artsy and had forgotten
how to just appreciate the simple things and that not everything has to have
a deep intellectual meaning, etc. Well in academia it does. That is the
whole point. If not then it would just be workshops (not that I am knocking
workshops, I hope people understand what I am trying to say here). The point
of putting yourself in an intensive 4 year BFA or 2-3 year MFA is for that
critical thinking environment. There has to be reasons for what you are
doing in a BFA or MFA program. If you are making images of flowers, it has
to apply to the academic world. If you don't want it too then make images of
flowers for yourself and that should be good enough. If your biggest
influence is Walt Disney great! But if you bring that in to an academic
setting you better be able to explain why and put it in to context of the
academic community. That is the nature of the beast. I know its more
complicated then this but I have gone on way too much already and I am late
for work. -Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: shannon stoney [mailto:sstoney@pdq.net]
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 8:56 AM
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: artists in academia; WTC in art; insufficient irony?
Thanks for all the suggestions and thoughts about academia and
artists. I can see that the time and energy demanded by teaching may
be a factor in preventing people from continuing to be artists.
However, the number of hours that faculty at U of H actually spend
teaching is only about 12-15 hours a week. Some do hold office hours
in addition to that. But, art teachers don't generally spend hours
grading long essays, like we English teachers do. What do they do
with the rest of their time, if they're not working on their own work?
I am wondering if another factor might be some of the beliefs that
these people hold about art and photography. In a critique
yesterday, I realized that they usually seem to be sending the
message that: small prints are bad; prints that are too pretty are
bad; art that is too heartfelt or passionate is bad, especially if it
is not also "critical"; and doing anything remotely like anything
anybody has done in the past is bad. If you have been telling
students these things for years, and the only people you ever talk to
are 19 year olds who are in no position to argue with you, you might
start to actually believe these things. I argue with my teachers
about these things, and usually they back away from them then, when
confronted with a question like, "Are you really saying that formal
considerations are irrelevant? And that one should never photograph
flowers?" But I'm surprised that it takes a question like that to
make them think more carefully about what they're telling students.
They seem to see their job as that of informing students about what
the art market "wants," but the art market is hopelessly confused
with the academic world and its concerns, and neither are very
concerned with the rest of the potential audience for art, ie regular
people. They also pride themselves on "subverting" various media
lies and bourgeois expectations and norms, but they pander to
bourgeois ideas about what art should be, coopted from the avant
garde of twenty years ago. They seem really confused!
In short, I am wondering if the real problem in academia is not
shortages of time and energy to work, but beliefs about art, what it
is, what it's for, and what it could be. IT would seem to me to be
more fruitful and honest to help students realize their personal
vision and express their own ideas and feelings, rather than helping
them copy what's mainstream in photography nowadays. TEaching could
be really rewarding if that's what it was about, and maybe it
wouldn't necessarily be so draining.
Not that it should be art therapy alone, but certainly strong
experiences and feelings are fuel for art. This brings up another
subject. Another student and I are attempting to deal in our video
pieces with the events of september 11. We are using some footage
from newscasts, pictures of the towers exploding,etc. This is
anathema to our teachers, for some reason I can't understand. They
say this work is too emotional, too passionate, not cool and
considered enough, too "off the charts" and heavy-handed. Granted, we
are not done with our pieces yet and they are still crude. But our
teachers seem to want something cool and "critical", something that
has a hip sort of detachment and a "smart" skepticism about it all.
In fact one of my teachers said repeatedly that my video was "not
smart." I said that this was not a time for "smart," that "smart" is
irrelevant here. I know that there has been a bit of media attention
about the idea that irony is now over, and some mockery of that idea.
But does it not seem to you that something fundamental has changed,
that talking about politics in art, the flag's meaning as an icon,
the artist's stance vis a vis the government and the military, and
all that has really, really changed? That we are no longer in the
post-Vietnam era?
I wonder if anybody on this list is working with those images of the
WTC in any form and how you are dealing with potential criticisms
about your work being insufficiently ironic. It seems to me that now
it's ok again to be passionate, even Romantic almost in the 19th
century sense again (of course using alt-process so that form fits
function.)
--shannon
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