Not Sh*tting Where You Eat

Minnie Minoso, oil on canvas 2009

So it has occurred to me already that blogging about what I teach for my Introduction to Art Concepts class for Santa Ana College is terribly didactic and, well, kind of boring for the audience I hope is tuning in. And I use the term “audience” pretty much euphemistically, because, well, lets face it, this blog is basically a conversation with myself, isn’t it? I was hoping for some feedback about what and how I teach, but without that I’m just talking about fire, the wheel, and not shitting where you eat in terms of art. Important stuff, no doubt, and there’s some choice stuff I think, but I’ve put out the call to what all you out there in internetland think, and have heard the cyber-equivalent of crickets. In a classroom I can wait this out and have a captive audience, but this internet’s a tougher room. Right now we’re covering formal language and principles of design, as well as terminology like “representational”, “abstract”, and the like. I get a real sense of the excitement level dropping in the students with this stuff; referring to things like line, shape, color, unity, scale, emphasis, etc., can suck the poetry right out of a room.

The next thing we begin to go over is a bit more interesting, the specific mediums of art itself. What does “drawing” really mean? Or “painting”? Or “photography”? Like I said, ground level stuff, but still worth returning too. Not so much categories, as sets of issues; I try to show sculptures with drawings issues, photos with painting issues, paintings with sculpture issues, video art with drawing issues...you get the idea.

Besides all that, the new art season is upon us. Saw some stuff. Best so far? Baker’s Dozen at the Torrance Art Museum. Galleries? Francesca Gabbiani at Patrick Painter. That’s just so far. But you know what event I’m looking forward too? This:

And you're required to attend. This will be on the final.

12 Hours a Month

First things first:

Picture of My Father Modeling Jackets, 2009:

So summer is over, and the new school year has begun, and for 12 hours every month, I have the privilege of teaching Introduction to Art Concepts at Santa Ana College again, for the third time now.

Beings that that is my only official obligation for the time being, I have much time to think about the class and even more time to prepare for it. I have decided to use the blog here to post my thoughts and strategies on how I present the information of the class, in the order I typically give it. Now I understand that for many of you out there (all 4 of you that actually read this) this information is as basic as it gets when thinking, chatting or writing about art. What I’m hoping is for a dialogue to occur that will help me fine tune my approach to the class, or at the very least, my personal thinking about the topics discussed.

So what is this class? To begin with, it is a lecture class, frequently an option for filling a humanities requirement, and is often referred to as “Art Appreciation”. I never took it myself in college, as taking two semesters of art history survey was the preferred option for actual art majors. In some schools it is viewed as “diet art history”, i.e. for non-art majors, though the content as I teach it I could see as very valuable to beginning art students (though the overwhelming majority of my students in this class are not art majors. Not yet, anyways.). In the class we discuss topics such as what art is, why art is made, how art is talked about, what the different mediums of art are, and a brief survey of the history of art all over the world, though from the general point of view of the Western tradition. The meta-structure of the course is basically two tiered, split at the midterm, with the definitions of art and how it is talked about coming first, and a fast forward survey of art history coming second.

I begin by trying to get an idea of what the students think art is in the first place. The inevitable first response when I pose the question is “paintings”, with sculptures and other general disciplines following . I try to show how while music, literature, and theatre are indeed art, it is visual art specifically we deal with. I show them the following series of images, discussing with them on each whether they think it is art or not.

Some of them will catch on and notice that the things that I lean towards being art in the sense that pertains to the class have labels, while the two that aren’t exactly what were talking about (Wolverine and the Aqua Teens) don’t. I use the metaphor of a scale with art being on one end and “not art” being on the other and try to get the students to place the things on the scale. This is all on the first day, and it gives me a good idea of their preconceived notions, and them a good idea of what it is were going to be looking at during the semester. Issues of art verses entertainment comes up, as does art verses illustration, art verses commerce, art verses advertising, art verses function, art as a designation of value and art verses craft. I try to explain that if culture was a corporation, art would be the research and development department. Things that are artful but not vying for the critical discourse of the institutions of fine art (or have been recognized as having a place in it) could be described as the marketed products of the corporation of culture; i.e. having been influenced and heirs, perhaps, of the developed research from art – culture’s R&D department. I also try to stress the point that declaring something as art is not a value judgment. In other words, it’s ok if something isn’t art in the sense that we’re talking about, its value may be judged in some other context. If art was good and “non-art” is bad, then what does the phrase “bad art” mean? Another example I make is of a Venn diagram of sorts where a big “art” circle representing the major painting / sculpture expanded paradigm is overlapped with to varying degrees with other circles such as photography, architecture, film, and others. Everything within the big circle including the overlaps is what we look at during the semester.

Next: Aesthetics, the Western tradition, and what do artists actually do, and the idea of creativity.

The Perfect Gig

So for the past two semesters, I have taught “Introduction to Art Concepts” at Santa Ana College in Orange County, California. This is a class that is also known at other schools as “Art Appreciation”, among other titles. The SAC catalogue description reads thusly –

“A study of the visual arts in relation to both personal and cultural expressions. Fundamentals of visual organization, color theory, terminology, historical art movements and concepts will be studied.”

It’s a good time. It’s the perfect gig for me. The material is structured in the various textbooks pretty much all the same. Starts with some working definitions or art and why it’s important, its purposes and where it’s found. Next it goes into formal language, visual elements, principles of design, things like that. Then it takes each medium, one by one, and then a fast forward through the history of art. The history half is the standard narrative of the Western tradition with a detour after the 18^th century to cover non-Western art traditions.

It’s a lot of material to cover. 16 weeks to generalize about some 5,000 odd years of human beings doing every visually apparent thing that didn’t fall under the category of “eating” or “fucking”. (Though personally I think all art is about sex and death.) It is up to me what I emphasize, what I leave out, what I include, and what spin I put on everything. Some things I personally try to emphasize are:

-- How to write, speak, and most importantly chat about art intelligently. (As well as how write, speak, and chat well in general.)

-- How you “have to get smart to get art” and how knowledge of it can give one a creative edge in any discipline or walk of life.

-- That the story of art used to be just be the story of white, (seemingly) straight European males, and that contemporary art today cannot be understood without knowledge and reclamation of artists from formerly marginalized groups (females, people of color, queer, “outsider” art) and non-western traditions.

-- The ideas of the avant-garde eventually trickling down to mainstream society; art as the “R&D department” of culture. Specifically how many of the prevalent digital methods of information consumption and production today (like the website you’re reading right now) are products of ideas first put forward in art.

-- Art history as a history of reactions, and the external (non-art) circumstances that dictate particular movements and trends.

-- How formal language, knowledge of relevant contexts, medium-specific associations, and art history can all be used to conclude content and/or meaning from a particular artwork. (The last two is more generally referred to as “critical thinking” to use pedagogical language.)

What I want to know is what else should be included? Or more correctly, what shouldn’t be excluded? During the history phase of the class, it’s a pretty fast rundown of the greatest hits of art, and many artists fall through the cracks to present a more generalized story. What are the most important art concepts that should be taught in “Introduction to Art Concepts”? If you could teach anyone without an art education only a handful of things, what would you show them?