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.

Reflections and Generalizations of the Culture at Large

So there is a discussion on the Next Issue! blog where Kevin Mutch has been attempting to impose some of the structures of fine art history on the history of comics. Now, the major trends of art are not specific to just art, and tend to be reflections and generalizations of the culture at large, so this experiment (which is not without precedent, I believe, though specific examples escape me. Anybody?) has some considerable merit.

But something about the discussion just doesn’t feel as productive as it could be. I would offer that those who are as intrigued by the idea of trying to make sense of the overall historical / theoretical narrative of comics (like me), should try to begin to create new language for it. Comics continually come off as an “insecure” medium, forever seeking the validation and attention of the art-world discourse. There are models for mediums that hold their own with their own history, language, and legitimacy, Venn-diagramming into the fine art world to varying degrees (photography, architecture, film). There is no reason why comics couldn’t be one of these, and is to a small degree, but the difference is that those three examples have stopped seeking legitimacy from the art world and its language. When the language of the art world discourse is applied to those fields, it makes sense – it is the language of culture – and the influence of those three mediums is so vast and omnipresent that the study of them has spawned separate scholarship.

It is not unusual to use the language of one medium to talk about another, especially when that medium is new. McLuhan identified this, and you can trace the development and connections of any medium this way. Early photography employed the language of painting (pictorialism) and then asserted itself against it (straight photography); film began by employing a hybrid of photography and theatre language, (and still does) but has established itself as cultural force of nature employing a highly refined cinematic language. (There was an interesting discussion on the Comics Comics blog about the comics equivalent of the words “cinematic” or “literary”). Those involved in comics theorizing seem to be simultaneously asserting its specific nature by denying a cinematic or literary focus, and at the same time trying to fit it into the specific art historical models used for the more general painting / sculpture paradigm found in the Western traditions.

We need to ask ourselves some very difficult questions. And by “we” I mean us comics theorizers. The three examples I cited above – architecture, photography and film – cannot be separated from our culture. In many ways those three things comprise much of our culture, along with what is contained in the Western painting / sculpture paradigm and many other things. The question then becomes, is comics, as we define it, as influential as those disciplines and therefore deserving of the same critical, theoretical, and academic scrutiny? All is not lost if we decide something other than “yes”. I am not falling on the negative side of the fence on this, necessarily, I just think there is an advantage to be gained, artistically, from comics retaining something of its culturally illegitimate status.

And to retain that, we have to stop trying to figure out how comics fit into art history. Mutch, in his last post, attempts to identify an initial postmodern moment in comics, using the high / low model of culture. Though he disclaims it, the very recognition of the oppressive, power and class based foundations of that model prevent comics from doing anything but become the authorless source material for the “high” art. This formed some of the basis for Art Spiegleman’s “High Art Lowdown” strip criticizing the Museum of Modern Art’s “High and Low” exhibition in 1990, curated by the late Kirk Varnedoe. We need to figure out what our history is, and see if, how, and when fine art history fits into it.

Inspired Aesthetic Quality

Snippits, brief thoughts, whatnot…

Rogue Wave 2009 at LA Louver – I went because it’s the Rogue Wave show, and because Kaz Oshiro was in it. Turns out someone I sort of know (Tia Pulitzer) was in it. Her work stood out at Superficiality and Superexcrescence at Otis, as it does in this show.

Nice scene, a lot of sculpture, as Sara Simon pointed out. We attempted to formulate a theory about how the economic downturn would usher a new opportunity for sculpture in the art market. Painting has always been the most archetypal of marketable art objects; sculpture has a reputation for being more, well, inconvenient. But much of what was at LA Louver Thursday made it seem worth the effort.

Lawrence Weiner at Regen Projects – I like words. I like poetry. I like typography. I like conceptual art. I like artists with funny last names. I like seeing John Baldessari at openings. I like being able to park. 6 out of 7 ain’t bad.

I’m beginning my initial preparations for teaching again in the fall – Introduction to Art Concepts and Introduction to Digital Media. My respective goals for this semester are to give the students practical tools for writing about art, and to emphasize more ideas about two-dimensional design in the digital class.

My basis for the latter has come from the realization that the students tend to catch on to how to use the software with incredible ease. What escapes them is how to create compositions and images that have an inspired aesthetic quality. A new book I have been studying, and have adapted for the class, Digital Foundations: Intro to Media Design with the Adobe Creative Suite by xtine burrough (sic) and Michael Mandiberg, provide a possible curriculum with this in mind, and it has become one of my favorite pedagogical materials.

As far as getting students to write about art better, I was wondering what all of you think. What are the essential points of emphasis when trying to get newcomers to art to articulate about it?

The Audacity of Stillness

Two things --

1. Your Bright Future at LACMA – Chance and fate have dictated that I am currently housemates with Korean artist Nakhee Sung at the moment, here at my home, Raid Projects. It's quite serendipitous, then, that LACMA should have an exhibit of contemporary Korean art at the same time. The show is indeed a good time. Christopher Knight has chided it as “90’s festival art”, and though I agree it has some dull spots, overall it made me want to go to Seoul and make video art.

A standout was Choi Jeong-Hwa’s plastic container installation that should have been a few acres bigger, but provided a delightful forest to lose oneself in. It was an interesting contrast to the other “forest” on the LACMA campus – Burden's streetlights – whose permanent status on the grounds served to highlight how disposable Choi’s materials end up being.

Of course, Do Ho Suh’s pieces kicked everyone’s dick in the dirt. His ability to get so much artistic mileage out of the places he has lived as the source for his work is mind bending. His brother’s an architect Nakhee tells me.

Love that Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, wish they would have mounted the monitor in the elevator, to see how they play off of the permanent Krueger installation. My favorite in the whole show, however, was Kimsooja’s unbelievably provocative video installation A Needle Woman. So achingly simple, so hypnotically compelling, so tellingly revealing, she has managed to concisely and articulately show how contrary to conventional wisdom it is to literally take a stand. Kim does nothing in these videos, and yet the audacity of her stillness so quickly instills a similar notion in the viewer. The presentation of multiple videos from all over the world make the universality of her stance (and her stance) visually and poetically apparent. One simple move, or more correctly a lack of moving, and Kim has transformed herself into a force of nature, dictating the direction of the humanity around her, instead of the other way around. An inspiring solution to anyone who has felt caught up in life’s flow.

Plenty of other goofy and great pieces, by other goofy and great artists, an overall paradoxical feeling of a group of artists at different forms of play, yet united by something globally plugged in, but decidedly non-Occidental. A heavy prevalence on video is a badge worn almost patriotically in this show, and a picture of Korea is presented that makes a case for a country whose artistic identity could easily be the meat in an Asian contemporary art sandwich, surrounded by the hearty bread of China and Japan. But only as long as it’s one of those Vietnamese sandwiches. Because those are fucking tasty.

2. I was going to write about Mat Brinkman’s Multi-Force comic book, but Frank Santoro over at the Comics Comics blog has beat me to it. I agree with almost all of his assertions, save for his initial feeling that Brinkman’s most representative output was his “official” art – the drawings, the installations, etc. For me, I’ve always just been waiting around for Brinkman’s work in book form – his comics – and everything else was ancillary to it. At most, I sought to incorporate and connect his other output to what I saw in Paper Rodeo, or Kramers Ergot, or Teratoid Heights. His show at M+B Gallery here in LA a little while back totally confirmed this for me, as it was easy to see those drawings as depicting denizens of Citadel City and the surrounding areas. It seems “cartoonist” is a term that needs re-defining in this new wonderful era of avant-garde comics. The Comics Comics gang seems to be at forefront of articulating this new contextualization, and it is them, frequently, that I turn too when I myself am trying to wrap my brain around the larger picture of what is being produced by fellows like Brinkman. I sort of thought of Brinkman as an artist who has maintained a comics practice, but maybe it’s my problem with the word and not the word’s problem…………

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?

Untitled Avant-Garde Comic #1

Bas Jan Ader Was an Exception to Lots of Things

So as an artist and teacher, it occurs to me often the larger question of ‘Why is art important?’ I imagine it is obvious to many who would even be reading this, but I feel that articulating it is another matter entirely. Then I imagine there are those that feel art is not important, but that’s why it is important, that sort of thing. As a community college instructor, the obligation falls upon me regularly to explain why an art education can be beneficial to several different walks of life and disciplines. And I honestly do believe it is. Much of the conventional wisdom around this is centered around the idea of creativity, and indeed I spend some time going into what that is and means with my “Introduction to Art Concepts” students early in the semester, as do the texts associated with that course.

I fancy it a sublimation of the survival instinct; if your life depends on it, you will get real creative, real fast. Artists are people who attempt to engage in creative processes without (usually) being in unforeseen life-threatening situations. I know what you’re about to say, but Bas Jan Ader was an exception to lots of things. But perhaps it is an instinct that needs expression in order to be a healthy, happy person….maybe.

One of my other sales pitches for the importance of art is referring to it as the “R&D department of culture”. Sometimes I like using THE MAN’S corporate lingo -- sometimes I even preface it by saying “If culture was a corporation, art would be the…”. Having insight into the strategies behind artworks and artists, with whom creativity is their business, can give one an edge in any discipline, over those who are not art educated. For many of us this is painfully obvious. The avant-garde does indeed trickle down to the mainstream, where it creates totally boring things like jobs, capital, supply, demand, products, etc. Don’t believe me? Reality TV? 70’S PERFORMANCE ART. Ikea furniture? MINIMALIST SCULPTURE. Photoshop? RAUSCHENBERG. Hipsters? WARHOL. I actually think that’s the litmus test for the avant-garde to cross over into “history”, but that’s another topic altogether.

We currently are all feeling the burden of those boring things I spoke of earlier, and there is a scramble for solutions towards relieving that burden. In many ways creativity is at a premium right now. However it gets solved, it will be a solution that has existed before, in some way; as any artist will tell you, originality is just a myth.