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"The Eclipse of the Sun"
George Grosz, 1926, The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntingdon, New York.
With all the current debate around the idea of 'Safe Spaces' at educational institutions both here and in America, (i.e., the assumption that students should be protected from ideas and conversations which may upset them), I recently began to think about how I personally dealt with potentially upsetting subjects, which may have arisen when I was teaching Art History and Contextual Studies.
Art History may seem at first glance like a totally inoffensive and 'safe' subject: just viewing some nice pictures and 'appreciating' them. Not so.
Art History only becomes meaningful when the context of an art work (and by that I mean the wider social, political, philosophical, historical, geographic and cultural context) is explored, and any such exploration, inevitably, begins to touch on some very controversial areas of thought.
My personal stance was fairly straightforward. I considered that to understand a work of art it was necessary to study the thoughts and motivations of the artist. We go to their writing, their statements, their actions, their career, and so on, in an attempt to try to get the most truthful picture of their thinking.
To give a fairly innocuous example. - We want to study Monet.
So we look at the art movements that he was kicking against (eg, the Academy), the art movements that he admired and emulated (eg, Japanese printmaking), any current emerging ideas that he was influenced by (eg, scientific theories about colour), and so on. All very relevant, and all fairly 'safe'.
But when we get to some edgier artistic movements (like Dadaism, Vorticism, Futurism, Constructivism, Socialist Realism, etc) there may be some slightly less safe areas of discussion.
"Portrait of Stalin"
Isaak Brodsky (Socialist Realism).
For example, when we begin to study Futurism, the political context becomes very important. So we have to discuss Marinetti, the Fascist poet and friend of Mussolini, and the Fascist ideologies which underpinned Futurist artworks.
The question is, should the teacher have a duty to sanitise these ideologies whilst tut-tutting throughout, and avoid anything which may be upsetting (such as the suggestion by Marinetti that "War is the world's only hygiene").
Or is it better to explain clearly and truthfully the thinking of the artists involved, to explain their point of view, however much we may personally disapprove, and to try to understand how their thinking panned out as artworks?
Well, I took the second of these approaches. I took the view that to understand any artwork, it is necessary to get as much as possible into the brain of the artist. We may personally accept or reject their political standpoint, but if we don't give it serious and honest consideration then we are not being truthful to them, or to history.
If we look at Futurist paintings and simply see them as pleasant combinations of colour and movement, then we miss the whole point.
A further example - at the opposite end of the political spectrum (if one accepts the simple left-right spectrum, and this spectrum is highly debate-able itself) were the Russian Constructivists. They were dedicated communist revolutionaries, and again, it is impossible to get a handle on their artworks unless their revolutionary beliefs are understood. So these beliefs are what I would attempt to cover.
A true anecdote: One day, as a young lecturer, I was in the office attached to one of the art studios at college, and I overheard a conversation going on outside in the empty (it was the lunch hour) studio.
It was a conversation between (I immediately recognised the voice) the then head of department, and the parents of one of our art students. They were complaining that someone, a lecturer, had been filling their daughter's head with rubbish about communism!
Their conversation got rather heated and the parents were at the "I'll get a team and come down and sort the geezer out" shouting stage, when I suddenly realised that they were probably referring to me!
The penny dropped: that as we had recently been covering the Russian Constructivists in their daughter's Art History programme, it could/would have been this that they were so enraged about.
(Now I didn't actually lock the office door, but it was probably the first time that the idea of a safe space had some attraction for me)!
Nevertheless, this unnerving incident aside, I have yet to sympathise with the proponents of safe spaces.
Especially when it comes to politics.
In particular, I think that any serious student of politics should be presented honestly with the underpinning arguments of Stalinism, Nazism, Maoism, Islamism, Colonialism, Liberal Democracy etc, then, after focussed analysis (for example - close reading of the founding documents of each of these ideologies) and lots of robust debate, arrive at considered conclusions.
What we seem to have increasingly in the universities is, unfortunately, indoctrination.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details......” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
Whose leg is this, and who painted it?
(The answer will be in the next posting.)
And here's the answer from the last posting -
'An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump'.
by Joseph Wright, 1768, National Gallery, London.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details......” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
"Drawing is putting a line around an idea."
Henry Matisse
. . and now, a Recommended Read . .
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Music
Click here to find a few songs on YouTube, and I'll add more as time goes by.
Music
Beyond painting, my other preoccupation is music - particularly songwriting.
I've recently started, just for fun, linking the two preoccupations together, by featuring a few paintings along with one of my recorded songs. If you have a spare minute, you're welcome to take a look. . .
These songs can also be found on (and downloaded from) iTunes, Spotify, CDBaby, and many other platforms, - (my intention is to upload a different song each month)
Also in the last period I've been recording some songs with some friends - have a listen here if you have the time.
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Concepts of Modern Art
By Nikos Stangos
Published by Thames and Hudson
By Nikos Stangos
Published by Thames and Hudson
This is a book aimed primarily at the student of art history. So it is not intended to be a 'pacy' read. But it covers the areas discussed in the blog above, is very interesting, and is a book which would begin to feel edgy for safe space warriors.
The main concepts and development of art from about 1900 to the present are analyzed in authoritative essays by some of the most distinguished art historians and critics in Britain and the United States. With Edward Lucie-Smith on Pop Art, Suzi Gablik on Minimal Art, Norbert Lynton on Expressionism, and Sarah Whitfield on Fauvism, to name a few, these scholarly essays illuminate each particular artistic movement of the century, and together form an entire history of modern art. 123 black and white illustrations.
Review from Amazon.
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