art education
Did someone write that Miklos isn't a good writer? I hope I didn't. After all my somewhat disgrunlted ramblings in this discussion thread, I think Miklos has been the most generous and articulate in terms of taking the time to respond to texts that have otherwise been rendered as innocuous or unneccesarily obscure. But in fact, I appreciate everyone's responses--however opposed to my views. I'm new to this town, and I don't know many people who are willing to suffer my interests in art theory. I really appreciate being able to discuss my interests with you all here.
It's interesting that the criteria for what makes one a good teacher has come up--so at the expense of being shuffled back into the mire of obscurity, I want to refer to that damned book again, and to Thierry de Duve's comparison of two paradigms in teaching art/education, based on principles of creativity and talent, in "When Form Has Become Attitude--And Beyond." Here is a synopsis of the essay:
http://home.netvigator.com/~jasperl/r%60tdd.htm
De Duve's Three Paradigms
CIRCA 89 Art Education Supplement
Quote:Two models, even though in reality they contaminate each other, divide up the teaching of art. On the one hand, there is the academic model; on the other, there is the Bauhaus model. The former believes in talent, the latter in creativity. The former classifies the arts according to techniques, what I would call metier; the latter according to medium. The former fosters imitation; the latter invention. Both models are obsolete. [1]
Thierry de Duve thus introduces his interrogation of the dominant paradigms in art education in Europe and North America. His full analysis, as laid out at a conference at the University of Southampton in 1993, is succinct, direct and persuasive. This analysis leads him to postulate a further paradigm of art education. De Duve now sees "the most advanced art schools" organised according to "the disenchanted, perhaps nihilistic, after-image of the old Bauhaus paradigm." In place of the models of "talent-metier-imitation" (academic) and "creativity-medium-invention" (modernist) De Duve posits a "new triad of notions: attitude-practice-deconstruction." He reserves his most scathing critique for this, as he terms it, "imploded paradigm." Describing the development of art education in the 1970s, he points to the prior emergence of conceptual art, with special mention for the When Attitude Becomes Form exhibition of 1969 (Bern/London) and claims:
Linguistics, semiotics, anthropology, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, structuralism and post-structuralism, in short 'theory' (or so-called 'French theory') entered art schools and succeeded in displacing-sometimes replacing-studio practice while renewing the critical vocabulary and intellectual tools with which to approach the making and appreciating of art.
De Duve acknowledges that this shift in emphasis from creativity to attitude occurred "with considerable differences depending on national and local circumstances." He concludes that in general, however, "with or without the conscious or unconscious complicity of their teachers, what had started as an ideological alternative to both talent and creativity, called 'critical attitude', became just that, an attitude, a stance, a pose, a contrivance."
The tendency toward a reorganisation of Fine Art courses which plays down the separation of traditional studio disciplines and mediums (the familiar trio of painting, print, and sculpture) may be seen to be part of this foregrounding of critical attitude or critical process. The much-vaunted interdisciplinarity of contemporary educational initiatives may do service for a great number of conflicting agendas, and can in itself become just a stance or a pose. Whatever the case, it is clearly exemplary of De Duve's third paradigm of art education.
De Duve's analysis more thoroughly questions the dominant paradigms of art education than most available accounts, which tend by and large to privilege a theory-practice dichotomy. I cite it here because it underlines a profound sense of crisis when it comes to the formulation of a definitive core philosophy to the teaching agenda. I also cite it here in order to take license in questioning art education along other lines: along the lines of a performance script I rehearse quietly between classes.
From what I can tell, this new system of art education proposed by de Duve, of "attitude-practice-deconstruction" intends to seriously address a 'crisis'(?) faced by multi-disciplinary programs in studio art.
Although my education in studio art is limited to a BA from a liberal arts college, I was enrolled in an "Honors Painting" course for three semesters, and I would definitely say that the basis of our class critiques were more conceptually critical/analytical than formal or technically based. Although, technical merit was weighed upon more heavily in order to be accpeted into the class. But my 'final' was not a painting at all, it was a performance. And in retrospect I don't view this multi-disciplinary evolution as a crisis, maybe because I'm too narrow-minded, or because the subjects I was dealing with were
coherent across the board. I'm not keen on thinking that the critical response to my artwork was just an "attitude," or "critical pose." It was well received, I got an "A." It made me "happy."
I see that de Duve's "attitude-practice-decontruction" model relates to the two historical paradigms in art education in that it questions/deconstructs those histories of art education as a new art practice in itself. He states that it is the same as the recent "'creativity-medium-invention' paradigm, minus faith, plus suspicion... the negative symptom of a historical transition."
Does any of this offer enough food for thought?
