How Not to Teach Art History

Michelle Kamhi August 7, 2017 16 Comments

Scholastic Art - September 2017 coverJust in time for a new school year, the September 2017 issue of Scholastic Art magazine features ten paintings that students should know, because they form part of “our collective cultural history.”

Surely a worthwhile undertaking for a publication aimed at middle school and high school visual art education programs—until one examines the works selected and what is written about them.

Legitimizing the Avant-Garde

Most troubling is that four of the magazine’s “10 Paintings to Know” are twentieth-century works that depart so radically from all prior standards that their art historical status is highly questionable. They are Pablo Picasso’s Dora Maar in an Armchair, Vasily Kandinsky’s Composition 8, Alma Thomas’s Splash Down Apollo 13, and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (Skull). Two of the remaining ten (Georgia O’Keeffe’s Two Calla Lilies on Pink and Frida Kahlo’s The Two Fridas), though somewhat less radical, also date from the twentieth century. When one considers that art history encompasses millennia of picture-making, this is a staggering disproportion. Not one work from the Italian Renaissance or the Golden Age of Dutch painting or the rich tradition of landscape painting in China—much less work by our own Hudson River School or more recent examples by important American artists such as Thomas Eakins or Andrew Wyeth.

Still worse is the choice of Picasso’s savagely cubist portrait of Dora Maar for the issue’s cover—a choice that implies this painting is especially worth knowing. Why is such a visually repellent work considered worth knowing? Because—Scholastic Art tells its young readers—Picasso is among “the most influential 20th-century artists,” and cubism is “one of his most important contributions to modern art.”

What did that contribution consist of?—“divid[ing] subject matter into small, simplified forms” and “reject[ing] traditional perspective.” In the Dora Maar portrait, Picasso “reduces the subject’s face, hair, and body to a collection of geometric shapes” and “places her features in an asymmetrical arrangement, creating an off-balance version of a face” (an understatement if ever there were one!). Picasso also “embraced bright, arbitrary colors” such as “yellow for the face, red for the nose, and blue for the mouth.” On the larger questions of this bizarre painting’s impact on viewers and the dubious value of reducing the face of a beautiful woman (see photos of Dora Maar) to an arbitrary pattern of geometric shapes eerily akin to the wallpaper behind it, not a word is said. Nor does the article ask whether it is wise to regard such extreme stylistic distortions as a “contribution.”

Students are further misled by the poster enclosed with the issue. On one side is a large-scale reproduction of Picasso’s Woman with Yellow Hair, accompanied by this quote attributed to him below it: “Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist” (as if art were mainly a matter of breaking rules). The reverse of the poster displays Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Horn Players (1983). If Basquiat ever learned the rules, I’ve seen no evidence of it. In any case, are these the two most significant works from the whole of art history that students should have posted before them in the classroom?

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Skull)
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Scull), 1981, acrylic and oilstick on canvas, 81 x 69 1/4 in. The Broad, Los Angeles, California.

What prompted the inclusion of Basquiat’s Untitled (Skull—which he appears to have misspelled as Scull) in “10 Paintings to Know”? Since the work dates from less than four decades ago, it cannot quite be said to have stood “the test of time” (one of Scholastic Art’s criteria for a work’s worth knowing about). Instead, his involvement with the New York City street art movement is cited, and the fact that his work was shown “in the city’s top art galleries.” Also noted is that, despite his death at the age of 27, “he is among the most commercially successful artists in history”—one of his paintings having been bought by a collector in May 2017 “for a record $110.5 million.” Nonetheless—the reader is informed—“many questions about his work [remain] unanswered.”

Not mentioned by Scholastic Art is the fact that Basquiat was a drug addict, whose premature death was due to a heroin overdose. Relevant questions about his work that remain are what on earth it means and how much of its chaotic aspect might be due to the drug’s psychedelic effects, rather than to any great creativity on his part. A further urgent question not raised by the magazine for students to consider is whether today’s art market is in fact a reliable indicator of artistic value. Finally, does the crude and confusing nature of Basquiat’s work really merit his presentation to students as a model for appreciation and emulation?1

Misconstruing Art of the Past

The one incontestable European masterpiece among the ten paintings singled out for study is Jan van Eyck’s justly renowned Arnolfini [Wedding] Portrait. But what students are told about it leaves much to be desired. This is what Scholastic Art deems important:

[The artist] includes details that provide information about the subjects. The figures wear clothing with thick fur trim, which would have been expensive to own. Many people think the woman looks pregnant. But in reality, she holds the fabric of her dress to show off the costly garment’s length. The way scholars interpret these details has changed over time. For years, people thought the dog was a symbol of loyalty. Today experts believe it is simply the family pet.

Jan van Eyck - Arnolfini Portrait
Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini [Wedding] Portrait, National Gallery, London.
Not a word to indicate that this is a work commemorating the sacrament of marriage–signified by the couple’s joining of hands and the husband’s raising of his other hand. Not a word about the painting’s aura of solemnity, befitting such a sacrament. No mention of the fact that the mirror behind the couple is framed by miniature scenes of Christ’s Passion, further alluding to the painting’s sacred purpose. Nor any suggestion that the little dog so prominently placed below the couple’s joined hands could be both an image of the household pet and a token of their fidelity. Most important, there is no indication of why this work still moves viewers nearly 600 years after its creation. As I argue in Who Says That’s Art?, it is features such as “the sober facial expressions of the young couple, their gesture of joining hands, and the aura of solemn calm in the elegant bedchamber” (all conveyed through van Eyck’s consummate mastery of the art of painting) that “ultimately make it a great work of art, a compelling image that transcends the particular historic moment being represented and conveys something about the gravity of marriage in general.”2

One Bright Spot

Grace Lin, Girl with the Bird
Grace Lin (middle-school student), Girl with the Bird.

Dismayed though I was by Scholastic Art’s September 2017 cover article, I applaud the issue’s “Student of the Month” feature. Honoring Grace Lin—an eighth-grade student at the Jay M. Robinson Middle School in Charlotte, North Carolina—it pictures her oil painting Girl with the Bird, which won a gold award in the 2017 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. A remarkably sensitive and accomplished self-portrait for a girl of only 12 or 13, it is an admirable foil to the avant-garde thrust of “10 Paintings to Know.”3 What inspired it? Not the likes of Picasso, Kandinsky, or Basquiat, but the landscape and art of Italy—in particular, she noted, the “sense of dignity and peace” in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.

Brava, Grace Lin! Your work would far better serve as a model for your fellow students than that of Scholastic’s poster artists Picasso and Basquiat.

Notes

  1. The lesson plan provided by Scholastic implicitly lauds Basquiat as a street artist who “gained recognition in the art world through collaborations with established artists such as Andy Warhol. His solo work, which explores ideas of inequality, race, and politics, brought him success and wealth.” As noted above, Basquiat’s exploration of ideas is not at all clear, as even his defenders have admitted. On Warhol’s inflated reputation as an established artist, see “The Apotheosis of Andy Warhol” (Aristos, December 2012). ↩
  2. Readers who would like to know more about the meaning of this great work should consult Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), 201–203. The National Gallery asserts that the painting is not intended as a “record” of the couple’s wedding, but Panofsky (a highly esteemed art historian) cites compelling iconographic evidence that the work aimed to memorialize the couple’s marriage vows. See also H.W. Janson, History of Art, 3d edition, revised and expanded by Anthony F. Janson (New York: Abrams, 1986), 377–378. Addendum: See “Revisiting Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini ‘Wedding’ Portrait.” ↩
  3. Unfortunately, it is not clear from the magazine’s account if the painting was done in connection with an art class at the student’s school or as an independent, extracurricular project. ↩

Contemporary Art Worth Knowing

Michelle Kamhi June 9, 2017 4 Comments
Levenson - Sibling Bond
Shana Levenson, Sibling Bond (2016)

Two exhibitions this spring have powerfully belied the artworld pretense that all contemporary art is in an anti-traditional “cutting-edge” vein. And unlike the contemporary work that fills today’s leading museums and galleries, they offer art lovers something to rejoice in.

The smaller of the two shows is Self-Portrait (April 20 – June 20)—at the Eleventh Street Arts gallery, affiliated with the Grand Central Atelier in Long Island City. The other is the Art Renewal Center’s 12th International Salon Exhibition (at the Salmagundi Club in New York, May 12 – June 1)—culled from entries submitted from more than sixty countries. Both exhibitions include work by some of the very best Classical Realist painters from around the world, a movement lamentably ignored by both art teachers and the art establishment.

The works most prominently featured on the two exhibition websites are not the ones I would have chosen. But I found other works in both shows to be truly memorable.

Self-Portraits

To begin with the self-portraits, the sheer diversity of images on display at Eleventh Street Arts is impressive—lest any reader assume that work in the academic tradition is likely to be stale and repetitive. From the keenly penetrating gaze of Louise Fenne’s Working on a Self-Portrait (see below) and Colleen Barry’s pensive Self-Portrait with St. Jerome to Jacob Collins’s rugged Winter Self-Portrait and Gregory Mortenson’s anxious Self-Portrait with Scarf, these works testify to the infinite variety of human individuality. They remind us how crucially we depend on reading the face to discern character, mood, and emotion. And in a culture seduced by the vulgar triviality of Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons, it is restorative to see images conveying a sense of dignity and gravity.

Fenne - Self-Portrait
Louise Fenne, Working on a Self-Portrait (2017)

Other works I was drawn to were Will St. John’s large-scale Self-Portrait with White Scarf (27 x 35 in.) and Charles Weed’s much smaller Plain Old Self-Portrait (7.8 x 9.8 in). They struck me as 21st-century counterparts of early and late Rembrandt portraits, respectively. Gazing out at the viewer with sober confidence, St. John cuts an imposing figure, poised with the instruments of his art (the white scarf wound around his neck recalls, perhaps intentionally, the white ruffs prominent in so many 17th-century Dutch portraits). In contrast, Weed’s intimate, slouch-hatted image, like Rembrandt’s late work, suggests self-knowledge deepened by experience. If I read it correctly, the sadness or weariness reflected in the eyes is offset by the faint play of a smile about the mouth—consistent with the self-deprecating humor of his title.

Of Joshua LaRock’s two entries, I found his 2016 Self-Portrait especially appealing. Seated before his easel (with a self-portrait in progress), he turns, palette in hand, as if to greet an unexpected visitor to the studio. His mouth slightly open in surprise, and his right arm jauntily braced against his thigh, he does not seem to welcome the intrusion!

Kudos to artist Colleen Barry for curating this excellent little show, and to Milène Fernandez of Epoch Times for writing about it (“Self-Portraits: Meeting the Artist Eye-to-Eye,” April 23, 2017). Will the benighted New York Times critics ever discover the value of such work?

ARC Salon

Unlike the Eleventh Street show focusing on one genre, the ARC exhibition comprised work in multiple categories. Of the landscapes, the two that made the greatest impression on me were not the award winners but Joseph McGurl’s luminous Transfiguration (below). and Katsu Nakajima’s luxuriant Stream of the Shadow.

Mcgurl - Transfiguration
Joseph McGurl, Transfiguration (2016)

Photographic though they may seem online, they are in fact selective re-creations of reality (to borrow Ayn Rand’s apt phrase), shaped in loving detail over time, as if honoring every blade of grass. They bear witness to a reverence for the beauty of the natural world. That reverence is made explicit in the artists’ statements, but the viewer scarcely needs those verbal confessions.1

Kim - Indian Peahen
Grace Kim, Indian Peahen (2015)

Nor does one need Grace Kim’s feminist-inspired artist’s statement to be transfixed by the penetrating eye of her Indian Peahen. Vividly alive, it seems to say “don’t mess with me!”

Two captivating paintings in the still life genre were Ascolta, ti Ricorderà, by Miki K. T. Chart, and Carmen Ruiz Segura’s Don Quijote. Both are boldly imaginative and effectively realized. To anyone familiar with Cervantes’s classic send-up of chivalric literature, Segura’s paper specter rising from the pages of a book, ready to tilt with a paint-brush lance against an oil lamp, is the perfect embodiment of the novel’s protagonist. No title or artist’s statement needed. So, too, Chart’s image speaks for itself, as art should do. Her tiny canary perched atop an old-fashioned mandolin, singing its heart out, is clearly a nostalgic evocation of the musical traditions of Italy—as further alluded to by an antique map depicted in the background.

In the final chapter of Who Says That’s Art? I suggest that what is needed to counter the artworld’s “cutting-edge” mentality is a 1913 Armory Show in reverse, on a grand scale. The ARC salons are the closest thing to that idea that have yet occurred. But they require better publicity. And the cause may not be well served by some of the top awards bestowed.2

This year’s Best in Show, for example, was Semillas, by Tenaya Sims. It struck me as an ambitious but puzzling and oddly repellent image, too dependent on the artist’s long-winded verbal explanation for understanding his intention. And last year’s Absolute Trust – Sleeping Beauty, by Arantzazu Martinez, left me equally unmoved. What should be the most telling part of the picture—the face of the sleeping princess—was far less interesting than her sumptuous garb and the plethora of props and birds surrounding her, which seemed a mere pretext for displaying technical virtuosity. Then, too, there is the matter of her hair, inexplicably windblown when the drapery around her shows no sign of movement.

In contrast, let me cite the work from this year’s show that has made the most lasting impression upon me. It is Shana Levenson’s Sibling Bond. Pictured above, it is an unpretentious yet moving embodiment of the love between a small, sad-eyed boy and his not-much-older sister, who enfolds him in her protective embrace and seems to set her mouth firmly against adversity. It called to mind for me tender moments I’ve witnessed between my own grandchildren, as well as fictional accounts of such a bond—most recently, the characters of Florence and Paul Dombey in Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son. Here is surely an enduring human theme, deeply felt and touchingly rendered.

For today’s art teachers exclusively focused on politically and socially “relevant” contemporary work of dubious artistic quality, this painting should serve as a counterexample worth knowing and teaching about. As it indicates, there is much more to our lives than the social and political dimension. The personal dimension is of profound importance as well, and should not be neglected in the art education of our children.

Notes

  1. Nakajima’s statement. As McGurl reports, his image is indeed a “synthesis of several landscapes . . . seen and painted over the years.” ↩
  2. For more about this year’s ARC salon, both pro and con, see “A One of a Kind Art Salon Champions Realism,” by Milène Fernandez (Epoch Times, May 18, 2017). ↩

Fake Art—the Rauschenberg Phenomenon

Michelle Kamhi May 24, 2017 1 Comment
Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram (1955-59). Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Image from Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Commons.

The phenomenon of fake news is on everyone’s lips in the realm of politics these days, but the equivalent of fake art in the contemporary artworld has yet to be adequately reckoned with. Google the term and you’ll find ample news of forgeries—work imitating that by famous artists and passed off as actually by them. What I’m referring to is far more insidious. It is the creation and promotion of original work that passes for art in the eyes of the cultural establishment but is not art by any meaningful standard, much less by the purported artists’ own statements about it.1

To witness this phenomenon in full swing, you could find no more telling instances than the exhibition Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends (which opened this week at the Museum of Modern Art in New York) or the exhibition catalogue by co-curators Leah Dickerman of MoMA and Achim Borchardt-Hume of Tate Modern (where the exhibition originated). They demonstrate—in spades—both the creation and the promotion of fake art.

Collaboration to Produce Anti-Art

The theme of the show—the first major retrospective since Rauschenberg’s death in 2008—is his lifelong penchant for collaboration, not only with others in the avant-garde artworld but also with scientists, engineers, and technicians. That aspect of his work appealed to Dickerman because—as she stated at a press preview on May 17—it dispels the “myth of a genius working in solitude” and substitutes the “creative power” of collaboration.

Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

So let’s take a look at some of the products of such “creative” collaboration by this alleged “genius.” A notorious early example is Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing. His “collaborators” were Willem de Kooning, who gave him the original drawing, and Jasper Johns—who persuaded him to exhibit the erased result in a gilt frame, labeled with the foregoing title. The piece was inspired, the MoMA wall text informs us, by Rauschenberg’s just “wanting to know whether a drawing could be made out of erasing.” He might have saved himself the month’s effort and forty erasers he later said he had devoted to it had he simply consulted dictionary definitions of drawing and erasure. In a sophistic gloss on this absurdity, however, Dickerman observes: “Rauschenberg set out to liberate the negative term, the unmaking from the making.”2

Like other work by Rauschenberg (with or without collaborators), Erased de Kooning Drawing is, in fact, a piece of anti-art. In the spirit of the Dadaists who inspired him, his primary aim was to challenge prior art, not to create something new in its place. Tellingly, the section of Dickerman’s essay in which that piece is discussed is entitled “The Destruction of Painting.” At later stages of his career, Rauschenberg was similarly involved in the destruction of sculpture, dance, and drama as coherent forms of expression. In Dickerman’s view, such activities were “creative.”

Can destruction be creative? True, many economists recognize the phenomenon of “creative destruction” in the economic sphere. In it, the new economic order displacing the old is itself seen to be of value. Thus it is truly “creative,” having produced a new economic value. But can any sane person not besotted by artworld sophistry honestly say that Rauschenberg’s erased drawing—or his Tire Print (a collaboration with John Cage)—has artistic value in itself? Only by ignoring or denying that art has a definable identity. Which is of course what Rauschenberg and his defenders have done.

Ignoring Essential Distinctions

Like many observers, Dickerman rightly stresses that what Rauschenberg was engaged in was an “assault on Abstract Expressionism.” What she misses, however, is that the utterly daffy forms his assault took negated not just the overrated and misguided work of the acclaimed abstract painters he hung out with at the Cedar Tavern but also the genuine art that had been produced since time immemorial and that was still being created by painters such as Andrew Wyeth. While Abstract Expressionism’s “claims of . . . psychic and existential significance” were indeed insupportable, those of traditional art were not.

Much is made in the MoMA exhibition materials of Rauschenberg’s famous claim that he aimed to work in the “gap” between art and life. Has anyone located that “gap” apart from Rauschenberg’s reference to it? I think not. Because there is no such gap. There is, however, a distinction. It consists in this: art is about life—a fact that implies it is different from (though profoundly related to) life itself. Failing to grasp that principle, Rauschenberg consistently flouted it. As Dickerman uncritically observes, he not only “admitt[ed] ordinary things into the domain of art,” he also “imagin[ed] . . . an art that did not separate itself from lived experience.” She regards that as “welcom[ing] the quotidian.” I see it as obliterating art.

Rauschenberg once explained: “I was working either with devices that would let the work compose itself, or stepping back enough to let the accidents take over.” On another occasion, he declared: “I don’t want to be in full control.” Like numerous other statements made by him, those declarations are tacit admissions that what he was doing was something other than art, since the concept of art, at root, implies control by the maker. Nor did Rauschenberg intend to convey meaning or “express a message,” though works of art had always done so.

At the press preview, I asked Dickerman whether, in view of such statements, one might be making a big mistake in treating Rauschenberg’s work as if it were art. A long, awkward pause followed. She then responded: “For me, that doesn’t resonate.” Rauschenberg’s approach to art was “very egalitarian,” she explained (echoing a notion prominent in her catalogue essay). He thought that “all things should be admitted [in art],” she added.

Rauschenberg’s “Combines”

The works that most fully exhibit Rauschenberg’s “egalitarian” approach are his so-called Combines—a term he coined to characterize the bizarre pieces for which he is probably best known. Neither paintings nor sculptures (nor art), they incorporate a motley assortment of two- and three-dimensional objects. Combines displayed at MoMA include Monogram (featuring a stuffed goat girded with a tire3), Black Market (comprising, among other things, a street sign, four clipboards, and an old suitcase), Pantomime (containing two electric fans), and Gold Standard (a gilt folding screen cluttered with diverse objects and tethered to a ceramic dog on a bicycle seat). To my mind, they suggested what might be produced in the occupational-therapy ward of a mental asylum that could only afford to supply its inmates with materials collected from the town dump.

Many MoMA visitors I observed smiled at the sight of the Combines—as one might smile at the antics of a dotty uncle. But shouldn’t we expect more from the work of a “defining figure of contemporary art” (to quote the MoMA press release)? Such idiotic fake art, like other examples by Rauschenberg, is far more insidious than forgeries, because it undermines the very idea of art.

One should not blame the dotty uncle, however. He could not help it if he was slightly daft.4 The principal blame for such a travesty of art belongs to the curators, institutions, and sponsors (from the Terra Foundation for American Art to Bank of America and Bloomberg Philanthropies) who elevate the dotty uncle’s antics to the status of art—not to mention the critics who help legitimize it, such as Holland Cotter of the New York Times.5

Notes

  1. The philosopher and cultural critic Roger Scruton has aptly excoriated such “fake art” in several articles, but this sense of the term has, regrettably, not yet gained wide currency. ↩
  2. For insights like this, Dickerman has won numerous awards—most notably for her Inventing Abstraction catalogue. For my own views on that exhibition and her catalogue essay, see “Has the Artworld Been Kidding Itself about Abstract Art?” (Aristos, December 2013). ↩
  3. On critics’ attempts to read meaning into this work (despite Rauschenberg’s repeated denials of coherent intention), see Who Says That’s Art?, pp. 131-133. ↩
  4. Though Rauschenberg is only mentioned in passing in clinical psychologist Louis Sass’s illuminating study Madness and Modernism, his Combines and other work surely exhibit many of the characteristics Sass associates with schizoid personality disorders, as do his often kooky statements about his work. ↩
  5. See Cotter’s “Robert Rauschenberg: It Takes a Village to Raise a Genius,” May 18, 2017. ↩

Lively NAEA Debate on 'Who Says That’s Art?'

Michelle Kamhi March 12, 2017 5 Comments

“Resolved that there is much useful to be learned from Kamhi’s 2014 book, and that this book can be profitably read and studied by art educators at any level of their professional development.”

That resolution—proposed by Distinguished NAEA Fellow David Pariser—prompted lively debate at the 2017 conference of the National Art Education Association in New York earlier this month. The clear consensus that emerged affirmed Pariser’s resolution.

The three debate panelists were Lorrie Blair, Amy Brook Snider, and Anna Kindler, all with decades of experience in the field. Though by no means agreeing with every point in the book, two of the three panelists enthusiastically endorsed Pariser’s resolution—a sentiment reinforced by all but one of the audience members who participated in discussion following the panelists’ comments.

Kicking off the debate, Blair argued that the book “gets us out of the echo chamber” of like-minded ideas that tend to dominate peer-reviewed publications in the field. As an example, she cited the comment posted by Paul Duncum (a prominent art educator) on the book’s Amazon.com page. Her own first impulse on reading Who Says That’s Art?, Blair frankly confessed with some humor, had been to wish she could simply “unfriend the author” and thereby erase me and my ideas from memory. But on reflection she acknowledged that the book would have the salutary effect of piercing the art-education “filter bubble.” She therefore wholeheartedly endorsed its use, and thereby joined the ranks of courageous academics meriting praise for fostering healthy debate in academia.

In sharp contrast, Snider voiced vigorous opposition to using the book in either graduate or undergraduate art education. Among her main objections was my criticism of Elizabeth Murray (who happens to have been a close personal friend of hers), and of Art21’s coverage of contemporary art on PBS. Criticizing my “picking and choosing only those examples that further my ideas,” Snider argued that the approach to critical thinking pursued in the Critical and Visual Studies program at the Pratt Institute, where she taught prior to her retirement, is far superior to my book’s argument—see correction.1 Hers was the lone dissenting voice on the panel.2

Finally, Anna Kindler was not present, but her written statement (read by Pariser) made perhaps the strongest case to her colleagues for the book’s use in art education. While expressing some personal “open[ness] to a certain amount of ‘art-relativism’,” she argued that Who Says That’s Art? “is a powerful reminder of the relationship between art and society,” one that points to “the tension between the expert and commonsense notions of art.” She therefore insisted that art educators would disregard it “at [their] peril.” Referring (like Blair) to the “bubble” surrounding the field, she admonished fellow teachers that

the case for art that we within the bubble . . . have repeated for years is not one that actually resonates with folks outside the bubble. Art education . . . will simply not win the battle for the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens unless and until we can provide clear and credible answers to those whom we ask to support our practice. . . . [I]f the world of art education were to adopt Kamhi’s definition, a persuasive case for art education would be much easier to make.

During the Q&A that followed the panelists’ presentations and discussion, two high-school teachers in the audience expressed strong agreement with the resolution. Moreover, it’s worth noting that the only dissenting voice from the audience was that of Kevin Tavin—a radical in the field with whom I’ve long disagreed.

Notes

  1. Correction – March 26, 2017: I inadvertently misconstrued Snider’s comment about the Pratt program. After reading this post, she wrote to say that the following was her view: “My opposition to the use of Kamhi’s book as a tool for critical thinking also relates to the relatively new Critical and Visual Studies undergraduate program in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Pratt Institute. The focus on critical theorizing in much of the required coursework in that program does not allow for the extensive and time-consuming examination of content nor knowledge of particular subject matter necessary for thoughtful reflection.” ↩
  2. I will refrain from responding to Snider’s particular objections here, except to say that an argument logically selects examples that support it. Even Snider’s own argument against my book has done that. Moreover, in arguing for the artists it covers, does Art21, for example, feature negative responses to their work? I don’t think so, though if it cared to do so critical voices could be readily found, beginning with my own—which its producers should be aware of, as I happened to meet and make my views known to Joe Fusaro, the show’s Senior Education Advisor, at the 2011 conference of the New York State Art Teachers Association. ↩

Valentin Who?—A Neglected French Master Spotlighted at the Met

Michelle Kamhi October 19, 2016 9 Comments

Valentin who? Valentin de Boulogne (1591–1632), that’s who! But I must confess that I had never heard of this masterly painter before the landmark exhibition now at the Met, though I’ve been studying art history for more than half a century.1

Valentin de Boulogne, Cardsharps (ca. 1615), Old Masters Gallery, State Art Collections, Dresden, Germany
Valentin de Boulogne, Cardsharps (ca. 1615), Old Masters Gallery, State Art Collections, Dresden, Germany

Valentin achieved no small fame in his lifetime, however. Ranked high among the followers of Caravaggio (1571–1610), he also inspired notable nineteenth-century realists such as Courbet and Manet. Yet, astonishingly and inexplicably, Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio is the first monographic exhibition ever devoted to him. Co-curated by the Met’s Keith Christiansen, John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Department of European Paintings, and Annick Lemoine, lecturer in art history at the University of Rennes, it at last gives Valentin his well-merited due.

The son of a painter and glazier, Valentin was born near Paris in 1591 and by 1614 had moved to Rome—then Europe’s cultural capital—where he remained till the end of his short life. Like many of the ambitious painters who flocked to that city in the early seventeenth century, he emulated the style of Caravaggio. He not only adopted Caravaggio’s earthy naturalism; he also employed his method of painting directly from live models posed in the studio, thus dispensing with the elaborate preparatory drawings used by Renaissance masters.2

Transcending Precedents

Valentin left his own distinctive stamp on Caravaggesque painting, however. His work is marked by psychological insight and subtlety rare in Caravaggio. His Judith and Holofernes, for example, is far more believable than Caravaggio’s version of the same subject.

Valentin de Boulogne, Judith and Holofernes, (ca. 1627–29), National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta
Valentin de Boulogne, Judith and Holofernes, (ca. 1627–29), National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta

Departing somewhat from the biblical narrative—which describes Judith as a “widow” (suggesting some maturity)—Valentin’s Judith has an almost childlike face. In sharp contrast with Caravaggio’s Judith, she does not recoil from the horrific deed, but proceeds with all the tight-lipped, cold-blooded determination that would have been required to carry it out. And the clandestine drama of the scene is heightened by a starker composition, subtly illuminated in front of a cavernous darkness—not diminished as in Caravaggio by a gratuitous swath of red drapery. It is one of the most compelling pictures in the Met’s show.

So, too, Valentin’s Cardsharps, cloaked in deep shadow, have a far more sinister aspect than those in Caravaggio’s more famous treatment, which is colorful but superficial. Especially chilling in the Valentin image is the predatory gaze of the cheat eyeing his pathetic victim—who clutches his cards to himself, oblivious of the evildoer’s cross-eyed partner in crime lurking behind him.

A distinctive aspect of Valentin’s approach to religious subject matter was his tendency to focus on a rarely depicted moment in the narrative. For the story of Susannah and the Elders from the Book of Daniel, for example, he eschewed representing Susannah bathing alone in her garden, ogled by the hidden elders. That scene has served many an artist as a welcome pretext for depicting a sensuous female nude. But Valentin chose instead to represent, in The Innocence of Susannah, a later moment, in which the young Daniel points the finger of judgment at the guilty elders for bearing false witness. While one of them pulls at the garment of their fully clothed victim, he is apprehended by an officer, and she turns toward the viewer, arms folded across her bosom in a gesture of self-protecting modesty. To her left, in the lower right corner of the painting, stand two small children. One gazes out at the viewer with an anxious look, while the other tugs at her robe, as if to ask, “Mommy, what are those men doing to you?” It is a poignant touch unlike anything I know of in Caravaggio.

Equally remarkable, Valentin’s Samson (the poster image for the exhibition) shows the biblical hero neither in one of his prodigious feats of prowess nor in the act of being unmanned by Delilah—the narrative moments most often chosen by artists. He is instead depicted alone, at rest. He is leaning on the jawbone of an ass, the crudely improvised weapon with which he has slain a multitude of Philistines. Wide-eyed and agape, he seems to be reflecting, not on his victory but on the magnitude of the havoc he has wrought. Is it perhaps of further philosophic import that Valentin has rendered Samson in his own likeness?

Another remarkable painting is Valentin’s Christ and the Adulteress, illustrating a well-known passage from the gospel of John. As Jesus is intent on writing a lesson on the ground for his disciples, he is interrupted by a group of scribes and Pharisees (Valentin represents them as figures of authority in 17th-century armor). Thrusting forward a woman guilty of adultery, for whom Mosaic law prescribed punishment by stoning, they demand to know what judgment Jesus would render. On reflection, he responds that whoever is without sin should cast the first stone. Valentin’s intensely personal moral focus is clear. Electrifying highlights create a riveting connection between Christ’s stern gaze (in the biblical account, he later instructs the adulteress to “sin no more”) and the woman, who hangs her head in shame, her half-bared bosom tellingly contrasting with her accusers’ armor.

In Valentin’s hands, The Last Supper, too, becomes an extraordinarily intimate event—so very different from Leonardo’s formal scene, which he would have known from engravings. Moreover, its ingenious composition seems to leave an open place at the table for the viewer. One could easily imagine taking a seat at it, flanked by the two disciples whose back is toward us. As Jesus appears to announce “one of you will betray me,” Judas (on the left) guiltily turns away, clutching his bag of silver behind his back, the evidence of his betrayal, while the disciple on the right bends to pick something off the floor, apparently missing the moment of intense drama reflected on the other disciples’ faces.

Valentin’s ability to make the viewer feel more like a participant than a mere spectator was evident even in what was probably one of his early works, The Return of the Prodigal Son. The broad sweep of the venerable patriarch’s compassionate embrace (which spans two thirds of the image) seems to encompass the viewer along with the prodigal, who kneels contritely before his father.

Such works are yet another reminder that even the most timeworn subjects can be infused with new life by a talented artist.

Like Caravaggio, Valentin knew the rowdy taverns and bawdy night life of Rome well, and depicted aspects of that life in his paintings. Rome in the seventeenth century scarcely lived up to its epithet of “holy city.” It was instead a seething den of crime, violence, and debauchery, from which artists not only drew their secular subjects but also picked the live models for their sacred images. As Caravaggio’s biography attests, artists often became embroiled in its turbulent events. Most of what we know about them is derived from police reports and court proceedings—as vividly documented in Andrew Graham-Dixon’s Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, for example. And scholars have only begun to plumb the depths of such records to gain a fuller picture of the period. One fact that has emerged is the existence of a lively market of private art patrons—though art historians formerly tended to regard Counter-Reformation painting as driven primarily by the church. The curators even cite paintings being used for money laundering by a notorious diamond thief who doubled as a dealer!

Valentin’s numerous scenes of taverns and music-making are tinged with a profound sense of melancholy that transcends the crass vulgarity of Roman low life, however, and suggests, in the curators’ words, “a meditation on life itself—its deceptions and its transient pleasures”—as well as its uncertainties, I might add. Especially haunting is Concert with a Bas-Relief. Notably, it features a sad-eyed young boy at its center, as does Valentin’s equally melancholic The Four Ages of Man.

In this connection, the curators quote an apt passage from the sixteenth-century philosopher-essayist Michel de Montaigne, relating the following experience:

I am not melancholic, though much given to daydreaming. . . . Once, while gaming and in the company of ladies, I was suspected [of] being preoccupied with some ill-digested jealousy or with my player’s luck. But in truth, I was meditating. . . . Only a few days before, as [a friend] was returning from just such a party, his head filled, like mine, with nonsense, women, and merriment, he had been surprised by fever and death.

Montaigne unwittingly presaged Valentin’s own death a few decades later. In the summer of 1632, after a night of drunken carousing, the painter fell into a fountain, subsequently developed a fever, and died, at the age of only 41.

If you are anywhere near New York between now and January 16, 2017, don’t miss the once-in-a-lifetime chance to survey at first hand and in depth this stellar painter’s work, culled from diverse public and private collections here and abroad. Some of the paintings have never before been loaned. What I have presented here are but a few of the show’s highlights. The exhibition numbers forty-five of Valentin’s sixty extant works, many of them on loan from the Louvre, and will travel there for an opening in February. If you can’t visit either New York or Paris, you might want to console yourself with a copy of the comprehensive catalogue, Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio.

Notes

  1. Remarkably, a quick perusal of Janson’s History of Art (3rd ed.) yields nary a mention of Valentin. Perhaps more surprising, a survey of art history by Germain Bazin—then chief curator of the Louvre, which holds the most extensive collection of Valentin’s work—merely lists him among numerous “foreigners (in Rome) who were to spread Caravaggio’s style all over Europe.” ↩
  2. An infrared image of Valentin’s unfinished Abraham Sacrificing Isaac clearly reveals that he sketched the outline of his figures in broad brushstrokes on the canvas and then altered the composition on the canvas as he rearranged his studio models into a more satisfactory grouping. ↩

“See something, say something” Redux

Michelle Kamhi September 23, 2016 1 Comment
Pressure cooker bomb found on New York street.

Last weekend’s terrorist events in New York City have again reminded me of the dangerous folly of some in academia who purport to be art educators. In a blog post last December on the horrific terrorist attack in San Bernardino, I referred to “art educator” Kevin Tavin, now Professor of International Art Education at Aalto University in Finland.

When still teaching in the U.S., Tavin had prominently inveighed against the nationwide poster campaign “If you see something, say something,” arguing that it plays into “fears based on a socially constructed fear of difference” and encourages citizens to single out “people who don’t seem to belong.”

Lamentably, more than one San Bernardino resident, apparently swayed by similar reasoning, failed to report suspicious activity that might have averted tragedy.

Once again, the stupidity of Tavin’s viewpoint has been exposed by actual events. Thanks to the action of one New York woman, a pressure cooker bomb left on West 27th Street in Manhattan was removed by police before it could do harm. Moreover, the cellphone wired to the cooker helped lead police to the likely culprit.

Noticing the pressure cooker outside her home Saturday night, the woman had at first dismissed it as some “weird science experiment.” But nagged by recollection of the ubiquitous “see something, say something” ads, she reconsidered. As she later explained to a reporter:

“In the subway, with those ads, there’s that thought in your brain all the time. I thought it would be irresponsible not to call because it did look suspicious.”

Indeed. But not nearly as irresponsible as Tavin’s version of “art education.”

How NOT to Be an Arts Advocate

Michelle Kamhi September 1, 2016 5 Comments
Richard Kessler, Dean of Mannes College of Music

Google my first and last name with the words “art education” and the first item you will find dubs me “The Joe McCarthy of Art Education.”1 Which prompts me to respond at this late date to that scurrilous blog post written in 2010. The author, Richard Kessler, then headed The Center for Arts Education—a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting K-12 arts education in New York City public schools. He is now Dean of the Mannes College of Music, one of America’s top music conservatories. And he epitomizes how not to be an arts advocate.

What had provoked Kessler to launch his ad hominem attack was my Wall Street Journal opinion piece “The Political Assault on Art Education.” Focusing with “liberal” blinkers on the political questions I raised, he conveniently ignored the work of “art” that had triggered the article: Judi Werthein’s Brinco—a piece that consisted of her distributing specially designed and equipped sneakers to Mexicans waiting to cross the U.S. border clandestinely. Not exactly what most people think of as art.

Like all too many arts advocates, Kessler defends virtually anything put forward as “art” (especially if it carries the properly “liberal” message)—regardless of its actual merit as art. In his view, “art” in general is a public good, and as such warrants public support in keeping with social justice. He had therefore objected (in an earlier post entitled “Arts Education and Social Justice”) to my account of “The Hijacking of Art Education.” In that article, as in the much  shorter Wall Street Journal piece, I argued that concerns for political issues such as social justice were eclipsing concerns for art among influential art educators.

Ignoring that crucial matter, Kessler pointed instead to the urgent need to provide “kids in urban centers . . . [with] a well rounded education that includes the arts.” As if I would deny it! Lamentably, he had not a word to say about the dubious sorts of “art” advocated by art educators I cited. Nor did he consider whether such work would in fact contribute anything of lasting value to inner-city kids, or anyone else for that matter. One artist/writer/activist I quoted, for example, applauds the widespread “‘de-skilling’ of artistic craft” that has occurred in the artworld since the 1960s. Further, he praises “conceptual art” for having entirely dispensed with the need for skill and having led, in effect, to “the total disappearance of the art object.” Kessler’s silence on such points was deafening.

Arrogance Compounded with Ignorance

In fact, Kessler’s arrogantly indiscriminate defense of any “art”—however far removed from customary standards—is grounded in ignorance, as evident in a still earlier post, “My Dinner with Merce and its Connection to Cultural Policy.” In it, he urged that “great artists” such as avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham be federally funded, as generously as possible, freely enabling them “to create, to experiment, to fail, to succeed.” Moreover, he lauded John Cage, Cunningham’s lifelong partner and collaborator, as among the “great, great composers” Merce had worked with. Such a judgment issuing from the future Dean of the Mannes College of Music is more than a little disconcerting. Considering that Cage’s most famous/infamous piece, 4′33″ [video/audio], entirely dispenses with musical tones in favor of ambient noise, it was the deliberate antithesis of music.

In a comment, I argued:

If avant-gardists such as Merce Cunningham and John Cage were indeed national “artistic treasures,” they should have been able to attract generous private support. The problem is that their work (unlike that of choreographer Mark Morris, for example) has never been able to appeal to a wider audience than artworld insiders. Forcing the public to foot the bill for their “experiments” is a deplorable idea. By their own admission, such experiments amounted to anti-art (that is why the public has rejected it). For evidence, see the analysis of their work and what they said about it in What Art Is (pages 220-29)—which I co-authored. The relevant pages can be viewed at Google Books: http://www.tinyurl.com/nnvhpm.

Needless to say, it is unlikely that Kessler had the intellectual curiosity to follow that link. Instead he posted this smug rejoinder, regarding Mark Morris:

I think that Mark would laugh pretty hard being presented as a mainstream counterbalance to Merce Cunningham. Apparently, Ms. Kahmi [sic], you’ve never heard Mark speak and most likely know little about his work.

Au contraire, Mr. Kessler. Here is what I had written five years earlier in “Mark Morris—a Postmodern Traditionalist” (Aristos, December 2005), after hearing Morris speak at Barnard College:

Unlike postmodernist choreographers such as Merce Cunningham, Morris (who speaks of being “smitten by music” at an early age) understands that music–true music–is the essential foundation of dance.

In contrast, I should add here, Cunningham was notorious for choreographing his “dance” pieces without music and only joining them to a musical score (often not very musical) at the time of performance. The result was, in his own words (cited in What Art Is), a “non-relationship.”

As I further reported on Morris’s talk at Barnard:

Most provocative, given his own early reputation as a rebel, was what he had to say about the avant-garde. Asked for his view of Cunningham’s work, for example, he cryptically answered that he “respects and appreciates the fact that he’s done it,” then paused and pointedly added: “That doesn’t necessarily mean I like it.”

Thus Morris and Cunningham represent what I referred to as “wholly antithetical views of dance.” That fact was made even clearer by Morris’s subsequent remarks on the contemporary dance world. As I reported, he said

he rarely attends “downtown” (i.e., avant-garde) dance programs, even those by friends. “I’m not of the Last Wave Generation that says if it lasts all night and you can’t understand it, it’s great,” he declared. . . . Nor is he interested in watching “really crappy, politically motivated work. . . . If it works as propaganda, it doesn’t work as art.” Most telling was the advice he then offered to his audience, made up largely of students and faculty associated with the [Barnard College] dance program. They would do well, he said emphatically, to read (or re-read) Arlene Croce’s controversial 1994 New Yorker article [“Discussing the Undiscussable”] on Bill T. Jones’s Still/Here and to “think about it carefully.” (Croce had refused to see and review Still/Here, arguing that its use of videotapes of workshops with terminally ill patients was beyond the pale of art and therefore outside her purview as a dance critic.) For those who might not yet have gotten his point about such work, Morris added: “Just ’cause you mean it, doesn’t mean it’s good.”

I concluded: “Artists in every discipline could learn from him.” So could arts advocates like Richard Kessler.

Notes

  1. As of October 2019, that item has dropped to page 3 of Google’s search results. ↩

Healthy Debate in Academia

Michelle Kamhi August 3, 2016 No Comments

When a Pulitzer-winning New York Times journalist noted for his own “progressive” views laments liberal intolerance on college campuses, we can be sure it’s not just a figment of conservatives’ “paranoid” imagination.1 Nor is it limited to the U.S. All the more reason to laud academics who have had the courage and integrity to defy the prevailing biases.Canadian Art Teacher - cover

One of them is David A. Pariser (Professor of Art Education, Concordia University, Montreal), who was bold enough to consider my contrarian viewpoint, in a fair-minded review of Who Says That’s Art? last year. Published in Canadian Art Teacher (vol. 13 no. 2), his review is reproduced here with kind permission. While expressing significant reservations about some of my positions, he nonetheless endorses the book “as a useful addition to any undergraduate or graduate reading list, . . . for it will generate debate and engaged discussion.”

Generating debate and engaged discussion—isn’t that what education is supposed to be promoting? Quite a far cry from the professor of art education who opined in an email message to me that my work wouldn’t survive the vetting process for peer-reviewed publication because my “arguments are inconsistent with current thinking.” (As I suggested to him, such inconsistency may place me in some notable company. My own favorite example is Ignaz Semmelweis, who bucked the entire medical profession of his day in his battle to protect women from childbed fever.)

In addition to Pariser, praise and thanks are due the editor of Canadian Art Teacher—Michael Emme, Associate Professor of Art Education at the University of Victoria. He not only published Pariser’s review but also welcomed my response to it (just published in vol. 14 no. 1 of the journal,2 and reproduced here with permission), made editorial suggestions that greatly improved its content, and graciously thanked me for contributing to the “rich mix of themes in this issue.”

Two more scholars merit acknowledgment for courageously fostering open debate in an often-hostile environment. One is the late Richard A. Ciganko, Professor of Art Education at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Reviewing Who Says That’s Art? for Studies in Art Education (the research journal of the National Art Education Association), he argued that it would be “imprudent” for his fellow art educators to ignore the “serious questions” posed by the book. Finally, the journal’s book review editor—Laurel Lampela (Professor of Art Education at the University of New Mexico)—deserves credit for ensuring that the book was reviewed.

Hearty kudos and thanks to these four academics, who should serve as models to their colleagues worldwide.

Notes

  1. Nicholas Kristof, “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance,” New York Times, May 7, 2016. “Universities are the bedrock of progressive values,” writes Kristof, “but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.” ↩
  2. Owing to delayed publication, the date on the journal is 2015—not 2016. ↩

Jousting with Mark Rothko’s Son

Michelle Kamhi June 22, 2016 6 Comments

Christopher Rothko—the highly affable son of the famed not-so-affable Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970)—has written a volume of essays lovingly re-examining his father’s life and work. Entitled Mark Rothko: From the Inside Out, it was published last November by Yale University Press, and its author has been promoting it with a passion inspired by devotion to the parent whose suicide left him bereft at the tender age of six.

Mark Rothko, Untitled 1968
Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1968.

As my readers are probably aware, I’m no fan of Rothko’s work (see, most recently, “Barking Up the Wrong Trees in Art Education”). So it’s not surprising that I welcomed the opportunity to go head to head with Christopher earlier this month on the subject of his father’s paintings.

The unlikely venue was the New York City Junto [more]. I say unlikely because that monthly discussion forum—founded three decades ago by investor Victor Niederhoffer (who has generously hosted it ever since)—has focused on matters related to free markets, the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand, and investing. Ayn Rand notwithstanding, art has rarely been more than a tangential topic of discussion.

This month’s surprising departure from that pattern was due to Gene Epstein, the Junto’s main moderator in recent years. Epstein’s day job is as the economics and books editor of Barron’s weekly business magazine. But he happens to be married to abstract painter Hisako Kobayashi—who initiated him into the ranks of Rothko admirers, as he explained in his introductory remarks.

There was a particular irony in a Junto session devoted to Mark Rothko’s work, however, for Ayn Rand made a compelling case against the idea that any abstract work could be an objectively meaningful form of art. So I gladly accepted Epstein’s kind invitation to present my contrarian view—as summarized in these brief remarks [click on > to hear audio]

and fleshed out in dialogue with Christopher Rothko.

Rothko’s overriding aim as an artist, his son explained, was to find a “universal language” for his work—in order to move the maximum number of people, in a way comparable to music. As Christopher put it, Rothko was actually a painter who aspired to be a musician. With the proper training that is the vocation he would have chosen. Feeling a particular kinship with the music of Mozart (his favorite composer), he sought to create a visual analogue that would convey an emotional sense of the “human condition”—the “darker side” of life along with its joyful aspect—much as Mozart’s music does.

In that connection, color was for Rothko “almost synonymous with emotion,” Christopher noted. By applying layers of color, the painter hoped to suggest different emotions. Yet he seems to have discovered for himself that the analogy between abstract art and music soon breaks down, as I argued in my remarks. Consequently, he moved away from his early use of bright colors, because—Christopher explained—people read them as more “joyous” than he had intended (in contrast, would one ever hear intentionally sad music as joyous?).

Over time, therefore, Rothko’s palette became darker and darker and his canvases increasingly “minimalist,” Christopher noted, until they reached the nearly black monochrome aspect of his murals for the Rothko Chapel in Houston. That work came up in relation to the claim, quoted by Epstein from Christopher’s book, that Rothko was a great painter in part because “he pushed painting to do things it wasn’t necessarily designed to do.” Asked by Epstein what he thought painting was not necessarily designed to do, Christopher responded that it centers on the way we need to bring ourselves to the paintings—the need to slow down, spend time, and “lose yourself in them.” Of the Rothko Chapel, he observed, it’s a space “you can walk into and say ‘there’s nothing here’ and be absolutely right”—if, he added, you don’t spend the time to complete the “interactive process” the painter aimed for.

Rembrandt - The Jewish Bride
Rembrandt van Rijn, The Jewish Bride, c. 1667.

Early in the discussion, Christopher had noted that his father believed “the most powerful expression of an idea is abstract.” Yet he loved figurative paintings such as Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride. Moreover, as I later discovered. Rothko much admired the work of another representational painter, Piero della Francesca (to whom, Christopher noted, my blog happens to be  dedicated!)—once arguing that he might have been the greatest artist who ever lived.

That is not the only contradiction begging to be reconciled regarding Rothko’s abstract work. In response to my remarks, Christopher surprisingly avowed that he actually agrees with most of what I said. In particular, he urges in his book that his father’s biography be left out of consideration in response to the work. Further, despite his prior emphasis on color, he now acknowledged that it is “secondary” to form, and cited an essay in his book entitled “The Quiet Dominance of Form.” On that point, he reported that his father was almost obsessive in adjusting the dimensions and proportions of the rectangular forms in his paintings. That limited repertoire of minimalist shapes is scarcely what I think of as meaningful “form” in painting, however—a term that instead conjures up for me the wealth of human figures, objects, and settings depicted by representational artists such as Rembrandt or Piero.

Although Christopher, like his father, loves the representational work of those and other masters, he said he struggles to find meaning in such work, insisting that to be art it must be about something more than the mere image. That is another point on which we happen to agree. Though I hadn’t touched on it in my brief remarks, I’ve stressed it throughout my work, including Who Says That’s Art?. Imagery in art is not an end in itself. It serves to embody values and a view of life.

One of the most telling moments of the evening occurred during the Q&A. Recounting a visit to the Rothko Chapel. a young woman seemed to echo what Christopher had said. “At first,” she confided,

I was perplexed by it, . . . and it felt like there was nothing there speaking to me. But I sat for a while, quietly, . . . and then I felt something. And the longer I sat there, the more I felt—the more energy and depth I felt from the paintings, which at first had felt very flat. And suddenly I realized that this whole space was humming, and it was quite powerful.

My question is, how much of that feeling was evoked by sitting in enforced silence in an enclosed, relatively bare space designated as a “chapel” (whose design had been largely overseen by Rothko)—rather than by the alleged power of the paintings themselves? In other words, how much of the “interactive process” Rothko aimed for in truth boils down to a viewer’s projection of self-generated feelings onto the nearly blank slate provided by the paintings?1

Readers can easily guess what my answer would be.

Notes

  1. In my remarks, I suggested that knowledge of Rothko’s troubled life, ending in suicide, may contribute to the emotional response some viewers have to his work. Contrary to that suggestion, Kobayashi (see above) reported that her first contact with Rothko’s work was at the 1978 Guggenheim Museum retrospective, when she knew very little about his biography. What moved her, she said, was the sense that he could “touch feeling without forms” and that he understood the “condition that we all live” in—the “pain” as well as the “happiness.” Such an account—from a fellow abstract painter who shares the same premises—does not prompt me to alter my general view, however, that emotional responses to Rothko’s work are mainly self-generated, rather than evoked by visual attributes of the paintings themselves. ↩

Barking Up the Wrong Trees in Art Education

Michelle Kamhi May 12, 2016 4 Comments

What’s being taught in art classrooms these days?

Lacking a comprehensive survey, I can’t offer a definitive answer to that question. But I can point to some prominent examples that should trouble anyone who regards visual art as a potent component of civilization and thus an important part of children’s general education.

Abstract Art 101

Barbara Clover (an art teacher soon to retire after two decades at Holy Savior Menard Central High School in Alexandria, Louisiana) was recently named Art Educator of the Year by the National Art Education Association (NAEA). So it’s worth asking what we might discover if we could eavesdrop on one of her classes to observe a lesson under way.

A recent news account offered the following glimpse:

All is peaceful as [a] class of juniors and seniors concentrate on a projector screen. Students use colored pencils to sketch what they see.

Mark Rothko - Untitled
Mark Rothko, Untitled.

So far so good. But what did Clover’s students see? A typical canvas by the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970). Not much to sketch there, unfortunately—just some blurred rectangles. Nonetheless, as the reporter noted, Clover had urged her students to try to understand what’s being communicated in such work. We aren’t told their answers. But Rothko’s rectangles surely gave them very little to go on.

Rothko once claimed that the goal of his work was “expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on—and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions.”

Had any of Clover’s students wept at the sight of his work? I doubt it. My guess is that apart from some sensuous pleasure evoked by his use of color, any emotion aroused in them was probably frustration at being expected to discern meaning in such a painting. The reason why is simple. People normally “express” basic human emotions vocally and bodily. They don’t reach for a paintbrush and create colored rectangles; they do things like jumping up and down and shouting. I saw a striking example on a crowded bus the other day—a little girl who was clearly not happy to be there. How did I know that? Her brow was wrinkled into a tight frown, and she periodically stamped her foot and emitted little shrieks of anger, while tugging impatiently at her baby-sitter’s arm.

The art forms based on such direct expressions of emotion are music, dance, and drama—not painting. Visual artists can represent human emotion, but they do so mainly through depictions of facial expression, bodily posture, and gesture—as in a justly famed fresco representing the Lamentation of Christ, by the great early Renaissance painter Giotto di Bodone (d. 1337).

Like many dedicated art teachers, however, Clover has simply accepted the artworld’s dubious narrative regarding the value of abstract work such as Rothko’s. What she probably didn’t tell her students, therefore, is that Rothko, along with other famous abstract painters, was haunted by the fear that viewers would fail to grasp his deeply serious intentions and would regard his paintings as merely “decorative” rather than meaningful.

Nor would students in today’s art classrooms be likely to learn that such a fear was fully justified—as evidenced by numerous patently decorative uses of purportedly serious art (uses ranging from Mondrian-inspired bathroom designs to a Rothko reproduction marketed by the Crate & Barrel home furnishings store as a “bright yet soothing . . . contemporary color statement”). Instead, students are routinely fed the artworld’s received wisdom regarding abstract art as a major art historical breakthrough worthy of our attention and esteem.

Postmodernist “Contemporary Art”

Revelations of where a younger generation of art teachers are heading can be found in the “Instructional Resources” featured in the NAEA journal Art Education. Let me cite just two. One, from the January 2016 issue, is about the “dizzying work” of Alex Garant—a Canadian painter who uses the “gimmick” (her word) of superimposing several versions of the same face out of sync.1

Alex Garant - Comet
Alex Garant, Comet, 2015, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 in.

Garant says she aims “to engage the viewer in a sensory journey” and “to create an aesthetically pleasing optical illusion.” But I defy you to gaze at one of her odd images for more than a few seconds. I found it impossible. Feeling as if my eyes were crossed, I had to turn away from what was a distinctly unpleasant experience.

Yet the adjunct professor and middle school teacher who had “explored” Garant’s work as an example of contemporary art for inclusion in her lessons concludes her article by claiming that it “magnetically draws the viewer in (emphasis mine), forcing us to question the essence of the figure before us.” Which left me wondering if she had ever actually looked at those bizarre images for more than an instant, or had questioned why she herself had emphasized their “dizzying effect.” Pity the poor middle schoolers who will receive lessons on such “art”!

Michael Beitz - Body-Brick
Michael Beitz, Body/Brick.
Michael Beitz - Belly Brick
Michael Beitz, Belly/Brick.

A passion for “big ideas” in contemporary art led another professor of art education to interview “sculptor” Michael Beitz for an Instructional Resource in the May 2014 issue of Art Education.2 Some of Beitz’s “sculptures” consist of casts of body parts attached to buildings—such as Body/Brick and Belly/Brick. Of these, he confesses: “I often work subconsciously without understanding what I am doing.” His professorial interlocutor makes matters clear for us, however. “By placing his own body parts into the construction,” she explains, Beitz “addresses issues of anonymity, alienation, and the nature of public space.” She further notes that the work reflects such postmodernist practices as “juxtaposition, recontextualization, hybridity, and layering”—terms given currency in the art ed lexicon through the writing of an influential educator named Olivia Gude.

Michael Beitz - Knot
Michael Beitz, Knot.

Other “big ideas” can be found in Beitz’s furniture “sculptures”—in which he twists and distorts familiar items such as sofas and tables out of any functional shape, to explore “relationships.” One of his favorite pieces is Knot.

Michael Beitz, Dining Table.

Another, created while he was an “artist-in-residence,” is Dining Table. Despite his intensely serious intentions about such work, Beitz candidly observes that they “look sort of funny.” Does that spontaneous impression give either him or his art ed interviewer pause to question his approach to “sculpture” and perhaps revert to one that is more traditional? Not in the least. Moreover, Professor Hoefferle assures Art Education readers that such works are “traditional in the sense that they involve a high level of technique/craft, are a translation or symbol of the artist’s experience, and are not the result of a research project.”

I must confess that my own view of “traditional” works of sculpture dealing with human relationships is a bit different. It conjures up works such as this ancient Egyptian couple, Michelangelo’s Bandini Pietà, or this remarkable latter-day Madonna and Child by a little-known Italian sculptor, Alceo Dossena (1878–1937)—not to mention a more recent example such as Three Soldiers, by Frederick Hart (1943–1999), in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A fruitful lesson might be to ask students to compare their spontaneous responses to these and other genuine sculptures with that to Beitz’s concoctions. But no such question was included in Hoefferle’s Instructional Resource.

Nor do teachers have any difficulty reconciling anti-traditional works such as those described above with the National Visual Arts Standards arrived at to great fanfare by the NAEA in 2014. Which suggests that what the standards most needed was a solidly reasoned conception of what qualifies as “visual art” and why. What was adopted instead was the contemporary artworld’s open-ended view of what art is—which boils down in effect to no standards at all.

Notes

  1. Sarah Ackermann, “Spin Me Round and Round: The Dizzying Work of Alex Garant,” Art Education, January 2016. See also “Alex Garant’s ‘Queen of Double Eyes’ Will Break Your Brain,” by Andres Jauregui, which aptly appears in the “Weird News” section of the Huffington Post, August 17, 2015. ↩
  2. Mary Hoefferle, “Michael Beitz: Objects of Communication,” Art Education, May 2014. ↩

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