Has formalism become acceptable to the general public? Are the public works of Kapoor and Eichelman popular because of their gimmickry or do people really respond to the abstract forms in ways that would have pleased the likes of Clive Bell and Clement Greenberg?
I think formalism is acceptable to the public as we have seen it for 60+ years. However, I don't think that means that formalism is liked or appreciated by the general public. I think there still exists some of that snobbery that was mentioned in the lecturette in relationship to Clive Bell. Even in the video of Ellsworth Kelly's exhibition, there was a starkness in the gallery and with the paintings that was somewhat uncomfortable, even from the comfort of my own couch behind a screen. In contrast, Kapoor, and Eichelman's works are in the context of everyday places which creates a level of accessibility that the Kelly exhibition lacks. I think Kapoors metallic sculptures and the fabric sculptures of Eichelman do trigger that aesthetic emotion because they respond to natural and organic forms similarly to Frankenthaler's work. In this way, I think most people can see the forms as objectively beautiful. I can imagine friends and family members saying "Whoahhhhh" when viewing these sculptures in person. I think part of this is the way that the sculptures invite interaction, as with the reflections in The Bean, and the way Eichelman's pieces transform a space. Both invite an experience rather than just an object. I had this aesthetic experience with a piece of Gabriel Dawe's work in person. I had seen his pieces in photos, but nothing compared to the way that piece glittered in the light and created optical illusions as you looked through it. It is still the most beautiful piece of art I have ever seen. I do think that Bell and Greenburg would turn up their noses at these works, although for different reasons. I think the sheer amount of selfie taking around these sculptures would immediately turn off Bell. I think Greenburg would appreciate Kapoor's work in the gallery, because it is very minimalist. I think he would consider Eichelman's works to not be self-critical, because as installation sculptures, they require that particular space to work, and therefore don't work as aesthetic pieces on their own because they are dependent on their environment.
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I think contemporary art is difficult for people because they don't understand that there are different reasons to make art and there are different ways to evaluate art. I didn't understand abstract art until I got to college. Prior to that, I didn't have any tools to look at it and evaluate its quality if there were no rendered objective images. It wasn't until I had seen more art and developed my eye and developed a way to evaluate ideas instead of just realism that I was able to appreciate contemporary art. If I came from a quality high school art program and didn't have those skills, how is the average person going to acquire them. This was one of the reasons that I started to rethink my art foundations course and what I really wanted to be foundational art skills. Our first unit is Artists Use Abstraction and we talk about how to evaluate abstract art. I show them the Art Assignment video and we talk about how our criteria to evaluate art has to move forward from 1870. Then we discuss how Modern art isn't really modern. We also talk about how art has context, and comes about in a certain place in a certain time. I got lots of ideas this week about how I could add to this presentation next semester. I think what was once old was definitely controversial in its time. Most people that I know of have an appreciation for art that ends around the Impressionists and Van Gough. When we talk about the Impressionists in my painting class, I introduce them as sort of old timey punks and rebels. They love the idea that when the Impressionists didn't get into the Salon, they just made their own. I can't imagine how controversial things like Dada were in their time, when they are still creating controversy nearly 100 years later. I imagine it was like rock and roll. I also wonder how accessible some of the work was at the time. Would the average person know of Duchamp or Picasso the way people might know Banksy today? Positive: One of the biggest positives from this class was starting to see the pieces from the other classes fall into place and start to see how everything fits and is connected between our classes from last year and our end goal of our research and paper. My research still feels exciting after this time and it feels very connected to my everyday teaching. The don't feel like separate things, but an extension of the same thing. I am starting to see exciting work come together from my students.
Minus: I need to be more mindful of recording what I am doing in class and the conversations I have with students. I have developed a system to save any of their writing that speaks to my research topic, but going forward I need to get a better system for recording after conferencing with students. The craziness from our master schedule change seems to be under control, but my classes are going SLOOOOOWWWW. We are usually well into Unit 2 by now and we are just starting. I am going to have to make some decisions about what to cut soon to make time for my new voice instruction lessons and be able to finish our content by the semester. I will be facing the decision to cut a unit from my classes to have better and probably more quality work on fewer projects, or trying to get them to pick up the pace so we don't have to cut. I struggled a lot with comprehending the framework and how to use it. I think I will still need some more edits in the spring to make this integrate and flow with my paper. Interesting/Intriguing: My most interesting data so far has been that students don't feel like they have voice, even if they report they are confident in the qualities that add up to their voice. I am also interested in the directions students are choosing to explore and the personal narratives they are choosing to pull from. So far students have explored, their trans identity, the death of a family member, the bystander effect, body image, their adoption story, the frustration of living with crutches, and much more. I think they are starting to find their flow. Questions: As I get into my research, I find I am more interested in what is happening in my classroom and less interested in other teachers. Is it ok to drop the part of my study that was researching other teacher's practice? This is also leaving me on the fence if my study should transition from grounded theory to narrative. This week, students are starting to get rolling on their first projects. I have finally gotten to conferences with students about their project plans and discuss their ideas, which is my favorite part of the process. We have almost finished our first mini lesson on voice about artists' purpose. Each day I have been sharing a few reasons that artists choose to make art. On Monday, we should finish up and then on Tuesday we will start talking about themes.
My advanced student is interested in the artwork and history of tarot cards and is working on creating her own set. They struggle a lot with making meaning in their artwork. I think their artwork is very meaningful, but they don't see it because the decisions are so automatic and they aren't good at breaking down their thinking. When asked why they made a certain decision they often reply "Because it looks cool." I hope to encourage them to be more mindful of their choices. They are doing a lot of research on the specific cards and the meaning behind them and creating their own interpretations of the figures and symbols in them. We discussed one specific card they were working on that had a star on the characters back. The student didn't have a reason for using the star so we looked at a book from the classroom library that has symbols from different sources and cultures. At the end of the conversation, they seemed excited to add more depth to their choices in the pieces. A new student in my Drawing class is showing a lot of progress in her concepts. She struggled a lot in her first project getting off of Google images and thinking about what she wanted to express in her piece. For the project she is currently working on, she is choosing to make art about her adoption and how her parents were in the process of adopting a baby from Japan, but met her and adopted her instead. She chose a shallow image, a Japanese cherry blossom tree, to express this idea, but we discussed cropping and how she could use color to make the composition more powerful and to express the complexity of the emotions of this piece. I was happy to see her go deeper in this project even if her image was cliche. For her next piece, I want to encourage her to dig deeper if she is still stuck on shallow interpretations. My mixed media class has so many powerful voices in it that blow me away with their depth. I wish they would blow me away with their productivity as well. Two students were inspired by the slide from the mini-lesson about artists expressing the intangible and spiritual, and started having deep philosophical conversations that they both mentioned in their planning conference and in their journals. One is now making her piece about how it is easy to see the bystander's obligation to help when someone is physically in trouble, but people don't see it when someone is struggling mentally or with bullying. I struggled with how to begin my Theoretical Framework this week, but once I got going, I think I found some clarity in my direction. It reminded me that the dialogue between myself and the students was a critical reason why I am so drawn to choice based art in the first place. Going forward, I will be thinking more about how TAB supports students being about to critically reflect, self actualize, and develop more awareness of themselves and others, and I will be looking for moments when students are doing this in their journals. This week I was able to grade my first set of Process Journals. Some students haven't started their first original artwork yet, so I don't have a ton of relevant examples yet. I have created a folder to save copies of any that relate to my research topic. I expect that next weeks as students finish project plans, that I will get some interesting journals.
Here are some excerpts that I saved: "This week I have been thinking about how I want to use my voice as an artist. I want my artwork to be about something I care about. I want it to not only be directed towards my audience, but I want to make it something personal and spiritually engaging for me. Usually, I don’t share the ‘deep’ parts of myself as an artist, and I usually keep my audience ‘at a distance’ from who I am. I think I have mastered all of the types of printing at a basic level, at least. The problem is deciding what I want to say. I think that time will eventually give me the answer that I need to figure this out. I talked with one of my friends during class on Wednesday about personal things relating to life and the battle we all face between what we know is right, and what we can’t help but feel in our hearts. This helped somewhat. I believe the biggest artistic strength that I have used this week is Artists Take Risks and Grow, because as an artist, I think I am going to finally attempt to channel my thoughts, feelings, and who I am through my artwork." "I'm really excited for this project because I think I can make it look really interesting. I'm doing a butterfly wing just because I think it'll be interesting. Butterflies kind of remind me of freedom and then also captivity. People like to capture them and preserve them and keep them forever without getting like old and falling apart. People keep them for their wings but I think it's cool to kind of bring it all into one piece. For the background I wanna make this kind of jail cell and I wanna have the butterfly in front. Kind of presenting that we don't really know what side of the perspect we are on because everyone is different. They want to be free and do whatever they please but then some people are on the inside of the cell and are forced to do what others tell them to because they are being held captive." "Right now I do not have anything sketched out but I do have something I’d like art to be about. The things that I want my art to be about are people of color and people of color in the LGBT+ community. I also want to include loving romantic relationships in my art. So basically I’m not sure one hundred percent what my idea should be but i fill find out soon." I'm not sure if these students have consented to let me use their information, but I am excited to see where things go. |
AuthorMorgan Singleton is a secondary art educator with a Master's degree in art education. Archives
April 2017
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