An artifact (notes for a seminar)

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Note: This essay will actually lead into Monday’s post about the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece. That’s why you should read it even though there are no pictures.

Needing a notebook for the script-in-progress for the dance/theatre hybrid Midsummer Night’s Dream that I’m collaborating on with Southern Arc Dance, I took from the shelf my old leather case. It’s very nice: zippered, storage pockets, sturdy. Before the iPhone, it was where I organized my life.

I wondered what might be in it, since I haven’t needed it for some time, and indeed, the contents were my conductor’s score for William Blake’s Inn, which we last performed in 2007. But there was more.

In the sections in the back, there were printouts and classroom observations from GHP, other flotsam from twenty years ago when I was the assistant program director for instruction — and there was a page with my scribbled notes for a seminar on Art & Society.

I never pulled it together, but it would have been a three-session seminar for the students at GHP, all gifted and talented high school juniors and seniors plopped down on the campus of Valdosta State University for a life-changing six weeks. (Seminars were what the RA staff and the faculty would offer in the afternoons to keep the kids busy. Our motto was “A tired child is a good child.”)

So here were the questions I was going to pose for discussion with the students who chose to attend. (Note that the seminar was not aimed at visual arts majors only, but any kid who wanted to attend.)

Session 1: Shock of the new

Is it possible/necessary/good for the artist to shock the audience?

Examples:

  • Impressionists (Manet’s Olympia, etc)

  • Cubists

  • Futurists

  • Surrealists

  • Jazz

  • 12-tone music

  • “The Rite of Spring”

  • rap

  • Serrano, Mapplethorpe

Questions:

  • Was it the artist’s goal to shock?

  • Whom was the artist trying to shock?

  • If the world around us is in essence shocking, should we be shocked when our art reflects that?

  • Is shock even appropriate?

  • Can the artist create something new without shocking the audience?

  • Does the artist run the risk of shock fatigue?

Session 2: Patronage

What is the responsibility of the artist to the people paying the bills?

Examples:

  • Medieval artists vs. Renaissance

  • old Playboy cartoon of a scrawny but well-endowed Renaissance nobleman ranting at the artist for his portrait giving him a more athletic build but minimizing his codpiece

  • Michelangelo vs. Julius II

  • Trading Places

  • the NEA

  • the WPA

Questions:

  • What has changed since medieval art: artist/society/patronage?

  • What role does art play in our society? Who should pay for it?

  • Is there a cost/benefit to art?

  • What is the role of the power structure towards art?

  • If the purpose of art is to create something new, and thereby shock, does the power structure have to pay for it and take its lumps?

  • Is the artist obligated to provide precisely what the power structure expects for its support? Is the art work-for-hire?

Session 3: Social Issues

Must artists respond to the social issues of their time?

I didn’t have a lot of notes for this one, just the parallels between the 1930s and now (particularly in theatre), and Picasso’s Guernica.

This topic in particular was in the forefront of my thoughts as I made my way through the National Museum of Contemporary Art.

The purpose of these sessions was not to provide a “correct” conclusion for the teens who attended, but to open their worldview to the options that we would discuss. It would have been particularly helpful to those who were thinking of pursuing a career in the arts to have those differing frameworks in their heads so they’d be better prepared to deal with the ones they encountered.

And here we are, nearly 20 years later, with the floor open for discussion in the comments.