–adjective [er-yoo-dahyt, er-oo-]
characterized by great knowledge; learned or scholarly: an erudite professor; an erudite commentary.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Art School: On the Ground, Practical Observations for Regenerating Art Education (Ernesto Pujol)
old curriculum structures, fiercely protected by entrenched bureaucracies to the point of paralysis- making change slow and even close to impossible, discouraging many young faculty members who are ready and clamoring for it.
studnes should receive training in hte basic tools of Conceptualism, such as scholarly research and literary writing, as applied to traditional painting, sculpture, printmaking, glass, cermaics, and photographic process, making muscled and poetic gestures more conscious and articulate and balancing craft with thought, while also gazing selectively at other disciplines.
Studends should have to develop fully thought-out written proposals before, during, and after painting and sculpting. I don't mean that they wshould do this simply to defend an image or object during individual and group critiques, as students have always done, but to learn how to justify that creation intellectually, beyond the subjective, in our visually dense and materially cluttered world. If they don't wantto od this, they have no business being professional contemporary artists...not everyone is a cultural producer. Our art schools' counseling departments should be sharper in vocational counseling.
it is time to call for new flexibility in curriculum development, implementation and evaluation, followed by even more change.
flexible modle may not be friendly to notions of tenure and may have to commit to temporary or part-time faculty.
generate public intellectuals
generate visual scholars
generate artist citizens
generate active cultural workers who participate in global society
Conceptually based, multidisciplinary studios are hybrid learning environments.
instructors need access to:
messy studios & clean studios
wired classroom spaces
assign research and writing about students work and review it
we need artists teaching artists. working on education as well as outside projects.
we don't need art world celebs who don't take teaching seriously.
we don't need vanity participation giving limited time to students.
stop hiring 'faculty artists' who have no field experience-artists who have jumped from their BFA to their MFA without blinking and have very little to offer students other than textbook ideas and textbook art. This sort of oxygetn-lacking wheel is killing contemporary American art in and out of academia. (we need field experience!)
We are currently perpetuating mediocrity
According to College Art Association statistics, although we are graduating more MFAs than ever before, they are leaving school in such financial debt that they cannot afford to go into communities and take chances as artist-citizens. Perhaps this is a uniquely American problem, and European countries that support their artists face other challenges. In the United States we are not graduating artists; we are graduating teachers right and left, and we should finally admit it. We are generating institutionalized artists and institutional art, and this runs the risk of collapsing over the next few decades, whether multidisciplinary or not. We need more fellowships for our students, and schools need to stop their grandiose expansion plans, consider their appropriate scale, and charge less for the education they provide as a civil act of cultural disobedience.
what can we do to protect socially powerful art practice from this all-too-quick commoditization? (protect from being institutionalized)
art schools should be the conscience of the art world.
educate young artists about shop and business ethics; counsel them about the challenges of early success, in terms of the rigid branding expectations that are publicly set; dare to address those art dealers and collectors who walk through their MFA shows; and host more than ever before the experimental and political art that has not yet found exhibition venues. Otherwise their alumni are going to be vulnerable toboth art market pressures and conservative political climates.
the amount of "information" revealed by a work of art is the measure of howm uch power an artist gives to an audience.
we cannot be perscriptive
lets look at geography, context, social class, economic status etc..
If American art schools are in the business of mirroring culture, they need to stop dismissing religion as an anti-intellectual subject and conversation. Walking through art schools right now, it is hard to tell that we are a country at war...Art Schools need to embrace the narratives of their international professors and students, or they will betray them by colonizing them once again through whiteness.
Schools should enter into long-term partnerships with communities whose leaders and members are willing to participate in the education of artists, they way they might tkae on the education of doctors by allowing the establishmen of a public clinic. In addition there is a need to improve the mental health services that art schools offer to students who are facing dyslexia, attention deficit and compulsive disorders, addiction, and depression. Art schools need to help students through these personal challenges before giving them the responsibility to work with communities.
what is the measure of success?
Nevertheless, in the short term, art schools are successful if they guide young artists into the right artistic production process for them: this match between talent (creative intelligence and skills) and old and new mediums is what gradually helps them to achieve their unique voice. This match also inserts the young artist into visual history, into the right ancestral inheritance line through which to locate, understand, and articulate their work both to the art world and that receives them and in the greater social context.
In the long term, I believe artistic success should be defined as the ability to sustain art making for a lifetime, whether within the profit or non-profit sectors, remaining part of the conversation about the destiny of the contry, the culture and global citizenship. Artistic success should be about continuing to grow and produce, constructively critiquing and regenerating, because no one should be blindly tied to tools that become obsolete, to mediums that cease to be relevant to peoples lives, to theories that no longer explain who we have become as a people, both mirroring the culture and providing alternatives for the culture.
help provide society with critical thinking tools that help to uphold a creative demorcacy.
studnes should receive training in hte basic tools of Conceptualism, such as scholarly research and literary writing, as applied to traditional painting, sculpture, printmaking, glass, cermaics, and photographic process, making muscled and poetic gestures more conscious and articulate and balancing craft with thought, while also gazing selectively at other disciplines.
Studends should have to develop fully thought-out written proposals before, during, and after painting and sculpting. I don't mean that they wshould do this simply to defend an image or object during individual and group critiques, as students have always done, but to learn how to justify that creation intellectually, beyond the subjective, in our visually dense and materially cluttered world. If they don't wantto od this, they have no business being professional contemporary artists...not everyone is a cultural producer. Our art schools' counseling departments should be sharper in vocational counseling.
it is time to call for new flexibility in curriculum development, implementation and evaluation, followed by even more change.
flexible modle may not be friendly to notions of tenure and may have to commit to temporary or part-time faculty.
generate public intellectuals
generate visual scholars
generate artist citizens
generate active cultural workers who participate in global society
Conceptually based, multidisciplinary studios are hybrid learning environments.
instructors need access to:
messy studios & clean studios
wired classroom spaces
assign research and writing about students work and review it
we need artists teaching artists. working on education as well as outside projects.
we don't need art world celebs who don't take teaching seriously.
we don't need vanity participation giving limited time to students.
stop hiring 'faculty artists' who have no field experience-artists who have jumped from their BFA to their MFA without blinking and have very little to offer students other than textbook ideas and textbook art. This sort of oxygetn-lacking wheel is killing contemporary American art in and out of academia. (we need field experience!)
We are currently perpetuating mediocrity
According to College Art Association statistics, although we are graduating more MFAs than ever before, they are leaving school in such financial debt that they cannot afford to go into communities and take chances as artist-citizens. Perhaps this is a uniquely American problem, and European countries that support their artists face other challenges. In the United States we are not graduating artists; we are graduating teachers right and left, and we should finally admit it. We are generating institutionalized artists and institutional art, and this runs the risk of collapsing over the next few decades, whether multidisciplinary or not. We need more fellowships for our students, and schools need to stop their grandiose expansion plans, consider their appropriate scale, and charge less for the education they provide as a civil act of cultural disobedience.
what can we do to protect socially powerful art practice from this all-too-quick commoditization? (protect from being institutionalized)
art schools should be the conscience of the art world.
educate young artists about shop and business ethics; counsel them about the challenges of early success, in terms of the rigid branding expectations that are publicly set; dare to address those art dealers and collectors who walk through their MFA shows; and host more than ever before the experimental and political art that has not yet found exhibition venues. Otherwise their alumni are going to be vulnerable toboth art market pressures and conservative political climates.
the amount of "information" revealed by a work of art is the measure of howm uch power an artist gives to an audience.
we cannot be perscriptive
lets look at geography, context, social class, economic status etc..
If American art schools are in the business of mirroring culture, they need to stop dismissing religion as an anti-intellectual subject and conversation. Walking through art schools right now, it is hard to tell that we are a country at war...Art Schools need to embrace the narratives of their international professors and students, or they will betray them by colonizing them once again through whiteness.
Schools should enter into long-term partnerships with communities whose leaders and members are willing to participate in the education of artists, they way they might tkae on the education of doctors by allowing the establishmen of a public clinic. In addition there is a need to improve the mental health services that art schools offer to students who are facing dyslexia, attention deficit and compulsive disorders, addiction, and depression. Art schools need to help students through these personal challenges before giving them the responsibility to work with communities.
what is the measure of success?
Nevertheless, in the short term, art schools are successful if they guide young artists into the right artistic production process for them: this match between talent (creative intelligence and skills) and old and new mediums is what gradually helps them to achieve their unique voice. This match also inserts the young artist into visual history, into the right ancestral inheritance line through which to locate, understand, and articulate their work both to the art world and that receives them and in the greater social context.
In the long term, I believe artistic success should be defined as the ability to sustain art making for a lifetime, whether within the profit or non-profit sectors, remaining part of the conversation about the destiny of the contry, the culture and global citizenship. Artistic success should be about continuing to grow and produce, constructively critiquing and regenerating, because no one should be blindly tied to tools that become obsolete, to mediums that cease to be relevant to peoples lives, to theories that no longer explain who we have become as a people, both mirroring the culture and providing alternatives for the culture.
help provide society with critical thinking tools that help to uphold a creative demorcacy.
history & freedom
"The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom." Hegel, Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1840 edition)
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
some quoted text
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. (aristotle?)
It's the mark of high civilization to espouse morality but enjoy depravity. Jacinto Guevara
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use (Kierkegaard)
It's the mark of high civilization to espouse morality but enjoy depravity. Jacinto Guevara
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use (Kierkegaard)
Saturday, May 1, 2010
divine intervention
So I met up with Jacob today, the guy I met at New Wave Cafe two weeks ago accompanied by Nate Chung. We met at the end of Nate's panel about art and social action...and ironically enough, I was late to the panel only to catch Nate and Jacob stepping out. We were planning on going to a place to sit down but our conversation just happened right then and there. We were all so excited to come together and knowing that it was completely divine appointment that we were all thinking along similar wavelengths that a very engaging and informative conversation ensued. Mostly about our conviction of inaction upon the pressings of God's movement, but also the determination to get things moving. After meeting and sharing my vision for so many months to so many individuals, I have never felt such a pull as this that I should begin orchestration with these two individuals in particular. It is so obvious that God is moving and it is our responsibility- our obligation to align ourselves with God's will and his moving. My hear yearns to delve into the project of a 'dialogue space' that I am often tempted to quit my full time job at the Art Institute and spend all of my time in God's effort for this space to happen. It is so clear it is hard for me to go to work daily knowing that I will be squandering an opportunity to do something much greater with the abilities that God has given me.
I no longer need to be asking the question to God - "What do you want from my life?"
I can add nothing to his work, I can only be available to be used by it. this is my deepest desire and my strongest conviction. Make me useful.
Jacob is from Iowa. He moved out here for school. Transferring from two other school prior to earning his degree from DePaul, he went from Art to Social Sciences/Social Services. He is working at Chicago Artist Coalition as well as the census in Roger's Park and a wine Bar. His desire is not much different from mine however and he is committed to what God wants to do with his life- whatever form that might take. Nate is in a similar position and we all desire so much to see something different from what we are experiencing. Something so spectacular that all cannot help but notice the work that God is doing. We all see Chicago as a fly-by-city, but never to neglect it and leave it with nothing to contribute. Lets leave a legacy. Lets provide a sustaining model for change and continue to contribute to the viral love that Christ has to give to a broken, segregated city. Let us find the lack, the need and the opportunity and start a healing process that has an eternally lasting impact.
Pray.
Stand up.
Move.
Fail.
Repeat.
this is my desire God, please hear my cry.
I no longer need to be asking the question to God - "What do you want from my life?"
I can add nothing to his work, I can only be available to be used by it. this is my deepest desire and my strongest conviction. Make me useful.
Jacob is from Iowa. He moved out here for school. Transferring from two other school prior to earning his degree from DePaul, he went from Art to Social Sciences/Social Services. He is working at Chicago Artist Coalition as well as the census in Roger's Park and a wine Bar. His desire is not much different from mine however and he is committed to what God wants to do with his life- whatever form that might take. Nate is in a similar position and we all desire so much to see something different from what we are experiencing. Something so spectacular that all cannot help but notice the work that God is doing. We all see Chicago as a fly-by-city, but never to neglect it and leave it with nothing to contribute. Lets leave a legacy. Lets provide a sustaining model for change and continue to contribute to the viral love that Christ has to give to a broken, segregated city. Let us find the lack, the need and the opportunity and start a healing process that has an eternally lasting impact.
Pray.
Stand up.
Move.
Fail.
Repeat.
this is my desire God, please hear my cry.
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