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Lesson Plans


Re: teaching contemporary art

From: Maggie White (mwhiteaz)
Date: Fri Jul 21 2000 - 18:57:56 PDT

  • Next message: Henry Taylor: "Re: teaching contemporary art"

    LOUISE HARVILLA wrote:
    >
    >
    > I just stood in front of a Motherwell with friends at the Cleveland Art
    > Museum. <snip>. They
    > wanted insight I could not provide. <snip> I cannot appreciate Rothko either, so maybe I'll never
    > understand minimalist art.

    Louise,

    Even if you're not as knowledgeable as you would like to be, you could
    still gain some insight and influence your friends by conducting an
    aesthetic scanning a la Broudy (or use Feldman's technique; they're
    pretty close, just with different buzzwords). You would all be able to
    recognize the sensory properties. Your background in art would let you
    identify the formal and technical properties. From there you would
    begin to at least understand how the painting was composed, if not the
    "why."

    I tell my students not to worry too much about trying to figure out an
    artist's motives, as even professional art historians have to make
    educated guesses in the absence of an artist's specific statement about
    the work. _I_ have to make educated guesses, too, but I try to let the
    students see _how_ I've come to that conclusion.

    Maggie 

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