National Art Education Association

Thoughts on Getting PlasteredAuthor(s): Jerome J. HausmanSource: Art Education, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Mar., 1990), pp. 4-5Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193200 .

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Thoughts On Getting Plastered

Some months ago I travelled along with my wife, Ruth Felton-Hausman, to New Jersey where we were met by George Segal, the sculptor. He's an old friend and had long ago invited us to pose for one of his sculptures. Our trip to New Jersey was to do just that.

The technique employed in making the sculpture is known to virtually every art teacher - it's the sort of thing we do with students in paper-mache form making. Of course, there are many differences to be found in the casting of people rather than inanimate objects. There are even more essential differences in the conceptions and forms in the works themselves.

Segal has spoken and written of the importance of the model in determining the shape his sculpture takes: "The look of these figures is both accidental and planned. I usually know generally what emotional stance I would like to have in the finished figure and I ask the model to stand or sit in a certain way. That model though is a human being with a great deal of mystery and totality locked up in the figure. Certain truths of bone structure are re- vealed and so are long time basic attitudes of response on the part of the model. If you have to sit still for an hour you fall into yourself, and it is impossible to hide, no matter the stance" (Hunter and Hawthorne, 1984).

There's a strange and wonderful feeling as one becomes encased within the plaster bandage. George speaks to you in a low, reassuring voice. He works quickly with a kind of confidence and assurance. A state of positive intellectual and emotional rapport is established as you feel the

layers of bandage being applied. It's not long before you experience the warmth of hardening plaster. That which was malle- able and soft becomes incrusted and hard. There you are! Inside a work of art. More than that, the sculpture takes its form from the folds and surface nuances of your being. You have 'lallen into yourself".

I have had occasion to reflect upon the experience. There were those moments of complete darkness where only my nostrils provided access to an outer space. In the darkness of the work taking shape, I came to know it in a way that few others can grasp. Indeed, a part of what I came to realize was about myself. When com- pleted, I will know that sculpture because

4 Art Education/March 1990

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- An Editorial

I've "been there"; I've been in it. I am here reminded of an observation made by another friend, Bennett Reimer: "The kind of cognition the arts entail is a function of the quality of interaction, or experience, a particular time of the encounter. The cognition is not a knowing about (or knowing that); it is a knowing of (or know- ing within" (Reimer, 1989). "Knowing that" and "knowing within" are both important. It should not be a matter of choosing be- tween them. Presently, there's much discussion and debate about the teaching of art. Many are urging a more detailed and explicit approach to developing the content for instruction. Their emphases are more heavily weighted toward "knowing that." I am urging a redressing of balance to include emphases upon "knowing within." I'm not proposing a massive program of plastering students as a means to achieve their understanding of art. What I am suggesting, however, is greater recognition and awareness of our metaphorically "getting inside works of art." In this process we can come to know more of ourselves.

It was almost forty years ago that Viktor Lowenfeld wrote about the significance of self-identification in the creation and under- standing of art. He referred to that capacity to empathically project oneself into an idea or form. It's the feeling and understanding that you have when you follow and feel the swirling blues and yellows in Van Gogh's "The Starry Night." One can be within the crest of brushstrokes and experience the movement and energy against the vast- ness of the sky. The whirling and exploding stars can be contrasted with the quiet village below. While people sleep, there is

the spectacular drama above. Looking at the work invites personal identification; looking at the work invites involvement.

So too, with Piet Mondrian's "Composi- tion in Blue, Yellow, and Black" -there is an invitation to "get inside" of a very different aesthetic frame. Terms like "control," "structure," "color," and "relation- ships" are relevant. Identification with this painting invites insights into equilibrium and balance involving unequal but equiva- lent oppositions. Getting inside a Mondrian brings one to a new and more personal understanding of pure and plastic form. Getting "inside" an art form requires a special kind of thinking and feeling. You position yourself to see and think from the inside out. The form and content of the work invite an active state of involvement, a transaction in which we can stretch our powers of perception and understanding. As Lowenfeld put it: "No art expression is possible without self-identification with the experience expressed as well as with the medium by which it is expressed. This is one of the very intrinsic factors of creative expression. If we do not identify ourselves with these forces, art expression loses the very essence of its nature - its creativity." (Lowenfeld, 1952).

Jerome J. Hausman Editor

References Hunter, Sam and Hawthorne, Don (1984). George

Segal. New York: Rizzoli, p. 83. Lowenfeld, Viktor (1952). Creative and Mental

Growth. New York: The Macmillan Co., pp. 8, 9. Reimer, Bennett. "A Comprehensive Arts Curricu-

lum Model," Design for Arts in Education, Vol. 90, No. 5, July/August 1989, p. 6.

Art Education/March 1990 5

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