-
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
Report Information from ProQuestMarch 28 2015
06:56_______________________________________________________________
-
Document 1 of 1 What matters is art history Author: Mathews,
Patricia ProQuest document link Abstract (Abstract): Mathews wants
her students to come out of her "Approaches to Western Art History"
classexcited about art and art history, with an understanding of
the complexity and range of the subject and with anability to enjoy
the intellectual experience of art. The teaching techniques Mathews
uses are described. Full text: At Oberlin College art historians
have struggled for more than a decade to find the proper approach
tointroduce liberal arts students to our discipline. After
abandoning the survey of Western art as superficial--formerly a
course with 150 students taught over two semesters with the
participation of each professor in her orhis specialty--we turned
to a format of a one-semester thematic course limited to
twenty-five students andtaught by each art historian once a year,
titled "Approaches to Western Art History." We hoped this
coursewould give our students the essential tools for a more
intensive study of art. We disagreed, however, as to whatexactly
those tools should be. Therefore, with such common goals as
developing visual literacy and criticalreading skills, each of us
have developed our course as we have seen fit. Chronology was one
major point of disagreement. Some of my colleagues held that
chronology is essential, andindeed, students seem to long for the
security and sense of cogency that a chronological approach
offers.Others, such as myself, abandoned it altogether to focus on
issues of art practice and historical as well ascurrent
interpretative models. The chronological survey is one of the most
difficult things for an art historian to relinquish because
traditionallyit has been the foundation of the discipline. Without
it alarming visions of art appreciation courses with
littlesubstance beset us, those infamous and trivializing "gut
courses" that so diminish the reputation and the caliberof the
study of art. Yet chronology has its own set of problems for an
introductory course. First, one cannot dojustice to the history of
Western art, much less of the world, through a chronological survey
even if each era istaught by a specialist in the field. There is
simply too much material and not enough time to communicate
itscomplexity. In my experience, no matter how complex the ideas
presented in the survey course were, thestudents seemed incapable
of absorbing them on any but the most cursory and uncritical level.
Ideas needcareful explication, not simple declaration. Second,
chronological surveys typically misrepresent the history of art as
a seamlessly coherent narrative. Yet,as one of my colleagues put
it, "the nineteenth-century passion for synthesis will no longer
serve the needs ofserious art-historical thinkers." The history of
art cannot be usefully synthesized into a body of learning to
bedistributed over one or two semesters without profound
distortion. Nevertheless, the majority of survey coursesrely on a
canon of artists who follow one another in linear progression. Art
historians have labored under themisconception that the canon is
the product of careful culling to produce those artists of greatest
quality. However, as many would now agree, the canon is not the
product of some supposedly universal notion of"quality" imagined by
modernist art historians. Quality is a historicized set of
standards derived from a specificculture at a given historical
moment that served certain purposes. A canon therefore offers only
a partial view ofthe scope of artistic practice. A chronological
survey course could not effectively acknowledge such a scope. Nor
is there a single approach through which one can discuss the range
of art processed in a survey.Approaches to art history are as
diverse as the artworks and periods we study, as medievalists will
attest, andcannot without simplistic reductionism be forced into a
straitjacket of linear progress and categorical concepts
ofdevelopment and artistic genius. Chronology becomes more relevant
in upper-level courses where one has thetime to examine the broader
context of a given subject. I subscribe to an art historical
approach that acknowledges the dynamic, fluid, varied nature of art
and its
http://search.proquest.com/docview/223305203?accountid=149759
-
interaction with culture. Not only the canon, but those excluded
from it, play a fundamental role in the productionof cultural
meaning. In my view art history should teach students about the
role of art in the formation of culture,about the diversity of
approaches and meanings that constitute the art of a given
historical moment, and aboutthe interpretative modes used to
understand it. Finally, I believe that critical thinking and visual
literacy are more important to a student than chronology.
Arthistorians have fetishized a chronological, diachronic model
based on causality and often teleology thatsupports a linear model
of history and an elitist, exclusive lineage of art. Are the
questions of who did whatwhen really the most important information
for a student to absorb in their first art history course? I think
not. My "Approaches" course is based on discussion of images and
readings. We are fortunate to have a very finemuseum at Oberlin;
almost half the course time is spent looking at actual works of
art. I have found no text idealfor my purposes, so I rely on
articles on library reserve. I also assign five projects: an
analysis of how anadvertisement visually communicates its message;
an iconographical analysis of an image in the Allen ArtMuseum that
discusses the relationship between a work of art and the text on
which it is based; a historicalanalysis of a work from the museum
based on research into the artist's context, period, style, and
subject matter(students often choose little-known artists for this
assignment); a self-portrait exchanged with another studentwho
critically analyzes it; and an architectural study of the function
and plan of a building on campus. The course begins with a
discussion of the form and content of advertising images in class.
The students thenchoose an advertisement of their own and analyze
it. Although they feel at ease critiquing such pervasivecultural
images, they discover in the process that there is much more to the
advertisement than they thought.This assignment introduces them to
critical reading in an area with which they are familiar and serves
to alertthem to the notion that all images are representations with
ideological implications. They also discover that thesame visual
language applies to both media culture and "high" culture, and
their preconceptions about the"elevated" and "sacrosanct" nature of
"high" art begin to erode. In the next section of the class, the
students are asked to read two simple but oppositional texts (John
Bergerand Kenneth Clark) and discuss the implicit assumptions in
each about the nature of art and the "proper"method to interpret
it. Class discussion focuses not on the "correct" approach, but on
the various meaningsproduced by different methodologies. Students
enjoy recognizing that art history is just as contingent as
theworld they live in and has more to offer that world than just
aesthetic enjoyment or a cloistered history divorcedfrom social
concerns. After setting up the basic themes of the course--visual
literacy, critical reading, and the contingency ofinterpretative
modes--we spend the next few class sessions in the museum studying
the specifics of visualanalysis. Then we consider traditional
interpretive modes within the discipline from periodization and
style toiconography. Such classic art historical texts as Heinrich
Wolfflin and Erwin Panofsky are read against suchwriters as Roland
Barthes and Michael Baxandall. The iconography and historical
exercises help students toconnect research to actual objects in the
museum and allow them entry into the complex signifying nature of
art.The second segment of the course deals with more contemporary
issues of art and the artist, again throughconflicting texts: the
role of biography in art (Janet Wolff, Albert Aurier), the critical
reception of the artist (MeyerSchapiro, Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Griselda Pollock on Cezanne), and various constructions of the
artist (LindaNochlin, Pollock). A look at interpretive acts
follows, employing such themes as ideology and aesthetics (Susan
Sontag, Wolf, andthe role of art and ideology in the construction
of gender (Carol Duncan, Clark, Berger) and race (Cornell
West,Eunice Lipton). During this section each student performs two
acts of interpretation. She/he makes a self-portrait and exchanges
it with another student's to critique. We devote two class sessions
to discussions ofthese portraits: first the "critic" addresses the
work, then the entire class responds, and finally the artist
revealsher/his intentions. This has proven to be a very successful
learning experience for students. They attain a betterunderstanding
of both art and critical processes and of the inevitable conflicts
between intention and reception.
-
The last classes are devoted to experiencing and writing about
architecture on the Oberlin campus (JohnSummerson, Robert Venturi)
and to discussing the role of art institutions (Richard Bolton,
Hans Haacke,Richard Spear). In comparison to the survey course,
students in my "Approaches" class are much better prepared for the
studyof all periods in art history. They may not have a strong
background in chronology, but they are able to do arthistorical
research, to relate form to content in images, and to have some
grasp on interpretive strategies.Ideally, the students will be able
to locate many perspectives in the work itself, from formalist to
iconographical,empirical, poststructuralist, and feminist, and they
will learn as a result how to make distinctions betweendifferent
kinds of reading, so that they may appreciate and be open to
different methodologies and differentinterpretations. My approach
to teaching the introductory course raises a number of pedagogical
issues that I would like brieflyto discuss. The idea of art as a
site of conflicting voices and intersecting discourses is
fundamental to myteaching of art history. Because of my own
concerns about the exclusive nature of art history, I insist on
thecontinual acknowledgment of issues of gender, race, class,
sexual preference, and so forth. It may be that in thefuture the
focus on these issues will arise at the appropriate moment within
the context of a particular work, butas it now stands, these issues
are still so rarely considered in art history that I strongly
emphasize them as apalliative. I am not satisfied, however, simply
to add to the canon all those left out of it. When I first became
interested inwomen artists in graduate school and taught myself
about them because none of my professors had eitherinterest or
expertise in the subject, I assumed that I would simply insert them
into the existing canon. I soonfound, however, that women artists
did not fit. At best, they seemed cramped by this model, and at
worst, theylooked second-rate when judged by the canonic standards
for artistic practice of the period under study. To takean example
from my own field, modern art, the virility and aggressive formal
distortion of early twentieth-century, avant-garde art practice is
lacking in most women artists of the period (compare fig. 7 and 8).
However,when these women artists are studied in terms of their own
themes, cultural positioning, and approaches, theirrole in the
construction of cultural meaning emerges (see fig. 9). To teach
only one perspective misrepresentshistory as well as the role of
art in the production of culture and silences the voices of women
and other artists.(fig.'s 7, 8, and 9 omitted) The appropriation of
difference as a pedagogical tool by members of the "dominant"
culture is suspect however.Students are especially sensitive, at
least at Oberlin, to a male teaching about women or a white
womanteaching about African American art. They see such roles as
another enactment of gender and racialoppression, in effect as
another form of imperialism. How can these professors teach
something they have onlyexperienced secondhand, and from a position
of privilege? My own response to this situation comes from
theadvice of bell hooks: As long as we do not claim ultimate
authority over the subject, we have the responsibilityto learn
about and teach the work of Others. If authority and mastery in the
classroom can give way to facilitateddiscussion, students not only
learn more, but they learn more about how to learn and how to speak
to eachother about difference. We live in a global economy, in
which traditions other than those of the West are increasingly
asserting theirpresence as actors on the stage of world history.
Our student bodies are beginning to express a similardiversity. We
can no longer put our heads in the sand and pretend that
traditional approaches to art history andthe history of Western art
itself have the same cultural cachet as they did during the reign
of the West. Studentswant to know and deserve to know more about
the different traditions within and without Western art. To
incorporate, however, different ways of looking and valuing art,
such as those of Africa or China, would be adifficult task for most
art historians trained in Western ways of seeing. Moreover, I feel
strongly that one shouldnot try to teach outside of one's
expertise. In my opinion to try to discuss an "African" way of
seeing based onvisual analysis alone essentializes African art. To
do it justice, one should be deeply knowledgeable about
-
Africa's various cultures and arts and be able to elucidate the
complexity they exhibit. Rather than all becominggeneralists spread
too thin, we need to commit ourselves to hiring more specialists in
non-Western areas. In summary, I want my students to come out of my
cited about art and art history, with an understanding of
thecomplexity and range of the subject, with the ability to enjoy
on a fairly sophisticated level the visual andintellectual
experience of art, to have some concept of the history and the
methodologies of our discipline, andwith the tools if not yet the
mature ability to critically assess interpretations of art as well
as the assumptions andapproaches of the discipline. For majors and
nonmajors my "Approaches" course is designed not only to createa
foundation for interpreting art and understanding art history, but
to unsettle preconceptions about the role ofart in the production
of culture and the ideological values and assumptions that underlie
the discipline of arthistory and of culture more generally.
Finally, I hope to leave the student with the sense that art
history and arthave relevance outside of the narrow confines of the
discipline, both for their other course work and for
theirunderstanding of the larger culture. Subject: Teaching; Art
history; Publication title: Art Journal Volume: 54 Issue: 3 Pages:
51 Number of pages: 4 Publication year: 1995 Publication date: Fall
1995 Year: 1995 Publisher: College Art Association, Inc. Place of
publication: New York Country of publication: United States
Publication subject: Art ISSN: 00043249 CODEN: ARTJA5 Source type:
Scholarly Journals Language of publication: English Document type:
Commentary Accession number: 02527864 ProQuest document ID:
223305203 Document URL:
http://search.proquest.com/docview/223305203?accountid=149759
Copyright: Copyright College Art Association of America Fall 1995
Last updated: 2014-05-19 Database: ProQuest Research Library
http://search.proquest.com/docview/223305203?accountid=149759
-
_______________________________________________________________
Contact ProQuest Copyright 2015 ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved.
- Terms and Conditions
http://www.proquest.com/go/contactsupporthttp://search.proquest.com/info/termsAndConditionsWhat
matters is art history
