Mis-Teaching Art History, by Stephen Bertman

“...[B]efore we can truly appreciate works of art for what they are, before we can in fact understand them, we must immerse ourselves in the beliefs and the challenges of the times in which they were created. In short, we must view them not from the outside looking in but from the inside looking out.” (43-44) ...Bertman cites a poem by Walt Whitman which tells a story of a learned astronomer who receives applause and favor from his pupils, but, “[l]ike the biologist who seeks to comprehend a living organism by killing and dissecting it, the ‘learn’d astronomer’ turned the majestic stars into a cosmic corpse.” In the poem Whitman becomes disillusioned with the the professor and writes, “How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up up in perfect silence at the stars.” Bertman concludes his article, “If we must be the ‘learn’d astronomer,’ each of us in our own fields, then let us be him before the long beard grew, before the heady accolades came his way, before intellectual humility was covered by a thick, desensitizing callus of professional conceit, and let us instead be him as he once was, young and innocent, eagerly fashioning with his own hands a tiny telescope so he could come closer to heaven’s vault. Let us recapture that innocence so that we can still, in the company of our students, from time to time glide out into the ‘mystical moist night-air’ and look up ‘in perfect silence at the stars.’” (45)

Bertman, Stephen. “Mis-Teaching Art History.” Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE), v.33, (2011-2012): 42-45. Print.


And here's the full poem by Walt Whitman:

When I heard the learn'd astronomer, 
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, 
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, 
    and measure them, 
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured 
    with much applause in the lecture-room, 
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, 
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, 
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, 
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Street Art, by Robert Sweeny (Editor, Art Education Magazine)

I was impressed by the willingness of Art Education magazine to embrace a theme like street art. After rifling through copies of the magazine from the sixties and seventies, it’s obvious the publication has come a very long way. “Street art is contradictory: a form of artistic expression that resists institutional legitimacy while it simultaneously becomes more widespread, more accepted—an institution in it’s own right.” (4)

Sweeny, Robert. “Street Art.” Art Education, v.66, no.5 (September 2013): 4-5. Print.

Arts Practice as Agency: The Right to Represent and Reinterpret Personal and Social Significance, by James Hayward Rolling.

“To see the arts as a means of social interpretation and reinterpretation and as a catalyst for personal, interpersonal and social exchange and development, one must first see the arts as an “adaptive, dynamic, goal-seeking, self-preserving, and sometimes evolutionary” system for perpetuating the human species (Meadows, 2008, p.12). I thus claim the arts to be much more than just a generator of activist manifestos, or a universal language of self-expression or a means of crafting meaningful objects with technical precision... [They are] a self-determinative means through which to aggregate, accommodate, and assimilate ways of thinking not our own and likewise disseminate our own meanings and resources to others.” (13) Wow. 

“Perhaps the most crucial of all human rights is... the right to signify self, to signify experience, affinities, aspirations, beliefs, and ideas. Without the liberty to mark oneself as a person that matters, to model one’s personal and social experience to others without censorship, and to make special one’s place in the world without assault, prohibition or diminishment by those who rule or dominate, human agency is curtailed.” (11-12) 

“...I will redefine the practice of making art as the practice of rendering meaning from life experiences either through making marks, making models, or making special.” (11) Rolling expounds on each method of making. I liked his sentiments on ‘making special.’ “Dissanayake (2003) introduces the idea that the arts represent the evolutionary practice of ‘making special’ all that is significant to the life and health of individuals, societies and civilizations... To ‘make special’ is also to delineate identity, home, and community. ‘Making special’ is thereby also indicative of self-determinative agency.” (16)

“...[I]n what way can arts practitioners make a valuable contribution regarding matters such as the maintenance of potable water supplies, the proliferation and preparation of food stocks, the conservation and development of energy systems, transportation concepts, health and safety products, or enterprise and entrepreneurship ideas that might turn the tide of global poverty?” (15) Rolling proposes that creativity is the remedy for many of the world’s most pressing concerns. He references a book called “Design Revolution” (by Emily Pilloton, 2009) which treats design as activism, compiling 100 empowering and liberating ideas for alleviating global concerns. 

Rolling, James H. Jr. “Arts Practice as Agency: The Right to Represent and Reinterpret Personal and Social Significance.” Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, v.29 (2011): 11-24. Print.

Reflections on my own art education, solicited by Mark Graham:

Identifying defining moments (positive or negative) in my art education is difficult. It would be easier to treat the subject in the abstract, focussing on the overarching transformative power of the arts in my life. My involvement has given me new eyes—made me more empathetic, more engaged, more interested, more involved, less apathetic and less ambivalent. It’s given me hands to work, ears to listen, a mouth to speak and a heart to feel. It’s been an adhesive, of sorts, binding me to the world and the people in it.

Despite the difficulty, I’ll try to identify a few defining moments in the positive and negative throughout the years. As a child, my mother advocated every art form. We sung, danced, drew, painted and sculpted. Before I walked or crawled she held a crayon in my hand and we drew pictures together. My early memories of her are limited to a few brief glimpses of my hands in hers, working and creating. When she passed (I was three) the arts took on a new meaning. They became therapeutic. I felt near to her when I was making. I subscribed (though I didn’t know it) the the Romantic ideology that art can be an intermediary between the seen and the unseen worlds. I felt my mother’s presence when I participated in the creative act. Art became my medium. It helped me to communicate in ways that I otherwise could not.

In school, some teachers cultivated the arts while others seemed much less comfortable with them. I remember being reprimanded in third grade for doodling pictures of Lewis and Clark instead of writing a story about them. To me, the picture told a much more vivid and compelling story. I remember wondering why the two forms of storytelling weren’t completely synonymous. 

Ironically, my fondest memory of early art-making in school wasn’t encouraged by an art teacher—it was by a librarian. She was a sweet, hunched over woman who perceived in me a budding affinity for drawing. She asked for permission to have me come into the library to help with a special project. The library, she said, needed posters of literary characters to help the younger kids “get their imaginations going.” So while my class went to the computer lab to practice typing, I went to the library to draw. I thought that was a marvelous trade. That librarian always had the kindest things to say about my terrible drawings.

Later, in high school, I had a one art teacher that made the whole world new, and two art teachers that made it somewhat stale. The two that made it stale focussed on craft, while the other focussed on concept. Perhaps that’s a drastic oversimplification, but while I was in class with the two, I created hollow works of art, devoid of emotion or feeling or depth—technical exercises that, although necessary, never actually spoke. Spelling lessons without ever composing a sentence. And the other teacher elicited so many stirrings that we leapt at the chance to respond. We simultaneously craved technical practice because we recognized that our command of the craft was merely vocabulary to help us communicate. He perceived that we had opinions and ideas that were bubbling beneath the surface, and he cultivated them. 

A personal narrative solicited by Brent Wilson & Mark Graham:

As a child, my mother (an artist) advocated every art form. We sung, danced, drew, painted and sculpted. Before I walked or crawled she held a crayon in my hand and we drew pictures together. My early memories of her are limited to a few brief glimpses of my hands in hers, working and creating. When she passed (I was three) the arts took on a new meaning. They became therapeutic. I felt near to her when I was making. Art became my medium—my communion. 

For fifteen years the arts flourished in my life, and then, when my father passed at 18, the arts were knocked out of me. I craved for safety. Security and practicality took precedence over all else. I felt I no longer had time to indulge in crafts. Perhaps I feared wading through my own emotions, or perhaps, somehow, I even drew a parallel between my perceived artistic self-absorption and my father’s passing. I’m not quite sure. I placed my passion on a sacrificial altar, of sorts, and didn’t touch it for nearly three years.

There wasn’t a particular event that made me return. Perhaps it was just the mounting pressure, like an old rickety dam about to burst. But one day, for whatever reason, I picked up a pencil and began to draw. My heart pounded. 

Art became the fire of my bones once more. I finished a BFA and threw myself immediately into a grad program in art education. 

I’m not sure where I’ll end up. I’m not sure about a lot of things.  

But I am sure of one thing—my heart is pounding still.