I'm looking forward to the student presentations tomorrow, February 7th. This will be the first time this semester that students in this class will be sharing with their fellow class members the insights that they are getting from reading the essays in their aesthetics text. Already, I have received e-mail messages from students who are working on their class presentations and the concern is to find a way of making the presentations interesting and representative of some solid study of the text.
There is always a tension in an art school, I've discovered, between students who want to make art objects and those who not only enjoy making art objects but are equally interested in reading and reflecting on the thoughts and opinions of other people who are making art objects. The in-class aesthetics presentations are the result of students who have found a way of balancing their desire to make art objects and also to appreciate what others have written about the making of art. The in-class presentations in this class are especially important because for some students it is the first time they are able to see the way in which the studio and the academic complement and overlap one another.
These are some of the reasons why I look forward to these first presentations in the morning. Please feel free to comment on your thoughts about this process. I will be adding entries to the LCAD Aesthetics Blog periodically, and I invite you to interact with me.
2 comments:
I thought that Meg and Kim's presentation was really impressive. I definitely was taken aback by the "opinions" this so called art critic was spouting. He did make a great argument for the avant garde of the early 20th century but when he takes a swing at representational art as inferior his arguments are nullified. Aaron and Electra's presentation made me think of a definition of art I had read in Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, "Art is anything that man does outside of survival ." (eating, sleeping, reproducing) Yi Fu Tuan's thoughts about feeling nature around you as an aesthetic experience work as well in the country or in a park as it does in the busy city. You get a feeling from your surroundings and to be able to capture that in your mind and reflect it is what naturalistic painting is all about.
Dan, those are some very astute observations. It will be exciting to see how students respond to the flow of ideas in the upcoming presentations. As you know, the way that our text is set up is to move from very particular kinds of aesthetic experiences to broader and more universal themes in aesthetic experience. This should elicit some very interesting discussion and insights.
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