About the Teaching of Art

(Cross-posted at In Search of the Perilous Realm)

Should art be taught for enjoyment or understanding? Or can it be taught for both? I've been wondering about that for a few months. Last fall I had some talks with my mom about the place art should have in a curriculum based on relational principles (i.e. Charlotte Mason). Now my college semester has begun, and with it my fourth and final semester of humanities. We've been studying history chronologically, so this semester is about the 20th century. We've already studied plenty of modern art.

I've noticed, however, that all we study are the avant-garde, envelope-pushing works. We've looked at Matisse and Picasso and Munch, watched Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, listened to atonal music and talked about Schoenberg's twelve-tone system. Our discussions of "what's happening in art" during the 20th century have focused on modernism and post-modernism: the rejection of traditional Western aesthetics, experiments with other styles, and the serious, searching art that was produced as a result.

[Admittedly, the literature we've studied—World War I poets, W. B. Yeats, Pygmalion—has been more traditional. (In other words: no Joyce!) We haven't studied the literature as art, however, but as illustrations of contemporary ideas. The WWI poets demonstrate the two ways people looked at the war (romantic, patriotic sentiment versus shocked, disillusioned realism). Pygmalion expresses and criticizes the behaviorist principles of B. F. Skinner. And so on.]

I understand to a point why we ought to study the latest developments in art. The state of the arts can tell us much about the state of a culture. But my question is this: why do we privilege progressive art over works created in older styles, works which may do nothing to advance the art of art, but which are still profound and moving and beautiful? Why the bias towards the new?

I asked two of my professors this question, separately, and got several answers. One professor replied that, in a survey course such as humanities, we have limited time, and have to focus on the tip of the spear, so to speak, as art moves forward. He explained that, once you hit the 18th and 19th centuries, old styles no longer die out as new ones are born; thus by the 20th century you end up having neoclassical, romantic, realist, and a whole list of other styles all being used simultaneously with the developing modernism. That modernism is the new element, so that's what needs our attention. But just because we're not studying the other art of the 20th century doesn't mean it's not important.

The other professor replied that the humanities course is focused on understanding art rather than enjoying it. (This professor, by the way, enjoys art as much as anyone I know.) I may be misinterpreting him, but I think his point was this. When we look at the diverse collection of 20th century styles, most of them are ones we have studied before. Romanticism we met in the 1800s; neoclassicism in the 1700s. So, while artists may still be using those styles, they offer no new perspective on the human condition. The new styles, those that offer a different approach: those are the ones we can learn from. Those are the ones that add something substantial to our understanding of the world.

I think I understand their arguments, but they don't satisfy me. If students are taught to understand art—that is, to analyze it—without being taught to enjoy it, then education has missed the point of art. If we approach a work only to extract its philosophical underpinnings, then we have forgotten how to listen, and if we do not listen, we cannot learn. Art must be experienced, not merely studied. We learn from art only when we respect it enough to build a relationship with it. That means entering without an agenda and without trying to analyze. It means entering with attention, even with humility, to ask the art what it means.

Any good art will be rewarding if we take the time to build that relationship with it. In saying this, I disagree with the bias towards new art. I don't mind learning about the new as well as the old; we have to know the whole history in order to understand where we are now. What bothers me is the tendency to say that an artist must say something new in order for his work to have significance; to say that the only legitimate, honest art is that which speaks in the most current dialect; to say that today's questions can only be answered with today's artistic styles.

If art were like science, always gaining more knowledge, always correcting old theories, then the bias towards new art would be necessary. But art is not progressive like science. An old work of art, or an old style of art, has as much to say to us now as the art that is current. Plenty of music composed in the 20th century was sophisticated and significant without abandoning tonality or aesthetic standards. Vaughan Williams comes to mind, as does some Prokofiev, or later works by Stravinsky. Plenty of literature written in the 20th century was beautiful and meaningful without abandoning traditional narrative structures or poetic forms. I'm thinking of The Lord of the Rings, or the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, or Yeats's lyrical works.

We can gain as much by getting to know these traditional works as we can by studying new styles. Atonal music, abstract art, stream-of-consciousness literature, and the like may be more "advanced" (that is to say, newer). But that does not make them more valid or more valuable than art which says well what needs to be said, whether it has been said once or a thousand times.

Charles Edward Perugini

This is one of my very favorite paintings, so I decided to look up the artist.

His name is Charles Edward Perugini. He lived from 1839 to 1918, was born in Italy, but spent much of his life in England. He trained under Lord Leighton and married one of Charles Dickens' daughters, Kate, who was also a painter.

"The themes of his pictures are mainly nice girls doing peaceful things like reading, or just dressed in rich costume and looking contemplatively, often with a romantic tone." Girl Reading (also called In the Orangery)is probably his best-known work; it was painted in 1878.







Here's a picture he did of his wife, Kate:

Batman Begins: the Untold Story

I just finished watching Batman Begins for the first time with my brothers. They had both seen it before, which put us in the interesting situation of them showing me a movie for once. (An unusual occasion, that.) I enjoyed the movie a lot, but at the same time it left me with an unsettling feeling. In this movie, more than in any of the other Batmans or superhero movies I've seen, you see the vulnerability of good guys. It wasn't simply that the hero had weaknesses, or that he could be injured; that's a given in any good superhero story. This movie made you doubt Batman's ability to save Gotham, or stay a step ahead of the bad guys, or protect the ones he loved. It made you doubt his ability to defeat evil at all.

Batman Begins made me feel how precarious our victories are in this life. The world is balanced on a razor's edge. No matter how many times we save the world, all we're doing is keeping it from slipping. It remains hanging on the edge of destruction. The next battle could very well be the last.

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Read more.

Cook From the Pantry Challenge

I saw this challenge at Dewey's Treehouse . . . and ignored it because most home skills are beyond me. But we haven't really done a real grocery shopping trip since before Christmas and probably won't until this weekend. Tim felt like it would be interesting to see if we could do without having to get anything from the store, just use what we have, until the weekend. So, we aren't doing the challenge for the whole month. It's just for a week. And we'll still be getting lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers so I can have daily smoothies and they can have salads.

We have one frozen chicken breast, three boxes of taco shells, an envelope of taco seasoning, lots of canned beans, a little rice, pasta, lots of gluten-free Thai rice noodles, a jar of peanut butter, some oranges, a couple of onions, parmesan cheese and a jar of pasta sauce.

Here is our week's menu:

Monday - Thai noodles with peanut sauce
Tuesday - orange hummus (no lemon!) with taco-shell chips
Wednesday - pasta with tomato sauce
Thursday - pasta with butter and parmesan cheese
Friday - chicken tacos
Saturday - sauteed onions and kidney beans over rice

We also have our stand-by (apple cinnamon muffins and baked beans) if we need another meal. I've been dropping the muffin batter onto cookie sheets in order to save money on foil muffin liners. It makes them look like monstrous blobs, but they taste the same (one child says they taste better this way).

We'll make bread (we do have a bread machine), and Miranda has a box of frozen gluten-free waffles in the freezer (that's her bread). I think we have some rice cakes, too.

Part of the official challenge was to donate all the money you save to charity. We won't be doing that. We have a car that needs repair because a deer jumped out at us a few weeks ago, and a washing machine that needed repair last week, and we have other bills. So any money we save will be absorbed into the family budget.

Happy New Year!

In my reading this morning I came across this passage from Psalm 4 which seems befitting for the start of the new year.

Many people say, "Who will show us better times?"
     Let the smile of your face shine on us, Lord.
You have given me greater joy
     than those who have abundant harvests of grain and wine.

I will lie down in peace and sleep,
     for you alone, O Lord, will keep me safe.

I love this. It is at once a prayer for blessing, a song of thanksgiving, and an expression of trust. As the year begins we are all hoping for better days, days of peace and plenty. The psalmist directs us to God, who is the foundation of all our hopes. He gives thanks for last year's blessings, and reminds us that we are blessed whether or not we've had an abundant harvest, because we have been given life and love by our God. Finally, he reaffirms our trust in God by reminding us to rest, to keep Sabbath with God, because it is he who keeps us safe, whether we wake or sleep.

Have a blessed new year, everyone!