Author: Scott Palmer
The most important factor in the appreciation of any art is the practice of it. (35)
Henry Miller, The Books of My Life
One the central productive tensions in the study of art and culture comes from examining the processes embodied within its objects of study, that is, on the one hand, the creative impulse that leads to the production of cultural artefacts in the first place, and on the other, the energy and inspiration generated by reacting to and interacting with them. Ever interested in the power of inspiration, the author Henry Miller was particularly sensitive to these dynamics, both as a writer and as a reader. In a volume dedicated to his literary influences, The Books of My Life, Miller describes a strange but familiar sensation embedded within his own creative process:
In fact, due to some perverse instinct, the moment I am launched on a new book I itch to do a thousand different things — not, as is often the case, out of a desire to escape the task of writing. What I find is that I can write and do other things. When the creative urge seizes one — at least, such is my experience — one becomes creative in all directions at once. (34)
For Miller, producing and engaging with culture feed into and reinforce one another, in what Jonathan Lethem has called the “ecstasy of influence,” in the (frequently-taught) essay of the same name. Lethem’s thesis is a contemporary version of Miller’s. He enthusiastically embraces the concept that the “recombinant nature of [arts’] means of production” (60) is central to the creative process. For Lethem, studying the arts, especially in the modern age, is to participate in a “gift economy” (65) of ideas waiting to be poached, remixed and represented to the world. “Art is sourced,” he argues, “apprentices graze in the field of culture” (68) in an open invitation to wear one’s influences proudly. This is a particularly attractive argument to students of recent generations who are intimately familiar with the concepts of creative re-use—from hip-hop to street art to meme culture.
Furthermore, this particular stance towards cultural production frequently carries with it a strong political charge, both in terms of form and content. While adaptation and appropriation certainly can be traced in more ancient contexts (from Ovid to Shakespeare in literature and, as Lethem argues, the entire history of art), these practices became increasingly marked in the post-Enlightenment cultural landscape of the industrial revolution (or better, a series of revolutions reaching all the way to today). This “age of mechanical reproduction,” as Walter Benjamin famously defined it, serves as an excellent theme for Cultural Foundations III courses that allows for a thorough consideration of the concept of modernity in its various global expressions.
While a given course may consider the disastrous consequences of Victor Frankenstein’s experiments or the radical implications of Duchamp’s Readymade art in a class discussion, an essay, or a presentation, the inherently political dimensions of cultural production can be understood still more deeply by inviting students to become “creative in all directions” as they are inspired by and in dialogue with assigned coursework. As a result, student-artists can be situated in an intellectual space within which they are encouraged to articulate and represent their own affinities with or distance from the artists and movements being studied. As students investigate the political dimensions of individual and collective expression through their own socially-engaged art practice, they potentially develop a more nuanced and detailed understanding of the mechanisms and distinct features of artistic consumption and production.
Let me share a couple of examples of how this approach has been in integrated in my own LS Cultural Foundations classes in past semesters.
OBJECTIVES
I had a specific set of learning objectives in mind as I sketched out the parameters of how to introduce this approach in my own teaching. Firstly, I wanted for students to have an increased awareness of the social and public dimensions of artistic production as a result of engaging in their own creative work while simultaneously conducting critical analyses of other artists’ work. My hope was that this would provide an alternative channel of analysis/expression with an emphasis on intentionality and decision-making rather than technique. And finally, I wanted each participating student to identify a political issue and situate herself in relation to it through object-making.
MODELS
In the Fall of 2014, the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence organized a major exhibition, Picasso and Spanish Modernity, that focused on the many stylistic changes that the artist had undergone over his career. Students from Cultural Foundations III sections taught by Suzanne Menghraj and myself were invited to visit the exhibition, attend a series of lectures on Picasso’s work and to produce a creative work using the theme of “variations” in reference to Picasso’s own creative restlessness. The visual, textual, sculptural and musical variations produced by these students reflect not only their ingenuity and talents, but also the cultural forms studied in their respective sections.
http://prezi.com/zuw78zhxjkbb/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
A second project, entitled, Oggetti Politici / Political Objects (also in collaboration with the Palazzo Strozzi) was undertaken in the Fall 2016 in conjunction with the Ai Weiwei. Libero exhibition. A self-selected group of CF3 students joined students from two other art schools in Florence to contribute creative works that explored the nexus between the practice of art, activism and society.
A forthcoming publication has been “designed to contain the works and texts produced by the students as a result of their interaction with the exhibition, of their dialogue with the artists and of their research in the classroom. At the same time, though, PO / OP is an editorial experiment…that has acquired the status of a political object.” (PO/OP)
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1n0pmyx_EXqL4_6UvGxPX6XoI1ONY-FOtoYgf1AzzJoA/edit?usp=sharing
OBSERVATIONS
Participating student feedback was largely positive. In both examples cited above, students were required to produce a short reflective essay/artist’s statement that narrated and assessed the creative arc of each individual project. Below are a few conceptual and practical observations from these experiences:
Conceptual
- Even when inspired by artists and artworks expressing explicitly political ideas, creative projects produced by students were overwhelmingly focused on personal themes (such as self-care and self-definition). In some cases, students (in particular students of color) recognized and engaged with the inherently political dimensions of self-representation. As a result, articulating or representing race was a favored vehicle or impetus for expression. However, many projects also did not fully acknowledge the complex interchange between the political and the personal.
- Engagement with local resources served as a productive point of departure for virtually all projects. These in turn were inevitably situated in transnational or global contexts that reflected the students’ cultural background and mobile status.
- Dialogue between student projects was constant and significant in all project phases: conceptualization, creation and presentation. Participating students attended exhibitions, special lectures, and workshops for the Picasso and Ai Weiwei workshops so each had ample opportunity to share and discuss ideas. But this interchange was not limited exclusively to project participants; indeed one surprising development was the level of involvement of the wider LS student body on campus, who frequently appeared as subjects in their colleagues’ works and enthusiastically supported them throughout the project.
Practical
- My students and I were both fully in agreement that more time to devote to these projects would be ideal, notwithstanding that project work was initiated in the first half of the semester. Practical realities, such as managing semester coursework, frequent travel and the complexities of navigating a foreign culture were inevitable mitigating factors.
- I am convinced that participation should be freely chosen for projects of this complexity. Lower-impact (ungraded) variants can be effective as well, but given the additional investment of time and energy, my experience has been that students who choose this assignment option bring the necessary motivation to produce artwork that is both meaningful to them and sufficiently intellectually rigorous.
- Although one of my pedagogical objectives was to link the intentionality of making art with the analysis of artistic production, student participants generally were unable to articulate a nuanced awareness of how individual artistic choices are bound within broader processes. Upon reflection, this expectation may not have been realistic given both the brief duration of the project and the lack of prior conceptual “scaffolding” for such an undertaking. I suspect that a more sustained, longitudinal set of initiatives across semesters and/or academic years would yield even better results.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Documenting experience through various forms of media and creative expression is already a high priority for university students, and not only for those in Florence and other study away sites. Beyond the familiar hallmarks of touristic consumption, many students seek more meaningful souvenirs of their academic and personal growth during time spent abroad or simply when studying away from home. Object-making responds to this impulse by producing physical artifacts that externalize its author’s memories and experience. These creations thus reveal a rich network of influences, ideas and contexts ripe for further comparative reflection and analysis. This virtuous cycle, as Miller and Lethem argue, is what renders making and responding to art so compelling. Indeed, are not these moments of “ecstasy” precisely what we seek to facilitate for our students in their own academic careers?
Works Cited
Lethem, Jonathan, “The Ecstasy of Influence” Harper’s Feb 2007 59-71.
Miller, Henry The Books of My Life. New York: New Directions, 1962.
Political Objects / Oggetti Politici (forthcoming) Florence, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, 2018.