Art Criticism - The State University of New York

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Recasting the Art History Survey: Ethics and Truth in the Classroom Community Michael Schwartz "One of the greatest of these [non-democratic] restrictive mechanisms is the present-day school, because it does not develop people but channels them."l - Joseph Beuys, "Not Just a Few Are Called, But Everyone" Introduction Over the past decade or so there has been much talk about recasting the traditional art history survey.2 Most of the criticisms have been directed at course structure and content: the limits of formal and stylistic analysis; the dearth of social and political contextualization; the injustices of neocolonialist and patriarchal frameworks; the one-sidedly monumental approach to the historical past; the uncritical celebration of Modernism; and so on. 3 The great merit of the symposium panel organized by Susan Glasser is that it has finally opens up focused discussion about the scene of teaching.4 For even if we alter what We teach - changing the canon, shifting our analytic frameworks - this does not in itself effect how we organize classroom practice. Whether one expounds on open form in Rembrandt or sexual politics in Bonheur, the lecture format foregrounds and consecrates the teacher's institutional authority and singular claim to truth. This paper will address how we might facilitate a more genuine communityof autonomous thinkers in the art-historical classroom. Its argument is divided into five sections. The first is on the strategic importance of establishing sites of community in modernity. The second is on the heterogeneity of classroom obligations. The third examines tensions between nurturing a communal ethic and speaking the truth of art. The fourth moves us towards inventing a classroom community, offering a number of re-arrangements of pedagogical practice so to facilitate student construction of course content. The fifth and longest, which complements and fills out the earlier sections of the study, contends that the themes of the survey course should directly· engage issues at stake within our own visual culture so that art history can 104 Art Criticism
make a distinctive contribution to a critical hermeneutics of modernity. As will become clear, the bulk of my remarks are philosophical; I strongly believe that we need to reflect upon the social, political, and ethical stakes of what we do in the classroom. This essay addresses then not only how we might wake up students in the art history survey and revitalize the curriculum, but why do so at all. Community and Modernity First I would like to offer a very schematic account of what I mean by community and how higher education contributes to blocking its formation. Loosely following Hegel's account in the Phenomenology of Spirit, we can say that there are three basic modalities of "self-consciousness," three modes of self-formation that emerge in our everyday practices. All of these involve the desire for self-integrity: that a prior and internalized sense of self correspond to or harmonize with the sense of self emergent and embodied in an ongoing practice. 5 The first mode of striving for self-integrity is consumption. This is when one appropriates what is other than oneself for oneself; one effaces the difference between the prior internalized sense of self and the surrounding otherness. The character of consumption is that the negation or annihilation of external otherness immediately clears the space for the appearance of more otherness, setting up another moment of potential· consumption, and so on. Consumption, in the very broad and embracing sense I am using the term, is a mode of self-emergence that readily fuels further consuming. Although consumption is essential for sustaining life, it cannot achieve certainty of self. A second mode of self-consciousness is work. Like consumption it negates the otherness outside oneself, but does so by self-externalization. We come to see a "mirroring" of who we are in the product of our labor. Work is important in achieving self-integrity, but it has significant limitations. First of all, much work these days is "alienated"; although we produce something through our labor, we are often unable to experience the product as self-expressive. 6 Second, even when work is successfully expressive, the reality transformed by one's efforts is not another human self, hence it is a relatively weak echo of who one is. And yet work matters for our identities. In our daily lives we regularly experience varying degrees of satisfaction with our labors, from dreading tedious bureaucratic paperwork to reveling in expressive acts of writing conference papers and making art. A third mode of self-consciousness is recognition. And this requires another self-consciousness. Recognition is actualized only in interaction with other human beings qua persons. In the Hegelian scheme, it is the vol. 17, no. 1 105
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Volume 17; Number I ART C.RIT1C1SM
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Art Department State University of
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4 Art Criticism
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Breaking the Picture Plane: Reflect
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whale saga (more recently Hesse or
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and many of whom were born in Europ
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printed a bullet track fired into a
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music that (like the Mona Lisa) has
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causing by neglect a bitterness amo
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preserved some of the exuberance th
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which inspiration was stabilized. 5
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pain in the eyes of the cripple giv
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Bruckner did in his music) was not
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mortify into hard edges and mushy c
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with the sleep of reason. In the Am
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cent. Its fluidity of happy acciden
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And yet I can imagine these atrocit
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erature the not very evocative work
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maiden" of Marxism (unless things g
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ic he realize that artists suddenly
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The little nonsense that wise men r
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desensitized by the imitated means
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symbolism? If the arts only exist t
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The Femme Fatale as seen in the wor
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Huysmans parallels the life of De R
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ask for the unreasonable and receiv
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ennui or physical distress leads th
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Page 62 and 63: of Moreau's works is vague and myst
Page 64 and 65: ing her as the femme fatale, or sub
Page 66 and 67: The subtitle Satanic Decameron evok
Page 68 and 69: completely mythical. Coupled with a
Page 70 and 71: Moreau was very much a man of his t
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Page 74 and 75: p. 7-8; cited in Pierre Louis Mathi
Page 76 and 77: Between World War I and World War I
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Page 80 and 81: These passages were meant to help g
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Page 84 and 85: y old masters that were more suitab
Page 86 and 87: Notes 1 Alfred Barr, "Art in the Th
Page 88 and 89: From Diagnoses to Decadence: A Brie
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Page 94 and 95: Breuer attributed the presence of A
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Page 100 and 101: generation on which the multitude o
Page 102 and 103: 2 Elaine Showalter, The Female Mala
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Page 108 and 109: mode of self-consciousness that bes
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Page 114 and 115: In this final section of the essay,
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Page 124: ~fJed in the Unikd Smtc, .• 9 ~]~
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