Art school (Chapter 8)

I know I should have something to say about this chapter of All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes, but getting my experience with art school into a blog post is going to be unwieldy. If it all sounds confusing, that's because it was, intrinsically so I think, and that's my point. And also, I've discovered that spending Tuesday mornings writing about pop culture wreaks havoc with the rest of the week.  So, here goes:

I went to art school at UGA in the early 1980s.  The professors mostly espoused abstract expressionism, while the students preferred kitsch art (this link won't be for everyone).  Some created art seriously, while others were more about the trappings.  But the point that fits in with Myers' book is that there wasn't much respect for tradition. At that time, I took most people seriously who were actually going to the trouble to produce and show work, of whatever variety. I even enjoyed the eerie installations that included rooms full of melted wax, trash, and a child's record player chanting times tables. I took the folk preachers who built exhibits in their backyards seriously (Howard Finster wasn't the only one). The guy I knew who went barefoot all winter, smoked cigarettes while running, didn't speak for six months, and shaved his head, but only occasionally poured some paint on canvas, I didn't take seriously.

I kept very little of my own work, except for some slides--much of it disintegrated. Conservation is a problem even for curators in modern art museums, because since the sixties many artists consider museums to be "homes for dead art" and refuse to think in terms of permanence.  But I don't think there was any danger of my work going into a museum.

 

I do remember my art school days fondly (outside of classes, I had a lot of strange adventures, but they were mostly innocent because I had strong self-boundaries), and I even think it was valuable in some way (I taught myself a lot), but its most lasting effect was burnout.  I remember sitting on a bus one day during my senior year thinking, "Why do I have to reinvent the whole world to be an artist? People have already done that. I'm supposed to think that no one is authentic but other artists, but I think I'd rather be learning organic chemistry or something. Organic chemistry is hard, but at least it doesn't make you feel dizzy and isolated. I'm tired of everything being ironic and edgy."  So, after a bit of a post-graduation crisis, I picked up a second major in design, got married, got a job, and didn't think about painting again for at least three years.  And when I did paint again, I did portraiture, a type of painting that has a very long tradition and lots of craft behind it.  I'd had it with restlessness as a statement.

Myers quotes Jacques Barzun:

If ones elders are willing to be "permissive" and "flexible" about one's every excess, it soon becomes clear "that there is nothing to push against but the empty air, a feeling which is at first agreeable, then is disconcerting, and ends by causing the anguish of pointlessness--the horror of the absurd."

I was never particularly interested in indulging in every excess, though I was certainly encouraged to.  What bothered me was more whether there was any way to produce art at all without respect for natural form.  As might be expected from someone who later painted portraits, I enjoyed figure drawing better than anything else.  I was much better at capturing a form quickly and loosely on paper than I was at inventing a vision far removed from nature in my head.  But that was supposed to be "derivative."  If I had had some help that respected my interests, it might have become something more, but the philosophy of the school was quite the opposite of my inclinations, and I was too young to know what I needed educationally.  My absurdity was that so few respected what had brought me to art school in the first place--a talent for natural form.  

As Myers defines it, what my college experience lacked was a sense of high culture.  It focused on the new, not the timeless.  It relied on instant accessibility, rather than training.  It celebrated fame (shock value, alternative music) more than ability.  It constantly alluded to something else (usually kitsch, and particularly Southern kitsch). And there was little discontinuity between life and art.  

As I read over this, it sounds quite critical of my college experience, but I think that's because I'm discussing a chapter in a book that emphasizes the difference between high culture and pop culture, and thinking back over that experience in retrospect.  At the time, I hardly knew the difference. Discontinuity between art and life could be fun, lots of fun, but is that why one really goes to college? Was it worth four years of school mostly to develop a strong sense of irony? I understand that it was a studio program and that therefore I was working within the "tradition" of modern art, but I was stuck with the strong discontinuity between modern art and most of previous history. Meanwhile, there was so much more craft I could have learned, if only I'd known it was out there, but previous generations had thrown it out so completely that it was barely mentioned. At least I went to Italy.  

Here's what struck me in this chapter of All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes:

I do think that there are still differences between high art and pop culture, but the past fifty years have done a lot to blur the line.  This is partly because much of high art is a statement about pop culture.  Thus art no longer imitates human nature, but culture itself, usually by adding a layer of irony.  I'm not sure art believes there is such a thing as human nature anymore.  Was it Dorothy Sayers who said that we're using up our intellectual capital?  This is what she meant.

Pop culture's emphasis on the eternal now is completely different from the Eastern idea of zen.  I am not highly trained in Eastern art, but I understand its sensibility, and the difference is one between serenity and restlessness.  This is what makes me wonder if Madonna knew what she was talking about when she said she was a Buddhist Jew, but I won't go there.

The chapter ends with this quote:  

The aesthetic of immediate and constant entertainment does not prepare the human consciousness well for recognition of a holy, transcendent, omnipotent, and eternal God, or to responding to His demands of repentance and obedience. 

What I was struggling with last week when I posted was that such quotes feel, at first, like a sort of works righteousness.  I find it much, much easier to live outside the mainstream myself, or even to talk about what I've been doing in terms of day to day life, than to talk about it in expository terms.  This isn't because I can't make the necessary abstractions, but because I fear that I will sound legalistic to other Christians.  I do think that pulling back from pop culture is a good thing, or I wouldn't do it. And I agree with Myers' statement above. But there are all kinds of reasons people have for living the way they do, and I'm not interested in telling you exactly where you should veer off the mainstream. The Bible doesn't say whether or not you can watch a given movie, eat junk food, or listen to a given band. It gives us the big picture of who God is, and the glorious story of how Christ came to redeem us. The details are what God gave us lives, brains and an intellectual tradition for.