Reviewing the Arts Class Blog

DUE NEXT WEEK (February 15th): Reflecting on all of the assigned readings thus far (Plato, Bell, Tolstoy, and Winterson) and our class discussions, and write a reflection piece on this blog that describes your philosophy of art, what you believe to be art’s responsibility to society, and the viewer’s (and reviewer’s) responsibility to art. You may write in an informal or more formal manner (whatever feels most comfortable to you).

To receive credit for your response, be sure to include your first name in your post!

Make sure that you mention at least one idea or thought by each of the above authors and whether you agree/disagree and why. For example: “According to Plato, blah, blah, blah, but I strongly disagree because blah, blah, blah.”

Consider the following questions while writing your manifest (you may address all or some of these; feel free to come up with your own questions to consider):

• What, in your opinion, constitutes art? And how would you determine what is “good/bad,” useful or not? How is that similar to or different from any of the authors you read?
• What do you think is the purpose of art? Must art carry a message? Or must it be aesthetically pleasing? How is your response similar to or different from any of the authors we’ve thus far read?
• Must art do something? Explain why you answered the way/s you did. Also, note if your answers are similar to and/or different from any of our assigned readings (again, a good opportunity to reference readings).
• How do you view the relationship between art and its audience? Does art have a greater responsibility to its audience than the audience to art? Does your belief reflect any of the essays we’ve read?
• What kind of dialogue or personal experience do you have with art? How do you approach art? And what might one of the authors respond to your approach?
• What expectations do you have when going to see a play, movie, art gallery exhibit (to be informed? entertained? to engage in a personal experience? etc.). How does your typical experience with or of art coincide (or not) with any of the authors you’ve read?
• If a painting, performance, or film could speak to you about its expectations (of you as its audience), what do you think they would be?
• Do you think a piece of art stands alone (or can stand alone)? Or do you think knowing something about the artist is important and/or necessary? What do our readings thus far suggest?

** Always, always back up your thoughts with some example, quote, or explanation.

Reading/Viewing Due:

• Excerpts from What Is Art? by Leo Tolstoy
• Excerpts from “The Aesthetic Hypothesis,” in Art, by Clive Bell

This time, you’ll turn in your responses to each reading IN CLASS. In no less than a page per reading (for a total of no less than two pages total), answer one set of discussion questions from each of the readings due for next week. Please format your paper as follows:

** Upper left hand corner – put your name, date, class, assignment # / should be double spaced with Times New Roman font (#12) and one inch margins.

Again, I suggest that you take a look at the discussion questions first, so that you will have them in mind while reading (and can take notes or highlight as needed).

DUE ONLINE by 6 p.m. February 1st

Respond to one of the questions within the “Excerpts from Plato“ reading. I suggest that you take a look at the discussion questions first, so that you will have them in mind while reading (and can take notes or highlight as needed).

Inform me immediately if you are having problems accessing either the reading or the blog.

MAKE SURE YOU PUT YOUR FIRST NAME ON ANY POST YOU WRITE.

This forum is for my Spring, 2007 Reviewing the Arts class. A category will be assigned for each week for journal posting and/or assignments, as necessary. You are responsible for WRITING AT LEAST ONE SUBSTANTIAL JOURNAL REFLECTION onto this forum EACH WEEK, in response to readings, projects, presentations, and events, etc. Categories are also posted to this site for your reference, to help with your readings, class discussions, and general reflection, as you go through this course. You are encouraged to utilize this resource, as well as add to it and/or make suggestions for new resources as you come across them.

In order to receive credit, you must put your first name on all posts, or register (with at least your first name) and sign in before posting.

Adding additional resources will be looked upon favorably, when the time comes to turn in final grades, and could be particularly useful for those who may need an extra boost at the end of the semester (hint, hint). HOWEVER, adding websites and resources WILL NOT replace your required weekly journal responses. If you are experiencing problems with this online discussion board, please inform me immediately.

Arts in Cyberspace:

The Cyberculture Art Museum Collection: “Art for cybersake”

Database of Virtual Art: “The Database of Virtual Art documents the rapidly evolving field of digital installation art. This complex, research-oriented overview of immersive, interactive, telematic and genetic art has been developed in cooperation with established media artists, researchers and institutions.”

Complimentary & Recommended Reading / Websites:

Below are several links that you will find useful throughout the semester, as complimentary readings and or visuals to your assigned readings and essays. These readings are not required, but may be helpful to you in understanding the overall context of many of your required readings and/or assignments. I will continue to add to this list throughout the semester, so keep checking back. Please notify me of any missing or broken links.

Aesthetics, Representation and Authority / Theories:

Plato: Wikipedia

Clive Bell: Wikipedia / Clive Bell page at Rowan University, NJ

Leo Tolstoy: Leo Tolstoy home page / Wikipedia

Jeanette Winterson’s Home website: since we’ll be reading more of her work this semester, you might want to browse around her website, which is loaded with all kinds of interesting places, visuals, and even a discussion board.

Socially-Conscious, Activist & Transgressive Art:

The Social and Public Art Resource Center: This is a really wonderful site, representing one of the most significant public art centers in the world. Here, you can find out about the hundreds of community murals SPARC has created, preserved, and recorded.

Sniggle.net: The Culture Jammers Encyclopedia: “For the cyberian who has everything, including an attitude, take two doses of Culture Jammer’s Encyclopedia and call us in the morning. You’ll find a bevy of sassy skeptics who are ready, willing, and able to deconstruct society’s hottest hucksters, hackers, and antiheroes. Got the millenium-bug blues? Luxuriate in a lukewarm bath of literary hoaxes. Stuck in an ill-fitting operating system? Witness the inaugural Bill Gates pie-throwing contest, then slip into something a little more uncomfortable…” – Yahoo!’s Picks of the Week

* Be sure to check out the link to urban and adventerous artists!

Adbusters: “We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century. To this end, Adbusters Media Foundation publishes Adbusters magazine, operates this website and offers its creative services through PowerShift, our advocacy advertising agency.”

Sunday Morning – The Critics part 6: Arlene Croce -November 11th, 2005: Julie Copeland interviews London-based writer and critic Jan Murray about her “first encounters” with Arlene Croce.

La Pocha Nostra: Performance Art for the New Millenium: Official page for Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra . . .

Mark Dery (1999) Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs. Grove Press. “This article popularized the term Culture Jamming and sketches a definition of the concept. Many times republished on the Web, this text serves as a Culture Jamming Manifesto for many.”

Culture Jamming 101 “Andrew Boyd, author, artist and grassroots publicist, self-proclaimed “pioneer of viral activism” and associate professor at the New York University founded and directed for several years the Arts and Action Program of United for a Fair Economy (UFE) and now offers workshops and training in Culture Jamming, Media Pranks and Viral Communication. He was the driving force behind the Election Campaign Parody “Million Billionaire March” in 2000. The performance of hundreds of New Yorkers dressed up as millionaires demanding to be freed completely from social responsibility in exchange for their contributions to the presidential election campaigns. The Million Billionaire March combined elements of Street Theater, Subversive Affirmation, Creative Action with a carnevalesque atmosphere. The action was backed up by a website that is now offline.” (text from: Center for Communication & Civil Engagement)

Visual Culture:

Definitions of Visual Culture from the University of Wisconsin program on Visual Culture

W.J.T. Mitchell, “Interdisciplinarity and Visual Culture,” Art Bulletin, 78/4, Dec. 1995.

Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message,” (Excerpt from Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man. Part I, Chapters 1-7, 2nd Edition). (See especially Part 1, “The Medium is the Message,” paragraphs 1-3.).

Identity, Culture and Power:

Black Arts Movement: by Kalamu ya Salaam. Piece from the Oxford Companion to American Literature on the key cultural force of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and early 70s.

CommunityArts Network Reading Room: The Community Arts Network (CAN) is a portal to the field of community arts, providing news, documentation, theoretical writing, communications, research and educational information.

“The Artist as Citizen: Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Felipe Ehrenberg, David Avalos and Judy Baca” by Emily Hicks.

Cartoon Rhetoric:

Pat Oliphant’s Anthem: Pat Oliphant won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1966, only two years after leaving his native Australia and coming to the United States. Oliphant has caricatured seven United States presidents and challenged many with his graphic commentary on numerous political and social issues. At this Library of Congress site, you can view some of his most influential cartoons of the past three decades.

Ann Telnaes – Editorial Cartoonist: Born in Sweden, Ann Telnaes’ editorial cartoons are syndicated with Cartoonists and Writers Syndicate/ New York Times Syndicate. Her work has appeared in such prestigious publications as The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Le Monde, Courrier International, The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The New York Times, Austin American Statesman,The American Prospect and Ms magazine. Telnaes also contributes an exclusive weekly cartoon to Women’s eNews, an online news service.

McGrath, Ben. “Why do editors keep throwing “The Boondocks” off the funnies page?” The New Yorker, 2004-04-19: ” On the day of Saddam Hussein’s capture, last December, the left-leaning political weekly The Nation celebrated its hundred-and-thirty-eighth birthday. It was a Sunday night, and the weather was dreadful—forbiddingly cold and wet, heavy snow giving way to sleet—but three hundred people could not be deterred from dropping five hundred dollars a plate for roast chicken amid the marble-and-velvet splendor of the Metropolitan Club . . .”.

The Boondocks: Aaron McGruder’s “The Boondocks” reflects the racial diversity and complexity of our world. Combining childhood antics with contemporary political and social satire, the strip explores the terrain where dashikis and Brand Nubian CDs meet The Gap and Hanson.

Cagle Cartoons: A great source for political cartoons and “provocative pundits.”

Walt Handelsman’s Political Cartoons: A Newsday editorial cartoonist, he creates new scathing political (and other editorial cartoons) regularly.

Victim & Issue-Oriented Art:

A Lost Generation: Heather Lewis’s posthumous novel reanimates a movement unfairly dismissed as victim art.

Some other reviews of Bill T. Jones’ work:

• Howard, Rachel. “Bill T. Jones transcends boundaries in a work mixing dance, literature and race,” San Francisco Chronicle. 21, May, 2005.

• Jowitt, Deborah. “Striving for Grace: A racist image heals a hurt in a way that has nothing, and everything, to do with racism,” Village Voice, 17, Feb. 2004.

Research & Resource Websites:

Bedford St. Martin’s Research and Documentation Online: Useful literary resource for finding other research materials when doing major papers. Contains databases, indexes, websites, and references books for literature.

MLA citations: How to cite sources within your paper!

MLA manuscript format: formatting, pagination, long quotes, etc.