On Apr 1, 2008, at 10:32 AM, Chris Miller wrote:
usually teachers have asserted, in effect, "We are going to teach
you how to do what we want" -- while the contemporary art school
asserts "We
are going to teach you how to do what you want" --
which would require teachers to be mind readers - or Marxist
theorists like
Saul -- who know more about what you really want than you do.
You don't know much about teaching, do you? Or learning, for that
matter.
A good teacher doesn't say, "I want you to do it my way" or even, "I
want you to do it your way." Rather, the teacher says, "When you do it
this way [pointing to a drawing or painting], the viewer will
(usually) perceive [or react to] it in such and such a way."
There is a world of difference in those approaches... and they don't
involve ideologies or structuralistical theorems or such.
Perhaps at a higher level of study--you know, like, fourth year
apprentice or indentured grad student--the teacher or aesthetic guide
might get tough with the student: "For God's sake, Mueller, that's
shit! I thought you could do better. The hands you painted look like
flippers. Where are the fingers? And the idea? What idea? What kind of
picture is this? It's fatuous. It's tendentious. It's too easy. It's
so retro: you've painted a man talking to a dead hare sitting on a
stool next to a naked woman all smeared with blue ink (and flippers
for hands), and a big white fence runs through it. Come on! Think. Do
better."
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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
