Don wrote:
>I have many stories to tell how my art has influenced my status as an art
professor throughout my career. The negative effects far outweigh any
positive effects my work may have had. Most administrators are poorly
educated in the arts, at least the ones I have been unfortunate to work
for or with. My contract is being terminated where I work this year. As in
all
the previous cases, they give no reason. (I have taught in five college
level situations. At Ohio State the sculpture chair was very obvious in his
disapproval. I lasted one year. )<
Don, the majority of art teachers that I have met are fairly poorly educated
in the arts (or at least anything beyond the mainstream). It's very
disappointing. Certainly there have been occasions when I have been pleased
to talk to an art lecturer to ask them how they present certain material to
students only to find they've never heard of it and start asking me
questions. I'm just a computer programmer without 1 art qualification to my
name and they're asking me about things...it's plain daft! They could read
the books and other sources I do, they just choose to ignore a large part of
the creative activity going on in the world.
Arts education seems to be overly concerned with presenting fairly "safe"
material and a degree of elitism. Maybe this is a result of some of the bad
press arts education has received when it tries to be more experimental
(i.e. wasting public money arguments and such) and the fact that elitism is
the only route to riches in the arts. The annoying thing is that they will
soon, or maybe are already, be presenting Fluxus in the same "safe" context
that they present Dada (i.e. once it's history any radical/democratising
effect disappears).
>He had agreed to help me in a Fluxus type performance
in April. When he told a long-time friend of his, a fellow artist, that
he was doing this, the friend was bitterly opposed to him doing this. Their
very
long-time friendship is threatened. (He objected because of the Dada roots
of
Fluxus)<
This is very sad to see friendship threatened in this way. Although I
suppose an involvement in the arts often involves taking a strong stand one
way or the other. I often feel that artists of the avant-garde tradition are
more passionate about their work and invest more of themselves in it so when
criticisms arise about the work it becomes a personal attack. I guess it's
something that won't go away but it can certainly be upsetting when it
happens.
cheers,
Sol.
