Hey Readers,
I just bought a book by one of my favorite bloggers, Adam Ellis (you can read his stuff, which is always interesting and almost always hilarious at www.booksofadam.com), and I've read his first story, about why he decided to leave art school. In short, he was surprised and more than a little annoyed that one of his classmates submitted as her final project a dollar-store Virgin Mary statuette sheathed in a latex condom. "'I put a condom on the Virgin Mary,' she said flatly." He was even more surprised an annoyed when his professor and fellow students started gushing over how "brilliant", "defiant", and "brave" the piece was. By contrast, when he attempted to display his art nouveau style portraits of Captain Planet, a 90s cartoon action hero, and relate them, somewhat halfheartedly, as a commentary on the commercialization of cartoon characters, the professor suggested they weren't relevant "in the grand scheme of things." While I laughed at the story (and accompanying drawings from Ellis himself), it made me think about my own experiences with art, especially modern art, and my general disdain for works like Latex Virgin Mary.
My experiences with art have been mixed at best. As I was thinking about this piece, I realized I don't have a standard set of criteria for what makes good art, or even what makes art, as should become obvious through this post. As a little boy, I wanted to be an Astronaut Artist President, which I guess was fairly common amongst my classmates, but as I got older, my astronautical, artistic, and presidential skills kind of waned.
At my elementary school, we didn't take formal art classes until first grade. My art teacher was a really cool guy named Mr. Starinsky, who we called Mr. Star. He was a big believer in expressing creativity - our art tables were wildly uneven from paint splatters, dropped bits of clay, and other art supply castoff, but Mr. Star just used the tables to teach us about texture. By the end of first grade, he was teaching us how to draw silhouettes of city skylines, and how to build a portfolio. We actually had physical portfolios in the art storage room, which we were encouraged to decorate. He told us that in fourth grade, we'd get to paint the stools and trashcans in the art room. In short, art was a lot of fun in first and in second grade.
After second grade, Mr. Star left to become something assistant curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art, meaning we got a new art teacher - Mrs. Cypress. She was basically the opposite of Mr. Star. Art projects were to be done by her rules only - suddenly, pottery (my favorite part of second grade art) was about proper technique of making coil pots and less about experimenting with glaze colors. My drawing of an incredibly long Chinese dragon was not well-received (mostly because I ran out of time to color the whole thing in). Within a year, the textured tables were replaced with new, spotless ones that we had to keep clean, much to her delight and my dismay. My love of creativity in art class, was, in a word, extinguished.
In eighth grade, I got my first taste of creating modern art. We had a student teacher in our art class who gave us each two sheets of corrugated cardboard and told us to create a sculpture with it. We would have to present what the "meaning" of the artwork was, as it had to have some kind of personal connection. I remember three artworks in particular. One student carefully made a cardboard cutout of Kobe Bryant, and was at a loss for words when he had to explain it:
Teacher: "So, tell us about your work."
Kobe Kid: "Well...it's Kobe."
Teacher: "Okay...so, do you see yourself as Kobe? Is Kobe a special influence on you or something?"
Kobe Kid: "I dunno, I just really like Kobe."
Teacher: *Silence*
While most of the sculptures were put on display around school, one student's was kept in the art room because it showed someone holding a gun to his head. I don't remember what the work was about, but I do remember the speech we got about how a middle school is different than an art museum. The student would be getting an A (he went on to art school after graduation), but we couldn't display it for its subject matter. I think this was my first experience with what I would consider tasteful controversial art. It seemed different to me than some of the more objectionable stuff at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, like a picture of Spiderman smoking a joint or a picture of Christ splashed with urine. Actually, that provokes some further thought, which I would sum up as "Just because you can do something, that doesn't mean you should," or "just because it's edgy doesn't mean it's worthwhile." Consider the much talked about Pussy Riot case in Russia from last year - most Russians believed the women should be jailed, not because they didn't have a right to free speech (they did) but because their performance was seen as blasphemous and disrespectful.
The third artwork I remember is my own, and it was my first attempt at modern art. I was quite proud of it - in response to a lot of bullying in middle school, I cut out a large, head-shaped piece of cardboard, painted it green, and then rammed red cardboard spears through it. As I explained it, my point was that people who stand out and try to be different are treated like spears going through someone's head - they stick out and are seen as bad. Admittedly, it was a somewhat immature work based on a rebellious sentiment, but I was proud of it at the time. I appreciated the encouragement from my art teacher to make the spears look as gory as possible - not so much red as bloody. I remember one teacher who I didn't particularly like confronted me after it went on display to tell me that she found it offensive, but once I realized she couldn't really punish me for it (it was not explicit - there was no profanity, nudity, or excessive amounts of violence, nor anything exceptionally controversial addressed in it, like abortion or suicide), I basically thanked her for her criticism (with the minimum amount of sincerity needed to avoid some sort of punishment for disrespecting a teacher) and moved on.
As I entered high school, I had a weird understanding of art. I liked looking at all kinds of art, from classical Greek sculpture to Picasso, but I liked Modern Art especially. However, within modern art, I lacked that clear set of standards to say what I liked and what I didn't. I loved Roy Lichtenstein's pop art style, but Andy Warhol's soup cans didn't really do anything for me. I could stare at a perpetual motion machine for hours, but a looping video of a forest scene only confused me. Through AP Art History, as well as my limited artistic encounters in college, I would develop a more nuanced understanding of art, albeit one that wasn't any clearer.
Readers, I'll keep going in Part Two, which I hope should be uploaded in a day or two. Like a solid artwork, the big picture will make sense even if these details do not just yet. Cheers!
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