Week 7: White Cube in the City

In "Our Students Need the City" with Carol Becker, who offers a different perspective. She  mentions that isolation of artists is often confused with freedom, and that most students not "trained" to think or act globally or politically. If this is, indeed true, which in most cases it likely is, then art is merely a process of objectification, and important issues are not in focus because art students are trained to look at world individually, through an isolated eye. Institutions have made it so artists are only perceived as "producers of commodities" as opposed to an integral, and crucial expression of identity and culture. And our culture is pervasive in the sense that we assume the attitudes, practices, and beliefs are indeed a fact of life. We don't question them, or the institutions they are derived from. In short, we've "cultivated separateness." So, this begs the question: should institutions teach artists how to remain autonomous? Or should they remove the frame, and rebuild a foundation for art based on ideas? is it freedom?

 I, for one, think we should expand to create, not limit to implode. Freedom, after all, equals possibilities. Becker says, "But there's this idea that if you verbalize, or intellectualize, it'll destroy the spontaneous, intuitive qualities of artmaking" which really resonated with me. Growing up, I thought all artists were these dark, lonely, brooding, miserable people, surely making art intuitively, as if they had some divine gift. You weren't supposed to ask questions about what the art is, what it's trying to say, you weren't supposed to intellectualize it and connect it with other social/political issues; you were supposed to look at it and appreciate it for its aesthetics. Don't ask questions. Don't challenge the artist. Don't challenge the ideas behind the art. They just are. The artist is brilliant. You don't need to know why, or how. That was my perception of artists growing up, and although it was obviously misconstrued, I think it relates to this whole idea of aesthetic and autonomous art. That we should not intellectualize and verbalize, limits us in every way. Instead, ideas give us freedom. The aesthetic attitude, the autonomy, the disconnectedness, being a prisoner of one specific medium, in art, isn't beneficial. The freedom to choose is.  And I think that is what Becker is getting at. That ideas can frame the school! Not the medium, but rather the ideas surrounding the art, and the possibilities that these ideas provide. There should be flexibility among artists, among ideas and the mediums, rather than this isolation and inflexible frame that most artists/students are taught. We should structure our lives in a way that invites and encourages possibility and expression and unlimited creativity, not tie ourselves down to the institution and the notion of artistic ideas and mediums as a separate. They're all interconnected. They all feed off each other. From ideas to art to new art to new ideas. It's time to remove the frame.

In "Breaking Out of the White Cube" with Richard Shusterman, we've gotta give up the "ideology of aesthetic autonomy", aka aesthetic limits are no longer acceptable in the art world. Instead, we've got to reconceive art in more liberal terms, reshaping aesthetics so they can function/serve how we want them to. not necessarily a rejection of aesthetics, as they are obviously very pleasing to look and do serve a purpose, but an expansion of aesthetics/arts to function together with ideas and the bigger picture. In most other cultures, art is integrated into daily life through celebrations, customs, traditions, any kind of participatory art, but in our culture we seem to have isolated ourselves from art. Shusterman mentions that in our art culture, aesthetic attitude is a social and intellectual distinction- those who can look a pretty picture of scenery and only look at it for its aesthetics, not for its emotional properties, are people who aren't connected with nature and the world around them; instead, they are isolated from the world and use their objectifying eye to cultivate the aesthetic attitude that embodies art in western culture. Aristotle defined art as poesis, or making, not as praxis, or doing, which seems quite contradictory because what we make does affect who we are, what we create is a product of who we are, and who we are is an expression of what we create. So, in that sense, art is praxis, the doing, because with art we are doing things, we are creating things, yes things external to ourselves, but things none the less that affect not only us but also, hopefully, others as well. And if art isn't doing, it should. It shouldn't be merely making. It shouldn't settle. It shouldn't put these restrictions upon itself. At least, I think that is what Shusterman is getting at. He also mentions that art and science are parallels, in the sense that both are taken out of the "life world", or isolated from life, while simultaneously being conceptualized and disconnected from the modern world. What we should strive for, instead of isolation and limitations, is liberation from the oppressive bonds of tradition. For freedom from the aesthetic attitude yields unlimited possibilities and expansive, brilliant ideas.

Terri Warpinski, a photography professor, showed us her work, starting with her earliest pieces in paintings/printmakings, to where she is now in her art practice with photography. Upon seeing her transformation from one art medium to another, I immediately connected  the "removing the frame" idea with her journey throughout different mediums. She ultimately used her ideas to propel her forward and eventually evolved her mediums to suit her ideas. And throughout it all, she seemed to be evoking this zest for art, for optimism, for the transformation of ideas into something meaningful and powerful. And I think that's what it's all about. Giving our ideas a chance. So that they can develop into something wonderfully brilliant and uniquely serendipitous.