{"id":555,"date":"2015-05-23T16:04:42","date_gmt":"2015-05-23T14:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/?p=555"},"modified":"2015-05-23T16:08:56","modified_gmt":"2015-05-23T14:08:56","slug":"highlights-from-the-beauty-class-visiting-artists-post-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/2015\/05\/highlights-from-the-beauty-class-visiting-artists-post-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Highlights from the beauty class visiting artists (post 2 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my last post<\/a> and this one I am sharing highlights from presentations by the several artists who joined us in the second half of the course and key ideas that resonated most for the students.\u00c2\u00a0 The last\u00c2\u00a0two sessions, discussed in this post, focused primarily\u00c2\u00a0on the notions of taste and craft.<\/p>\n

April 14 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c On tastes, on obssessions, on beauty in unusual places (Fred Stonehouse<\/a> & Polly Carl<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Fred<\/a>

Fred Stonehouse<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Polly<\/a>

Polly Carl<\/p><\/div>\n

In the first half of this class we enjoyed a great lecture\u00c2\u00a0by the artist Fred Stonehouse<\/strong>, who is on faculty at UW-Madison.<\/p>\n

Fred was laid back and put the students entirely at ease. He began by talking\u00c2\u00a0about growing up in a middle class family and not knowing much about museums. As a Roman Catholic, he said that his experience with art as a child was mostly from religious calendars.<\/p>\n

Fred’s work is inspired by where\u00c2\u00a0he finds beauty\u00e2\u20ac\u201din tattoos, in devils, in the sacred heart, in bats, in his dog, in skulls\u00e2\u20ac\u201din short, in things that most people find rather dark. Fred’s presentation alternated between the motifs that have inspired him over the years and the works that he created. (See his online\u00c2\u00a0gallery<\/a> for images.)<\/p>\n

The students were able to relate to Fred and his art and many expressed later that it was a relief\u00c2\u00a0to understand that Fred\u00c2\u00a0draws bats, for instance, because he finds bats beautiful; and that sometimes futher\u00c2\u00a0interpretation is neither\u00c2\u00a0necessary nor even beneficial. At one point, Fred quoted\u00c2\u00a0Barnett Newman, the abstract expressionist who said in 1952, “aesthetics is for artists as ornithology is for birds.” Fred\u00c2\u00a0characterized artists generally as being about the idea, the object, communicating visually, having imagination and intelligence\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut not being intellectuals, per se. Speaking personally,\u00c2\u00a0he said\u00c2\u00a0that he is most interested in art not<\/em> sanctioned by the academy. Fred’s talk was\u00c2\u00a0very much in line with the Greil Marcus commencement address that I had the students\u00c2\u00a0listen to in preparation for this class (see below).<\/p>\n

Toward the end of his lecture I reminded Fred that when we first met each other I had been talking about the Elaine Scarry idea that beauty is lifesaving and that he\u00c2\u00a0had responded, “Absolutely. It’s what keeps us from hanging ourselves.” Fred elaborated a bit on this, saying that art is an obsession and necessity for him. He commented, “When I’m in the studio I hate to be distracted; it’s hard to come out and deal with life \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 And if I’m not in the studio for more than about three days I turn into a total douchebag.” The students laughed and I responded, “It’s interesting to think about which practice, if one doesn’t\u00c2\u00a0do it for a few days, makes one\u00c2\u00a0turn into a total douchebag.” \u00c2\u00a0For me, these days, this seems to be writing. A few weeks later I asked the students to think about\u00c2\u00a0just that question. Another portfolio assignment inspired by Fred’s talk: I asked the students to document beauty they find in something typically perceived by people as dark.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

This same week Polly Carl<\/strong> returned and did an engaging and insightful riff\u00c2\u00a0on the Carl Wilson book, Let’s Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste<\/em><\/a>. The book is Wilson’s\u00c2\u00a0quest to figure\u00c2\u00a0out\u00c2\u00a0why so many people in the world love Celine Dion, an artist that he had come to loathe\u00c2\u00a0since\u00c2\u00a0her triumph\u00c2\u00a0at the 1998 Oscars\u00c2\u00a0with the theme song from Titanic\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>(over Elliot Smith, who composed the music for Goodwill Hunting).\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>In advance of this class the students wrote about an artist\/genre that they loved and one that they loathed and also interviewed someone quite different from them age-wise or background-wise and asked, “Who is a musician\/band or other type of artist that you deeply admire, and why?”<\/p>\n

I also gave them the assignment to listen to this 20-minute SVU\u00c2\u00a0commencement address by Greil Marcus, in which he talks about art, audience, and artistic hierarchies, among other things.<\/p>\n