The semester has drawn to a close, our seniors have graduated, and today I  have finished reading the final projects, artist profiles, journals and narrative self-evaluations by the fourteen brave and bold students who, along with our experts and teaching team, formed this remarkable learning community. The projects range from Heather's academic analysis of Singer Sargent's use of flamenco in his controversial painting, "El Jaleo" to Alex's playful and passionate engagement with the work of French artist/sociologist Sophie Calle to Suzie's inventive use of film to profile a filmmaker to Kpoene's full-fledged tour of the Pomona Arts Colony to Cyn's close and very musical look at two Middlebury musicians.  Then there's Amber's interviews with one of Noman Rockwell's models, Lauren's close look at what stardom has done to the rockband Guster, Sophia's lab report appraoch to redesigning museums, Katie's look at tattoo art, Nancy's musing on earth art, Whitney's personal experience with live music, Sasha's exploration of the responses to the Russian choreographer Boris Eifmann, Leticia's discussion of the art of fashion photography and Jon's comparison of the creative processes of musicians.  Read them all!  What strikes me in particular about these projects is the balance between serious academic engagement with the material and authentic, personal vision of the writer.  These students dared play with technology, style, structure and perspective.  Bravo!

 

Check out awZ, where all these works have been published and where soon I will add works by our beloved visiting arts professionals.

Our energetic and generous visitors and teaching team now get their lives back, at least until we all rest up and want more discussion!  Rereading the full arcs of these exchanges has been incredible, a means of taking a virtual tour of the knowledge space we developed and explored. I plan to use these discussions in the fall version of the course--the writing becomes course material as well as process. 

I will continue to think about this learning experience, how much it has caused me to grow as a teacher, through this summer as I write conference papers pertaining to the adventure and plan the next iteration of WP 200, and I will continue to flip this homepage, adding insights, discoveries and responses as they come to me.

Thank you, members of this learning community, for a most remarkable teaching and learning experience--it has changed me profoundly. 

BG

 

This stage of the journey-the weblog and class journey--begins to wind down now as we head into the final week of classes. Unlike many classes, which have a clear sense of closure at the end of the semester, it is my hope that the learning community of WP200 will see the end of the semester as a transition to another stage in the learning: we take time out, perhaps, from the intensity of this conversation to consider what we've learned, the distance traveled, the relationships formed.  In the quiet of summer, we mull over the questions raised, the issues encountered, the challenges faced with the time and space to revisit them, to revise them, to make peace with them, even, before we return to new discussions here when those of us who wish to, continue along this route.  Please join us on the next stage of the adventure!

Some of us might work with the weblogs without taking a break, adding to our postings, reaching out to our arts professionals, continuing the dialogue here and off the web.  And that's as it should be.  This course weblog is not the community itself; it is a vehicle for our community to create a collective intelligence--and from what I hear from students and visitors alike, the discussions will most likely continue off site.  I am eager to follow the next stage, to see if the community fluctuates, shifts around in terms of identity and purpose now that the official schoolroom business is done. Will this spring's students want to know what happens in the fall iteration of the class?  Will they contribute to the weblog after the semester ends?

The weblog itself will remain open and alive, open for business, eager receptacle of knowledge and questing and communing.  I will add a special link for ongoing discussions and I will continue to flip the homepage from time to time to add comments on any additions your might want to see.

And then come fall, we will create a new offshoot of this first arts writing weblog, inclusive of it and different, too--the weblog for the fall version of the course.  John Mangan will jump from visitor status to part of the teaching team, bringing his expertise in music reviewing to the fold.  Also in the works is a collective of sorts, a joint weblog used by Penny Campbell's dancers and the arts writers--more on that development as it unfolds.  Liz Logue will return from NYC, where she is deep into an internship with the dance critics at the Village Voice, and serve as writing tutor; Suzie Mozes will be our tech tutor responsible for awZ (which will, by the way, be up and active in the next couple of weeks as final projects are completed and posted).  So, you see, WP200 will grow here as a learning space as more apprentices join us and add to the experience.

Thanks to James Maroney and John Mangan who joined us for class on Tuesday.  Although they met for the first time at the beginning of that class session, they conversed with one another and the students as though they had known each other for years--partially a result of the weblog community?  They made reference repeatedly to the web discussions--the students wanted to hear about their sense of the artist's preparation and the writer's need for a scholarly background in the genre about which s/he writes.  Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of that discussion was how far the students had come since the first visit by one of our professionals, Jim Grant.  Confidence, conviction and passion describe the students' interactions on this day.  They are ready to leave the WP200 nest and continue to develop their aesthetic, their writing voice, their relationship with the world of art. 

Now the project process presentations are in full swing.  We heard from Cyn about MP3.com and budding musicians, Amber about Norman Rockwell as artist and chronicler (she also completed the creative part of her project by preparing a Rockwellian meal for some of us, complete with apple pie for dessert), Sasha about Boris Eifman and the value of criticism, and Leticia about fashion photography as art.  The projects exemplify the connection between good critical thinking and a creative approach--they have been absorbing excursions into all corners of the art world--the students are doing superb work.

Take a look, too, at the extraordinary dialogue going on "behind the homepage" between my colleagues about the experience of teaching in these transitional times--the challenges, frustrations, responsibilities and successes of incorporating web technology in a liberal arts classroom. 

More to come.

BG

 

Another week of exploration and learning.  I've been reading  a remarkable book recommended by Héctor, Collective Intelligence, by the French anthropologist, Pierre Lévy, and finding within his pages language for much of what we are trying to accomplish in this course.  He writes of collective intelligence, of apprenticeships and of knowledge space, concepts which describe our work together in WP200: our collaborative discussions, in particular, but also posting drafts and giving responses to the writing of peers, becoming a learning community in which all of our efforts educate us, all of our input is necessary for us to grow.  Such a voyage has not been without its frustrations and mishaps.  Who knew that the online discussions would accumulate such numbers of pages?  I did not consider the added burden on the class to keep up with the weblog reading alone.  Classtime spent with our visiting arts professionals, while illuminating and valuable, took time away discussions on writing.  Now we!=re experiencing a bit of backlash--students are worn out from the intensity of the course and its instructor; they are frustrated by my refusal to give as clearly delineated instructions on the final project as they desire.  It may seem that we are locked in a bit of a battle--and the fact that we have worked closely together, learning about the weblog's applications to writing and classroom learning can seem at odds with the fact that I still hold the reins of evaluation and assignment generation.  I'm learning.  I'm making mistakes.  But I'll take the bumps in the road any day,  for the discussions unfolding in class, the writing, the final project proposals all show me the remarkable growth experienced by us all.

Stephanie's visit was the week's highlight: she connected art to history, urging the students to read the front page of the newspaper every day: art and writing about it will gain more meaning as a result.  She also gave a moving talk that evening about her experiences in the living text of the Bible: the villages of the stories are real villages inhabited by real people.  These are the stories she writes about in The Daily Star and in her own books of poetry. 

We've also talked about writing artist profiles and taken  the first steps towards bringing the final projects to fruition.  This next week will be relatively quiet as we work hard on the research component, conduct interviews, and think about James Maroney's visit next week.  Amy Karr'00 from The Hudson Review might well sit in on class Thursday, giving us feedback about the projects-in-process.

Recommended weblog excursions include the responses John Mangan is giving to the students as they send him their drafts and the projects in their various stages of completion, the discussion about the lessons learned from the weblog adventure.  Take a peek at bits of  the blossoming projects--Amber's interview with one of Norman Rockwell's models, Heather's flamenco collage or Kpoene's look at Cayla Carrizal.  More to come as the projects are posted.  Stay tuned, too, for our first film clips!

Just when I thought we had settled into a comfortable rhythm on the weblog and in class, we find ourselves revising once again our whole notion of what it means to be a learner and a writer, what it means to have this organically evolving virtual classroom replace our old sense of a learning space.  The ride has been a bit bumpy this week, but we have grown, as a result, in remarkable ways. We're living proof that change rarely comes without some pain.

Visiting the marvelously contrasting exhibition spaces of MassMOCA and the Clark Art Institute ( a few of us also visited the Williams College Museum of Art) last weekend put into perspective much of what we had been discussing about the effect of space on art.  I was impressed by the depth and energy of the discussions the students held in front of various paintings in the Clark (the Sargents, the Renoirs, the Goya, and the Bonnard)--and I wasn't the only one.  We were trailed about the museum by an older woman who had studied at The Pratt Art Institute many years ago and who remarked to me that she was amazed to hear college students show such insight and originality in their views, and such respect for one another.  The students had something to say and said it with enthusiasm and elegance.  Did I ever feel like the proud teacher!  "See, see!" I felt like shouting. "If you just give students responsibility for their learning and a sense of the validity and importance of their evolving views, then they will blow you away."  Yes, it was quite a day. 

We have yet to process that visit completely because two days after the fieldtrip, Paul Klein arrived in town, had dinner with us and came to class. Anyone who has followed the discussion on Paul's thread knows that he is not one to avoid blunt talk, and blunt talk is what we got.  Humor, too, and insight into the life of an abstract art gallery owner, but definitely blunt talk about putting it all on the line every time we write.  He urged the students to throw themselves into each assignment, wresting from it every last possible lesson.  To hear more, and witness the profound effect his visit is having, scroll down through his discussion until you reach the April 8 entries onward, and then once the streaming video is in place, you can view that class session for yourselves.

I am struck by the role the weblog is playing in this experience.  If Paul and the students had not been engaged in this long-distance discussion via the weblog, would the in-person visit have gone differently? Would it have stirred them? Would he have affected the students and they him quite as much?  Without the weblog, the students would not now be continuing this discussion and growing from it, strengthening their sense of the worth and power of their own voices.  I see the weblogs as having allowed the learning experience to move to and then through the brief moments together in class.  The weblog has become the classroom in many ways, a place that does not vanish at the end of the class period only to reappear miraculously for the next scheduled class meeting.  No one is waiting impatiently at the door if the discussion spills beyond the hour and fifteen minutes.  No one is saying, time to put your pens down.

There's much more to reflect upon here, something I am trying to do in the conference papers I am currently writing with a team of collaborators about this weblog experience.  But for our purposes here, we must move to the projects in earnest this week (look at the proposals on the individual weblogs and check out the discussion going on between Heather and James Maroney about Sargent (scroll down to 4/10)--another example of the postive impact of the weblogs) and meeting with Stephanie Saldana who has flown in from Beirut to discuss what it is like to be a poet writing about art during these times of crisis in the Middle East.  She'll meet with us several times informally, come to class and give a talk entitled, God in a Time of War, Tuesday evening, 7:30  in Twilight 201.  If you're on campus, don't miss it.

I am eager to witness and experience this next leg of the journey.  Hold on tight!

BG

 

 

We're back, confident and energized, ready to take on any arts-related topic.  It's as though the class has a renewed sense of purpose--to root out the art that makes them take notice and want to write.  I wonder if, as Paul asks in his thread (scroll way down in his discussion to 3/30), they went home for break and found themselves changed, equals at the dinner table, initiating and then dominating debate over the state of the world, art,of course, seasoning their contributions to the talk.  Or perhaps it has to do with the passion with which our visiting professionals engage with them, each other, and art.  The fearlessness has rubbed off.  The delight in argument has infused our classroom with palpable excitement.  Facial expressions are intense and words sharp as students argue about Roberta Smith's panning in Sunday's NYT of the Whitney Bienniale (scroll down to 3/31 posting by Paul for the link) and about whether we should really be going to New York for our fieldtrip today to see for themselves what all the fuss is about that has broken out on James' discussion thread. I had a near mutiny on my hands when my teacher's head prevailed over my student's heart, and I stuck to the MassMOCA, Clark Art and Williams College Museum of Art plan.  It's tough on the students when after telling them that this is their class, their learning, I pull rank and say, sorry but there's a good reason for us to see this string of three museums side by side.  Something to write about!

If the first half of the semester was an explosion of options for writing and thinking about the arts, the second half is shaping up to be a more focussed engagement with a single project and specific individual writing goals laid out during their midterm portfolio conferences.  Of course we'll also write flash fictions, poems and creative nonfiction shorts along the way. And we'll keep plunging into the discussion pages of our visiting professionals  and the threads of the students.

Updates from the weblog: Jim, busy as he is with his Copland residency, is understandably quiet though now that our newest arts professional, John Mangan (former music critic for The New Haven Register and current dean of Ross Commons--check out his thread) has joined us, my guess is that Jim will find a moment from time to time to put in a word.  Stephanie will be quiet, too, as she heads for the U.S. on assignment from The Daily Star and to visit us.  Paul will join us Monday and Tuesday, for what will certainly prove to be as lively and thought-provoking a class as we'll have this semester  (check out his assignment and the article on ArtNet that he has suggested we read and evaluate).  Stephanie, Lucas and Sophia have been engaged in nearly as passionate a discussion of Beijing (scroll to 3/31) as James, Paul, Sophia and Alex have been having about the Whitney (scroll to 3/31).  Take a look at the students' postings in these discussions, at the depth of thought and the energy of the writing. 

Lots more to come when we return from Billsville and then meet up with Paul.

BG

Mid-term. The middle of things. That's just how we all feel--that we've waded right into the heart of  thought-provoking, illuminating and heated discussion after discussion; written inspired but unfinished drafts of responses to the visual arts, theater and music; dared to move beyond language alone in our personal weblogs--students are both exhausted and jazzed and needing a wee break.  So off they head to beaches and museums, concerts and ski slopes.  They'll be back on Monday to jump back into the weblog, to think about how they might write artist profiles, "art-issue" pieces, and their final projects (see syllabus and course updates for details).  We'll head south to MassMOCA, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute and the Williams College Museum of Art, welcome Paul Klein, then Stephanie Saldana '99, Amy Karr '00 and James Maroney to our physical classroom.  Much to come during the next six weeks!

Much to comment on right now--on the way to his Copland residency Jim Grant blew into town to give the students a glimpse into his working process, his composition, "Release" and Betsy Siegfried's photographs, in the series "Lifelines."  For an hour and fifteen minutes the students listened, asked questions, and marveled that this online writing voice belonged to a real man who arrived wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, who spoke with the passion and humor about his art they had come to expect in his writing.  That he was clearly delighted to meet them astonished the class.  Check on the Jim Grant visit page (to be posted soon) to view excerpts from his time with us.  His feedback?  There was not nearly enough time--he left feeling even more committed to this group of students and our process than before, but frustrated, too.  When he gives a lecture or speaks to a class, Jim's usually glad to pop in for an hour and then cut out--but not this time.  Having already established relationships with so many of the students and becoming, as he put it "a member of this learning community--I don't think of it as a class, but a community and we're all in this together, equally," he found himself wanting to extend the conversations face-to-face over dinner, in an informal atmosphere, as well as within the four walls of the classroom.  Wow.

Last time Paul Klein visited one of my classes, he stayed for that hour and fifteen minutes with my students, then went off to meet with his son Lucas and other students.  But this time, when Paul arrives in Middlebury on April 8, we'll have dinner with him that evening and then meet up again in class the next morning.  We'll do the same with Stephanie.  And we'll see if the students, Paul and Stephanie feel as though they've had enough time together. We're seeing here the weblog affecting every aspect of this course, beyond even what I anticipated.  I'm eager, too, to see what happens to the weblog discussions once our professionals leave campus.  If Jim's visit turns out to predict a pattern (and remember, he came to class on Thursday, March 21 and the students took off for break the next day), the students will generate even more questions, interesting (or as Jim writes to Alex, "monster"--scroll down on the link to see their exchange) questions taking his page into new territory.

Of course, there are many other places on this weblog you should all turn to as soon as possible.  Go with all speed to Stephanie's discussion page (remember that to get to any discussion, click on the tiny cow skull icon on the bottom of the page) and scroll down to where Associate Provost Tim Spears has joined his former student's discussion on the arts in America and in the Middle East, and where she and Hector discuss poetry and then move beyond art to the Arab summit, taking place right now and reported on by Stephanie to us right here on this weblog as it is unfolding in Beirut.  Ask her questions!

Take a look, too, at the exchanges between Paul and James (heated and fascinating glimpses into separate viewpoints and experiences of these two fine-arts professionals).  Be prepared for blunt talk--you'll learn a good deal from their discussion.

Look into the student weblogs to see how far the students have come with their writing in six short weeks--everyone has something worth reading posted.  I'll add links here once I've had a chance to read everything they've written and choose some must-reads for you.

So, it might get a little quiet here for a few days, but then again, Stephanie, Paul, Jim, Lucas and James are using the time to engage with each other, and so you should keep checking in on all their pages.  I've got some ideas about adding more visuals and posting our professionals' visits, so this mind-of-its-own weblog will continue to evolve, I think, right up (and perhaps even through) the final class in early May.  Stay tuned.

BG

So much is happening on the weblogs that it is just about impossible to stay abreast of the discussions and student writing without this handy weekly homepage flipping.  The weblog  no longer serves primarily as a flexible course organizational tool or a place for students to hand in their work and respond to each other's writing.  It has fostered, most significantly perhaps, a community of learners exploring the roles of art and artist in society.  And along the way, through engaging in this serious, intense and illuminating discussion, the students are learning to articulate their ideas precisely and persuasively.  The writing has become sharp, lively and elegant.

We haven't even hit mid-semester, and I can already say that this has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my teaching career. How often does a teacher get up in the morning and boot up the computer to see what her students have written the night before?  Well, I do, and more often than not, I find something in the threaded discussions, the "visiting professionals" pages and the individual student weblogs well worth reading.  The students have taken responsibilty for their learning; I guide and ask questions and respond to writing and ask more questions rather than controlling every aspect of what goes on in class.  I feel like the director who has seen the actors make the play their own. And it is quite a feeling.

What's new on the course weblog and in class?  The first threaded discussions have closed and their directors have given in-class presentations (videotaped) on some particularly useful or thought-provoking aspect of each discussion.  As soon as we have those tapes digitalized, you'll see them up and running on the discussions page. 

The second series of discussions is just now getting up and running--you'll want to check them out once they get underway.  Alex has posed a timely question about art in times of crisis, prompted by  a NYT article on the reopening of the National Gallery of Afghanistan; Heather has led her group to consider a related question about the rising attendance at New York galleries and museums in the wake of September 11.  We're delighted that Professor Eric Davis of the Political Science Department and Secretary of the College has joined this discussion.  His interest and expertise as well as the weblog he is developing for his fall 2002 first-year seminar, September 11: Causes and Consequences, will serve as an invaluable resource for those involved in this discussion. Having Eric join us marks the opening of our doors to students and scholars of other disciplines considering the same questions from different vantagepoints--this is the spirit of liberal arts, and we're living it!

Jim Grant has returned to us after being on the road and preparing for his upcoming Copland House residency.  Having an artist in the trenches has proved essential --the class has turned to him for all mannerof practical and artistic counsel and response. His warmth, candor and writing gifts have inspired the class as much as his courage, vision and career successes (not to mention his kayaking, surfing and cooking adventures). Next week he arrives on campus with his music and Elizabeth Siegfried's sequence of platinum prints, LifeLines , that inspired his Symphonic Poem No. 1: Release.  Check out his page for the assignment he has given the students in preparation of  his visit and for some excellent give-and-take between Jim, Lucas, Paul and the rest of the group. 

The students are learning as much from reading what he and Paul, for example, have to say to one another (scroll down the discussion a spell to get to their exchange), or Stephanie and Hector, as they do from responses to their own questions. They are also learning how to juggle branching and diverging and simultaneous discussions--check out what's going on in Paul's discussion (scroll down until you find entries from March 10 on or so) to see what I mean. Our visiting professionals have done a splendid job making the students feel a part of a remarkable and important conversation.

We've also entered the realm of the performing arts by reading Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba, attending the pre-performance lunch offered by the Theater Department, and playing around with kinds of responses we might have to this play and its production. The students will write narrative collages in response to the play--check their weblogs next week to see the outcomes. I've also heard that Alex and Sophia have written and recorded a musical composition for their weblogs--you can see that the class is pushing the boundaries of response in inventive and dynamic ways.

Some places to visit on the weblogs this week--you can't lose wherever you go, but here are a few must-reads:  Lauren's unusual response to David Bumbeck's art--the arts outsider goes to the museum; Heather's music reviews; Suzie's first assignment as the newest arts reporter for The Campus; and Katie's pre-performance sense of how The House of Bernarda Alba might be staged.

BG

In a single week the weblogs have moved well beyond my choreography to become multi-faceted, multi-voiced discussions of arts and artists, politics and responsibility, careers in the arts and the business of art.  It has been both difficult (because the students don't need me) and satisying (because the students don't need me) to sit on the sidelines--a good place for the teacher in such an endeavor, I think--and watch the discussions, student-to-student, student-to-professional and professional-to-professional unfold and meander, digress and catch fire.  You will be handsomely rewarded if you open any of our visiting professionals' pages or look into the threaded discussions or delve into the students' own weblogs.  Conversations are popping up everywhere!  This is what happens when we take down the classroom walls and turn to the experts living art. 

Two new contributors have joined our throng: Lucas Klein (that last name should indeed sound familiar) '00, former student and advisee of mine and now a writer, reviewer and translator living and working in Paris; and Liz Logue, current Midd student ( WP200 alum and former arts editor for The Campus) who has taken a semester's leave to write for a business periodical in NYC and to pursue an internship in dance criticism at The Village Voice.  Both have  strong, passionate voices and are providing us with additional perspectives and insight.  Check out their commentary. Welcome and thank you both!

I am thrilled by the commitment and passion displayed by the class--no faint-of-heart writers and arts lovers here.  No, this group has asked and fielded questions like pros, embraced the most perplexing of conundrums, and marveled at the responses they have received from our valiant crew in the Other World. Suzie for one  is ready to sign on as an arts journalist; Whitney has decided it's nigh on impossible to write about the arts;  Sophia is deep into conversation with everybody; Alex is exploring the balance between erudition and deep personal response...and on it goes.  Each of them feels challenged by our discussions and writing assignments; each has gained real respect for the artist who puts it all on the line.

We are journeying into the realm of theater for a spell now as we prepare to view the theater department's spring production of Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba.  We've been reading Brustein--"Who Cares about Theater?"  and McCoy and Titchener about the aspects of theater focussed on by writers.  We've played around in class with poems in response to the production poster (an old-photo-like depiction of a breast dripping milk) and thoughts about what role theater plays in our lives.  Now we will read the play and write mock letters to the director with our sense of the themes we hope he will realize in the physical space of the stage, the costuming, the direction, the acting.  Already the students see how difficult a thing it is to write about something as ephemeral as a single performance.  We've talked about the difference between writing about an established play that has entered the literary canon and a new play unknown to the world.

Some highlights in this week's weblogs not to be missed: All  the threaded discussions and our visitors' pages, including Stephanie's--the discussions about politics and art (we should be flying her to Middlebury this coming week when Suheir Hammad, the Palestinian-American poet will be giving a reading and a talk about politics and poetry); the interchange between Sophia and Jim Grant, Paul and Lucas about the pressures facing artists trying to make a living; Sasha's  and Nancy's thought-provoking reviews of David Bumbeck; Kpoene, Sophia and Paul's discussion about the importance of the exhibition space; Suzie's reconsideration, after speaking at length with David Bumbeck, of her own initial reaction to hisshow; Amber's response to a Boston Globe review of an exhibition (scroll down to "Shadows and Light.")  Overwhelmed the students may well be, given the choices they must make while writing about art, but impressive they are in recognizing the challenge and then embracing it.  A bold, audacious group it is!

Any questions?  Please ask. 

We're flying into March, halfway to mid-term already, passing some milestones worth mentioning--

Yesterday's museum class pulled us together as a community, I think, with each member of the class standing before a work in the Middlebury College Art Museum's exhibition of David Bumbeck's prints and sculpture, and presenting it to the group.  We had all been to the show at least once on our own and written initial responses in preparation for today's oral response.  I was impressed by how passionately the class embraced the assignment and tried to get at why they were responding as they did.  The exercise brought home to us some essential considerations we have to keep in mind when we write about art--how do we write about art from within our own community?  How do we write about art by someone we know? How are our impressions influenced by our relationships, our sense of the artist and the knowledge that what we write will be read by other members of our community?  How is the lay-out of the show influencing our response?  The write-up?  Press releases?

I was surprised that only a couple of works were selected by more than one student--and interested that although they were all drawn to different pieces, they had some strikingly similar responses to both prints and sculptures.  We experienced some healthy disagreement, too, about the particularly controversial nudes in the center of the show, and talked about how we might write about art that provoked strong, almost visceral responses. To follow a continuation of the conversation, check out the threaded discussion led by Cyn.

The course weblog is hopping these days with the threaded discussions, the addition of menu items and the comments by our "visiting" arts professionals--Paul Klein, for one, has hopped into Sophia's weblog to comment on her chosen third periodical, The Chicago Tribune, his hometown paper.  I urge you all to take a look at this exchange--we rarely have the opportunity to hear from someone who is reviewed by the writers we are reading.  In a  must-read response he makes to Cyn's statement in her weblog--"In order to appreciate a work of art, one must be familiar with the artist's background and the history of that particular genre of art" Paul pulls us deeper into a thought-proking discussion (that I am hoping we also find composer Jim Grant joining) about whether arts writers accomplish much of anything other than revealing our cultural thinking of the moment.  Kpoene, an experienced arts reviewer,has some strong feelings about how we put artists on pedestals and will surely join in on that one too wherever it ends up happening within this weblog (perhaps several differnt places all at once).  Meanwhile, Amber, Hector, and Heather have been swept up in discussion with Stephanie Saldana about her coverage of arts in the Middle East--check it out. 

There's also a lot of lively writing happening out there on the class weblogs--John and Cyn and Leticia are finally really up and running with theirs, and add new dimensions to our larger class discussion. I've decided to use this homepage commentary as a place to point you to some writing I am sure you'll want to read in our weblogs.  This does not by any means represent all the excellent writing and thinking going on here--it's just a weekly kind of showcase of what we're doing, I suppose.  I'm probably the only person reading all the weblogs all the time, so I can provide this guidance, though do explore all our pages as much as you can--they're well worth the time. 

Take a look at Alex's response to the surrealist film, Last Year at Marienbad, probably one of the only ways that makes sense to write about such a work. For a wry, honest look back at an early theater memoir, Lauren's is one that we can all relate to in our own lives.

BG

We've covered some kind of territory this past week in the weblogs and in class.  The weblogs are blossoming into works recognizably  belonging to their individual creators.  Some students are branching out beyond the assignments and posting creative work or additional reponses to art,or their senior theses, even (see Whitney's link to her senior work).  John has posted a paper he wrote last semester about writing art ethnography, something you should all read. Take a long look at what this inventive group is saying about art.

In class we've explored what creative writers (Woolf, Shaw, Orwell and Williams) have to say about reviewing--none of them are very excited about it, with the exception of Shaw, who describes qualities he thinks are necessary in the successful reviewer. We took a look at their own reviews of CD's, both traditional forms of writing and then freer, anything-goes reponses.  Out of that conversation came the realization that some  writers found the NYT review much easier to write than their own free response, whereas others felt the opposite.  They are beginning to look carefully at their own biases and styles and aptitudes, learning how to work with who they are and what they've got.

We also had Alex take us through museums as spaces, about choices facing museum designers and especially exhibition designers.  Soon we'll have her excellent introduction to the world of the exhibition right here. To follow her, we looked at a single painting, Alluminaire G, by Stephanie Weber, hanging in Klein Art Works' current show of her work.  We moved from description to analysis to interpretation to evaluation, exploring the differences between these ways of looking at a work of art, and how we have fundamentally differnt ways, even, of describing a painting.  Some focused on color, others line, and still others composition.  Metaphor  (forest, ocean, grass) and emotional equivalents (calming, challenging)entered the discussion when we tried to interpret the painting. Evaluation was difficult!  And all this without reading a word about the artist or seeing other works in the show.  Surprisingly no one squawked about being denied access to contextual information.  It will be interesting to see what they have to say once they look at the exhibition as a whole and read a bit about her.  Will their views change?  And what happens because they are seeing the artwork on a computer screen and not in person?  Some of the class wanted the painting to take up the entire screen and were frustrated with it being distanced from them doubly--first by being on a screen and them on a screen filled with words.

Next, we're off to the college museum to check out David Bumbeck's show.  Check here for streaming videos as the students each discuss a single work in the show.

BG

Today we took a brief look at the history of writing about art, tracing the rise of criticism from Greece to the present.  We considered the large social, political and technological movements which swept Europe and the United States, and the impact they had on the development of arts writing.  To grasp what professional arts writers and we arts-writing explorers face as we make choices about how we want to write about the arts and why, we need to know how we've gotten here. 

We talked a bit about what seems to us to be a revolution in arts writing due to technology, when a critic who has written for years at the New York Times, such as John Pareles, abandons the written text altogether in today's online review of Jaguar Wright (you'll have to click on Album showcase and then find her in the previous showcase column)--he speaks his review while playing tracks from her CD for his cyber-audience.  Is this the future of arts reviewing--showing clips and commenting on them right there on audio?  Perhaps we should try this ourselves-- the oral review.  And in a way we will when we go to the College Art Museum.  But more on that later.

The class shared their choices for third periodicals to follow for the rest of the semester:

Seven Days, DoubleTake, The Village Voice , The Los Angeles Times , The San Francisco Chronicle , The Washington Reporter , The Chicago Tribune , 3ammagazine --I'll add the others as they are selected. 

Already we are noticing the pressures on arts writers who work for daily or weekly newspapers to conform to the voice, style and structure of the journal.  In that light, I handed the class four reviews of the same CD: Barricades and Brickwalls, by Kasey Chambers, and next class we'll discuss the differences between these writers. We're also going to hear from Kpoene about writing CD reviews sometime within the next week--what she's learned along the way. We'll post her presentation here on the weblog, in streaming video--The New York Times has nothing over us!

 

As of yesterday afternoon just about everyone had a weblog up and running in fledgling form, and already I see the 'blogs begin to take shape as expressions of each student's relationship with the arts and arts writing, much more so than this single course weblog could ever do.  On Monday they should all be linked on the class-weblog page and will be well worth exploring frequently to keep track of their evolving discussions.  Interesting, too, is a look at some of the weblogs from my other class, EL170C-Introduction to Creative Writing--the students are exploring related questions of what makes a work of writing art, and will be playing with language in ways that will interest us here as we examine artists and their process.  In a sense the one class can serve as a case study for the other. Catharine Wright's writing class, WP201, Writing Across Differences ia another must-read for the weblogs the students create and the fabulous links and resources and commentary it provides those thinking about the arts, especially about point of view and politics as they play into relationships between art, artist and audience.

I'm doing something new here--new for me, that is--by changing the home page from a simple greeting/brief overview of the weblog to a more dynamic, transforming page which reflects our journey as we experience it. 

Today we met for the second time as a class, and I can tell that this group is both game for the big weblog adventure--take a look at their 'blogs--and eager to grapple with some of the most difficult questions facing us as writers about the arts.  Today we began what is sure to be an ongoing discussion about the artist who writes about art vs. the arts writer who writes about art. We covered ground, too, on why we should write about art at all.  Check in the individual weblogs for their full reposnes to this questions, but here are some condensed, one-sentence versions:

We should write about art in order to personally and publically promote, respect and explore it.

What does art mean to us and our cultural exitence as human beings?

To communicate opinions, ideas, reflections and interpretations of an uncommon language which is art.

We should write about art to help ourselves as writers and voyeurs understand what we have seen and heard.

We should write about art to add enjoyment of various art forms by sharing ideas and experiences with others.  we respond to the artist's creativity with our own creativity.

It is important to have an active dialogue and receive perspective from within and without the arts community in order to maintain the vitality and innovation of expression.

Writing about art enables us to crawl inside the imaginations of others and consequently explore our own culture.