I’m back from a weekend in New York. Within a 48 hour period I wept with grief as we gathered on a pier jutting out into the Hudson River to to pay our last respects to Morris, then wept with joy at the wedding of my life long friend Melissa who, as one speaker noted, “has never given up on love.” Both the finality of death and the optimism of a mid-life marriage have left me feeling the deep and sobering expanse of what life serves up to us. We are all being asked to learn how to hold extremes in our consciousness. On every level.
From the interior landscape to the larger terrain: Another domain where extremes are being challenged is in the high stakes battle over art pedagogy. Miami Beach real estate developer Craig Robins announced plans to start a high profile “graduate program” to help Bilbao-ize Miami Beach into a major art center and destination site. Clearly a savvy businessman and marketer, Robins is approaching the creation of this program, called Art + Research, with the endorsing imprimatur of leading art world luminaries. His project, whether timely and appropriate for this 21st century or a vapid smoke screen for yet another money making venture, is as sophisticated as a mutli-million dollar corporate branding campaign. Art education as big business. Is the next step an IPO?
Here’s an excerpt from an article about his proposed initiative in New York Magazine:
The University of Miami–operated venture already has an impressive roster of New Yorkers onboard. Founding faculty include artists Liam Gillick and Rirkrit Tiravanija, both of whom teach in Columbia’s M.F.A. program; Yale instructor Steven Henry Madoff; and White Columns gallery director Matthew Higgs (they will all squeeze Miami tutorials into their current gigs). Former Columbia art-school dean Bruce Ferguson consulted on it. And for added star power, sitting on the board of Robins’s nonprofit Anaphiel organization to guide the school are former Whitney director (and Robins’s cousin) David Ross, John Baldessari, and ex–Art Basel director Sam Keller. Robins will kick in $2 million to help fund Art + Research for its first four years, and the University of Miami has promised to help raise another $2 million.
Unlike at Columbia and Yale, there won’t be any formal M.F.A. degrees awarded to those who complete the two-year program, which will revolve around a topical theme that changes with each entering biannual class. Accordingly, don’t expect to see the “resident artists” hunker down in front of easels and live models. “Most art is conceptually based now. It’s art based on an idea,” says Madoff. “It didn’t turn out that the twentieth century’s most influential artist was Picasso. It turned out it was Duchamp … We don’t need to do foundation courses, how to draw, how to sculpt … You don’t need three credits for American Art History From 1945 to the Present.”
Such an approach, loosely akin to the Whitney’s Independent Study Program, has its detractors. “I like Steven very much, but I think he’s dead wrong,” says Robert Storr, dean of Yale’s School of Art. “The idea that somebody who has read all the critical literature on art can suddenly have an idea and make it is just nuts.” In fact, Storr thinks knowledge of technique is central to an artist’s effectiveness. “Yes, you should teach ideas. But you shouldn’t teach theory and then send people off to subcontract the work to somebody else. I don’t know how many times I’ve been in situations curatorially where somebody’s had a great idea and an absolutely lousy work comes out of it because they don’t know how to talk to the people who are the superior technicians in their field.”
The thing is, the University of Miami already has a conventional M.F.A. program, and many of its professors wonder why Robins doesn’t just support them. “To have $2 million given to this rich man’s fantasy camp is more than annoying; it’s a complete kick in the teeth to the art department,” says UM painting professor Darby Bannard. “We are hurting so bad over here for basic facilities. I spent two years just trying to get the floor in the wood shop fixed—it was so rotted out you could put your foot through it.” Bannard’s own pedagogical style eschews theoretical discussions. “It’s very simple,” he cracks. “I teach people to paint. Inspiration is fine, but if you don’t have the skills, it’s not going to go anywhere.”
Madoff groans out loud at that complaint. His role? “It’s not classes and it’s not teaching. It’s advising. The founding faculty will be hovering presences. We’re just going to give you a ton of information and allow you to live free in a place, have a free studio, and get to meet with other artists. Unless you’re a millionaire already, who wouldn’t want a two-year grant?” Indeed, Art + Research is so determined to be innovative that it’s amorphous. At a certain point, Robins waves off further questions on the details of its structure. “It’s not exactly clear how it’s all going to work,” he offers with a bright, knowing smile. “But everybody’s always happy to spend time in Miami.”
Why am I reminded of the time about 25 years ago that Milosz Forman was made Chair of the Film Department at Columbia University, with obligations to give 8 hours of lectures in a calendar year, and otherwise no requirements to be on campus? I think what we see here is the visual arts taking a cue from the performing arts: why go in for a conservatory education when making a scene and leaving with the right connections is where the money is? This approach simply formalizes a phenomenon one has been able, casually, to observe — the excision of talent and craft from the art world, the substitution of “the conceptual” for those things. Quite as if painters and their ilk really didn’t have ideas.
I guess this is the revenge of the commenting classes on the rest of us. Finally, people who can do frigging nothing but chat are spawning their own art movement, and will now be able to give it as much physical reality as the Bauhaus. But it’ll be as tacky and meaningless as everything else in Florida.
This coupling of grief and joy is changing the fabric of our lives. Can we give ourselves permission to fully mourn and rejoice at the same time? Thanks for sharing about your final time with Morris and the surprising happy news about Melissa.
E, Love that phrase, “revenge of the commenting class.” The challenge for me is staying open, uncynical and unfettered by the sky scraper construction site next door to my humble Walden cabin…
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