Course Description

This course is meant to be a space for you to examine and deepen your relationship to the field and your own practice through readings, discussions, and presentations.  The readings are meant to expand your perspective on the field of jewelry and metalsmithing, to define its particularities and concerns in relation to the discourses of the contemporary art world.

Together we will explore a series of seminal theoretical texts, seeking ways to relate them to our own practice.  Through these texts we will encounter a series of themes and historical perspectives that are crucial to the field of jewelry, while also delving into fields and areas of inquiry, that have not commonly been related to our field, but perhaps should or could be.  Our aim is to get a historical and interdisciplinary perspective on where we are as artists/makers today, how we got here and where we could go from here. The course aims to bring up critical questions on why we make, whom we make for and the meaning of our practice beyond the studio and the jewelry and metals world.

This is a chance to practice your skills in connecting theory, reading and writing to your work and to build a vocabulary and ground of reference around your ideas, interests and intentions. It’s a chance to take part in an intense discourse around your field, which you might be asked to do many times in the future of your career.

The Wednesday meetings will adopt the form of a reading/talking circle. Your role in the group is important and the success of our conversations will be based on your participation and engagement. We will all take turns in presenting and leading the discussion and also examine what “research through practice” might mean for us, by exploring some ways of connecting theory and making. 

Sep 23, 2009

2.Ornament as Crime 

Oct 7th

9AM-12AM

Discussion: Art and Industry. Ornament vs. minimalism. The hand vs. the machine. What is ornament and what impact does it have?

Readings:

- Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime (1908)

- Herbert Read, Art And Industry (1935) - The problem in its Historical and Theoretical Aspects p. 20-57

- Hal Foster, Design and Crime (2002)

Student presentations:

- William Morris, The Arts and Crafts of to day (1889) Also research: The Pre-Rafaelite Brotherhood, John Ruskins (the Stones of Venice/The Nature of the Gothic), The Arts And Crafts Movement, Morris & Co

- Frank Lloyd Wright, The Art and Craft of the Machine (1901). Also research: The Prairie School, Arts and Craft movement in the States.

- Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Manifesto of the Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar (1919). Also research: History of Bauhaus, Art academies before Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, De Stijl, Gerrit Ritveld and Ritveld Academy, Black Mountain College

Supplementary readings: Elizabeth Cumming & Wendy Kaplan, The Arts & Crafts Movement (1991), Victoria Z. River, The Shining Cloth (1999)

Posted by

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)