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.
Course Texts
Beech, Dave, Beauty, Documents of Contemporary Art (2009)
- Readings: Theodor Adorno, On the Concept of Beauty (p.78-81) + Cousings, Mark, The Ugly (p. 145-151)
Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics (1998)
- Reading: Art of the 1990s Participation and Transitivity (p25-40)
Brain, Robert, The Decorated Body (1979)
Dissanayake, Ellen, Art and Intimacy - How the Arts Began (2000)
- Reading: Introduction + chap 4 “Hands on” Competence p (99-128)
Dissanayake, Ellen, Homo Aestheticus – Where Art Comes from and Why (1992)
- Reading: Chap 3 The Core of Art - Making Special (p 39-63)
Foster Hal, Design and Crime (2002)
- Reading: chap 2 (p.13-26)
Frank, Isabelle, The Theory of decorative arts (2000)
- Reading: William Morris, The arts and crafts of to day (1889) + Frank Lloyd Wright, The Art and Craft of the Machine (1901)
Hickey, Dave The invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty (1993)
-Reading: Nothing Like the Son – On Robert Mappelthore’s X Portfolio
Kant, Immanuel, The Critique of Judgement (1790)
- Reading: Critique of Aesthetic Judgement (p. 41-89)
Kwon, Miwon, One place after another (2002)
- Reading: Chap 1 (p. 11-55) + chap 4 (p. 100-137)
Loos, Adolf, Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays (1908)
- Reading: Chap on Ornament and Crime
Mulvey, Laura, Fetishism and Curiosity (1996)
- Reading: Chap 5 Cosmetics and Abjection: Cindy Sherman 1977-87
Norman, Donald A. Emotional Design – Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things (2004)
- Reading: p.2-33
Read, Herbert, Art and Industy (1935)
- Reading: The problem in its historical and theorethical aspects (p. 20-56)
Sparke Penny, As Long as it´s Pink: Sexual Politics of taste (1995)
- Reading: Postmodernity, Postmodernism and Feminine Taste (1995)
Vergine, Lea, Body Art and Performance: The Body as Language (2000)
Supplementary readings
Adamson, Glenn, Thinking Through Craft (2007)
Alfoldy, Sandra, Neo Craft (2007)
- Reading: Kasulis, Thomas P. Self as body in Asian theory and practice + Love Jönsson, Rethinking Dichotomies: Crafts and the Digital.
Candlin, Fiona and Guin, Raiford, The Object Reader (2009)
Caw, Mary Ann, Manifesto: A Century of Isms (2001)
Corse, Sandra, Craft objects, Aesthetic Contexts : Kant, Heidegger, and Adorno on craft (2009)
Cumming, Elizabath & Kaplan, Wendy, The arts & Crafts Movement (1991)
Eco, Umberto, On Beauty (2004)
Eco, Umberto, On Ugliness (2007)
Fariello M. Anna, Owen, Paula, Objects and Meaning: New Perspectives on Art and Craft (2004)
Foster Hal, Return of the real (1995)
Reading: Chap 5
Guyer, Paul, Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics (2005)
Hung, Shu and Magliaro, Joseph By hand: The Use of Craft in Contemporary Art (2007)
Ince, Kate Orlan: Millennial Female (2000)
John, Burton Culture and the Human Body / An Anthropological Perspective 2001
- Reading: p25-35 + 56-68
Klein, Naomi, No logo (1999)
Pollock, Griselda, Vision And Difference : Femininity, Feminism, And Histories Of Art (1998)
Risatti, Howard, A theory of craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression (2007)
River, Victoria Z. The Shining Cloth: Dress and Adornment that Glitter (1999)
Sartwell Crispin, Six names of beauty (2005)
Schor, Naomi, Reading in detail - Aesthetics and the Feminine (1987)
Sullivan, Graeme, Art Practice and Research: Inquiry in the Visual Arts (2005)
I think that a great deal of everything has both beauty and ugly; nature, concepts, behaviors. We are surrounded by things that have a reciprocate, good and bad, happy and sad, light and dark, so why shouldn't beauty and ugly be one of those things? That is part of the balance that humans need to be comfortable.
ReplyDeleteI don't know. But I'm definitely gonna start using the word beautifugly. which is kinda what courtney was saying too - reciprocation.
ReplyDelete"It is so ugly that it's beautiful"
ReplyDeleteI've heard that one.
I cant help but think "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"... but anyway..
ReplyDeletebeauty is different for everyone. even just looking at our "40 materials" assignment, the materials that ryan, kate, and kendall all brought forward, respectively, are objects collected over time that they find beautiful. they each have a story behind them, and though aesthetically i may not look at some of these things and think "yes, that is beautiful", but the story behind it, the feeling it gives them, and thus the reason they picked it up in the first place, is beautiful. The fact that something picked off the street can make someone feel that way is beautiful.
I feel i am an eternal optimist and think that there is more in life that is beautiful than there is that is ugly, but i dont look at at certain things and think they are beautiful because of something they might represent, or connotations that might be present.
also i think many of us are here to make "beautiful" and desirable objects. I know I am.
also i agree completely with courtface
ReplyDelete