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. 

Oct 14, 2009

Beauty Schmeauty

Every time I hear discussion about beauty, I think of the age old saying, "beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder." To define beauty as something that could be universally experienced is extremely problematic.

Not to make this the ultimate example of questionable beauty, or to pick on Brad, but I like to use the image of Jennifer's engagement ring as an instance to discuss subjectivity when addressing elective students.

Pitt designed this ring with Damiani (http://www.damiani.com/ check out their flash site... it ads animated "pings" in the form of spiraling lens flare, to the singular ring views- amazing!) to "relate to the concept of a heart (as) a symbol of eternity," said designer Sylvia Damiani (With This Ring, Proddow/Fasel 2004). How does this object of promise and devotion speak to you?

My point being that you could really question the beauty of any (engagement) ring- and who's to say who's right? Well it starts and ends with the finger it's on and who that finger's attached to- "the subject is governed by a pleasure principal" (Cousins 149).

So in approaching these readings I am also trying to figure out why beauty should be contingent on a converse. Just as I don't interpret beauty universally, I don't see beauty as binary. Defining beauty as what it is, or ugly as what it is not,  is too rudimentary. I also question Adorno's approach that we find beauty in the things that affirm life. I believe there is certainly beauty in death, to clarify- not in the act of, but in the absence of life, not just in the "threat of decomposition" (Adorno 81). That being said, is  Mapplethorpe's X Portfolio more beautiful because he is no longer here? Or is there a "Je ne sais quois" to them beyond camera/lighting technique? Are they horrible? It's up to you.
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