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 19, 2009

Mapplethorpe's "art"


For Mapplethorpe “those whom the world would change must change the world... and this derived from his understanding that, if one would change the world with art, one must change a great deal of it. Thus, the axiom that the meaning of a sign is the response to it had for him a quantitative as well as a qualitative dimension.” -Hickey, "Nothing Like the Son"


This photo is not one of my favorites. I can respect his art, but this one is different, and is hard for me to call it "art".


Any thoughts?

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1 comment:

  1. SissiOctober 20, 2009 at 10:05 AM

    I always used to feel mostly repulsed by Mapplethorpes sadomasochistic images. Not liking them = finding it hard to see beauty/art in them = not being able to digest or understand. Maybe this is what Adorno talks about when he is saying: "The shaping spirit of art allows only those elements to pass into the art work which it grasps or which it can hope to assimilate." What I can assimilate might be less than what Robert could. Thought I realized that Hickey´s text helped me understand some aspect of this image and actually assimilate it. Thinking of the aspect if submission and trust as beauty brought it to another level beyond the provoking appearance for me.

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