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 1, 2009

Response to the readings...

I wonder if these topics were being discussed at a place like RISD in the early 20th century? Would Loos be regarded as a welcomed speaker, or an outsider playing at taboo issues regarding 'art' and 'ornament'?

Herbert Reed states that "Taste, in all its incompleteness and exclusiveness, has been made the measure of industrial art, of the art of the machine age." This seems to be similar to what Hal Foster is saying about the design of branding and product (or object) identity in our era. Foster quotes Bruce Mau: "the only way to build real equity is to add value: to wrap intelligence and culture around the product...The real product has become culture and intelligence." And the driver of all those products, new and old alike, is a certain level of taste or perception or class or $$$$...?

Hal Foster: "Design is all about desire, but strangely this desire seems almost subject-less today, or at least lack-less; that is, design seems to advance a new kind of narcissism, one that is all image and no interiority..." Does this apply to art or to commercial products?
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2 comments:

  1. Anastasia AzureOctober 3, 2009 at 7:14 AM

    I wonder too how Loos's ideas were recieved during his time. From my perspective, his essay seems so extreme and judgmental, bordering on ranting. Was he taken seriously? Was this the beginning of a "preference for plain" movement?

    Interestingly after spending time in the library with the books of all flourishing ornaments, it put a certain angle on how prevalent and ubiquitous ornament was then and how that might provoke Loos's fanaticism.

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  2. ~ MariahOctober 4, 2009 at 8:22 PM

    I completely agree, he seemed so extreme!
    What's also interesting is if you read a little about him, his architecture is described as being a bit over detailed...

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