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About the Author
Laurie Fendrich, a painter who lives and works in New York, is a professor of fine arts and the director of the Comparative Arts and Culture Graduate Program at Hofstra University. Her writing has focused on the place of art and artists in society and the education of young artists, but she has also written essays questioning the viability of beauty in a post-Darwin era, the meaning of abstract painting, and the tyranny of outcomes assessment. She will blog about university life, the arts. and culture.
About Brainstorm
Mark Bauerlein
Marc Bousquet
Laurie Fendrich
Dan Greenberg
John L. Jackson Jr.
Stan Katz
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg
Brainstorm Alumni
Marty Nemko, guest bloggerBob Zemsky
Recent Posts
Mirror, Mirror, on and off the Wall | Comment [1]
Monsters of Achievement | Comment [11]
Where's Czechoslovakia? | Comment [27]
The Bad Cover | Comment [61]
Tickle Me Emo | Comment [16]
Featured Articles By the Author
Why a College Professor Teaches Taste
Reader responses to my previous post compel me to digress from my planned post—on how I go about teaching taste—in order to address the question of why I presume to teach taste to my students.
My initial post on taste reveals the extreme, even raw sensitivity many people—even university professors—have when it comes to the mere suggestion that taste might be a hierarchical matter. That a college professor like me dares to teach good taste—instead of simply “explaining” it, as if it’s a neutral matter, like a fact—elicits the charge of elitism (not so bad), snobbism (pretty bad) and even worse, words that don’t belong in print on a blog site dedicated to issues of higher education (very bad).
Ah, that nasty word elitism. But like Jon Stewart said, in mocking the flurry of commentators who charged Barack Obama with “elitism” after his comments about small-town Pennsylvanians, don’t we want leaders in democracies who are “better than us”? When it comes to art, the questions really are, Why are college art professors so afraid to convey to their students that they have superior taste?, and, Why are they afraid to teach that taste to their students?
Teaching good taste is a thoroughly democratic invitation to young art students to join the club of art-lovers by teaching them to become passionate about—rather than merely “knowledgeable” about—art.
The subjectivity of taste that always applies when things being compared are very close (e.g., judging vanilla ice cream to be superior to chocolate ice cream) does not negate the underlying truth that when things being compared are very far apart (e.g., judging Velázquez’s Las Meninas to be superior to a toddler’s scribble), no one with the least bit of visual acuity would say judgment is merely a matter of subjectivity. From this we derive the principle that matters of taste imply a hierarchy of taste, even if we can never be certain about its internal ordering.
Matters of taste and matters of morals are, in a deeply complicated way (richly explored by both Rousseau and Hume) analogous. Both have a ranking from good to bad that’s never going to be provable. A curious fact of human experience, however, is that even thinking people can’t shake the sense that these rankings are, roughly speaking, true and incontrovertible hierarchies—and not mere matters of subjectivity.
At the heart of the culture wars is a fight between many decent people with deep moral values fighting relativists, many of them in universities (most of whom are as equally decent as the first group), insisting that moral values are mere social constructs.
This same relativism clearly shows up in people who insist that matters of aesthetics boil down to preferences. It shows up in university professors when they say they are there simply to “make it clear to…students that the job of an art historian is not to judge whether art is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (i.e., notions of our own taste are not what matters), but to try to understand art within the context in which it was produced.”
To those professors, I ask this: “Why teach Velázquez at all, if you don’t love him and don’t think he’s truly great? Just because he made the history books?”
No wonder so many students fall asleep in art history classes! If a professor doesn’t love the art, if a professor doesn’t reveal to the students that he or she thinks the art is great, or conversely, think it’s grotesque, the presentation is no more than dessicated information that places art “within the context in which it was produced.” Professors like this live in the land of Nietzsche’s living dead, and their students will surely sense it. Yes, yes, I’m sure these students will do well on the outcomes assessment examinations that will eventually come their way, testing their true “knowledge” of art.
But guess what? They’ll never learn what it is to love a great work of art.
Posted at 10:35:28 AM on May 2, 2008 | All postings by Laurie FendrichComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
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Next: You Need Judgment to See Art
Art appreciation class and art history class are two different beasts.
When I love the art we’re talking about, I say so. My students can tell I’m passionate about my subject. But revealing one’s personal taste can also be dangerous. Here’s an example: we were looking at Barnett Newman, and I was explaining the principles behind the work. A student raised her hand and asked, “But Professor—do you actually like this?” I hemmed and hawed and repeated what I said about Newman’s intentions. The student repeated the question. “No,” I had to admit. “I don’t.” I went on to qualify that by saying to like or not like something was not the same thing as understanding or appreciating it. Too late. The minute I said I didn’t like it, it was like letting the air out of the balloon, and the class quit caring about Barnett Newman.
I do not claim to have superior taste to anyone. I have my own taste, unique to me. The students can develop their own, too, without my pushing them.
— Anonymous Art Historian · May 2, 01:08 PM · #
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you
- e e cummings
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate · May 2, 02:07 PM · #
I wonder whether teaching particular judgments adds anything to the lesson. Do we gain anything in the classroom by spending time communicating our judgments?
That is to say, I think we all agree that understanding is a necessary condition for anything like good taste. So even if we wanted to teach taste, we’d first have to teach students to understand art, music, literature, what have you.
Understanding, though, is descriptive and interpretive. What understanding is gained by calling Velázquez better than a toddler? Better at what? If the scrawl is the child’s first, it will certainly be more important to her parents than any Velázquez painting. Which is to say, when we’re talking about better, isn’t it better to talk about better at what? Better for what reasons? Which simply brings us back to analysis, description, interpretation.
The judgment seems to add nothing to the scenario. A term like “great art” is simply shorthand for two statements: “this art has qualities X, Y, and Z” and “I get pleasure from art with those qualities.”
We teach taste by teaching analysis, interpretation, context, history, etc.
— Luther Blissett · May 2, 03:43 PM · #
My earlier comment on this dreary person centered on the sheer banality of her observations. I cannot imagine any academic with any experience whatsoever not having had a similarly tedious conversation with colleagues who have just discovered that kids like crap (and crap is bad).
Now we are confronted with the middle class cheesiness of someone who sniffs at “words that don’t belong in print on a blog site dedicated to issues of higher education.” How can someone with no sense of the aesthetic and rhetorical usefulness of cussing even pretend to offer suggestions on taste or to trumpet a proudly elitist persona?
— Shortfingered vulgarian · May 2, 03:52 PM · #
LB: Right, but…“teaching by analysis, interpretation, context, history” doesn’t amount to much unless judgments are made with the results. Otherwise, students would/could/do say after going through all the analysis, interpretation (side thought: is one interpretation better than another, or all they all equal?), context and history: “So what?”
SfV: “dreary,” “banality,” “tedious,” “middle class cheesiness,” etc. Anything to offer but invective?
If SfV isn’t criticizing “middle class cheesiness” from a position of impeccable working-class credentials, then SfV is, well, an elitist, too. Or maybe royal-born and cannot deny his genes.
Also, the “rhetorical usefulness of cussing” (of which calling somebody an a**hole is only a particularly crude subset) is variable. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And oh, Marcus apologized for it.
Could go further, but I’d rather bait SfV into taking a little more rope.
— LuckyJim · May 2, 05:18 PM · #
LuckyJim — Sure, students must ultimately make judgments. But that’s their business. In the end, it’s actions, not judgments, that matter. Too often, you’ll wind up having students who parrot their teachers’ judgments about culture while they do nothing to contribute to the culture around them.
— Luther Blissett · May 2, 06:15 PM · #
Thanks for the rope. It is interesting, Lucky Jim, that I learned much about snobbery—both its virtues and its drawbacks—from a man who wrote a book about Kingsley Amis and, in another, discussed chickenshit.
Dad was a construction worker—first a carpenter, then a supervisor who brought in big dollars and got an office in an air-conditioned trailer. Mom was a secretary. My sister drives a school bus. I have worked in a tape factory, a lighting factory, and a textile mill. “Royal born,” my ass.
But, of course, I am an elitist. I know a lot about a certain subject and a great deal about several others. Thus, I was able to turn my back on those tacky folk back home with their Whosit, Painter of Light, illuminated prints and doodads and geegaws. I am a very intelligent person who has got plumb above my raising by going to school and then playing my cards right. I do not, however, present jejune (there’s more invective) findings as if they are novel and generalizations (kids’s parents are tasteless dullards and it is our burden to lead them out of darkness) as if they are arguments.
Why does it matter whether Marcus apologized for legitimately using a “bad word” to upset a faux anti-bourgeois? Really: why??
— shortfingeredvulgarian · May 2, 10:10 PM · #
A man “who wrote a book about” KA, and not the great author himself? Pity. And nothing about reverse snobbery?
Some additional lingering questions: At what point in in SfV’s childhood did dad’s “big dollars” kick in? (Crucial to the James-Frey-style c.v.) How much did that secretary’s job pay? (To paraphrase Dennis Potter’s “in my [fishmonger’s] family, the phrase ‘Dover sole’ covered a multitude of sins,” the term “secretary” covers a lot of salaried ground. Coupled with dad’s “big dollars,” the job might put SfV over the bar into a comfy upbringing.) Does sister drive a school bus as a full-time job? Were those factory and mill jobs summer deals during high school and college? (Great college application essay material, those are.) What’s with the Dubyaesque “plumb above my raising” and “playing my cards right”? (He wouldn’t follow it with “jejeune,” though; blows a hole through any NASCAR cred.)
Finalement (I am only moderately intelligent, but I think that’s a French word), Marcus didn’t use “a**hole” legitimately—it was an insult word, irrelevant to the discussion—but at least he was enough of a standup guy to apologize for it.
With that, LuckyJim is saying adios to this section, too, of “Brainstorm’s” The Great Taste Dispute. He’ll retire to the sidelines to contemplate why nobody can say for sure whether Thomas Kinkade (somehow I think SfV knew the ID all along) wasn’t actually as great a painter as Velazquez. I think it has something to do with the absolute relativity of taste.
— LuckyJim · May 2, 11:48 PM · #
Inability to recognize rhetorical register belies Lucky’s claims to some sort of authority, though the epithet “Dubyaesque” suggests an attempt at linguistic cleverness (which is undercut immediately by the [common] misspelling of a common word). (“Finalement” may be a French word, but “jejeune” is not.)
I regret taking this Cambridge-quality debater’s bait and providing evidence to show that I am not “royal born.“A working class cv is too much for Lucky Jim—who might just be Kingsley Amis writing from hell for all we know!—to handle. He cannot believe that some people who grew up dirt poor run in his circles. Lucky: Poor is poor, you clever parser of info that I myself provided.
Nothing about the banality of Laurie Fendrich’s “insights”? Pity that (fake Britishism alert).
— shortfingeredvulgarian · May 3, 08:27 AM · #
“The banality of the insights” is precisely the “common/place” that permits, indeed, inspires such argument.
“banality”/“ban” from the west germanic “francique” (not “francais”), the reconstituted language of the invaders of the Rhine….
“Rhine”: a variety of white whine…er, wine.
“A votre sante”!
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate · May 3, 10:32 AM · #
How many times must it be explained that art history is an academic discipline all its own, with different objectives than studio art as a field? I have no problem with studio art professors discussing what makes “good” art with students in studio art classes. Art historians approach art from the perspective of HISTORICAL CONTEXT and, yes, while personally I love and feel passionate about certain artists and their works (I admit this to my students too and they appreciate it) I also know that as HISTORIAN I must strive for objectivity in understanding the historical development of art and the reasons for its developments in certain directions at certain times. No one is asking studio artists to adopt the methods of art historians, and studio artists should not expect us art historians to adopt your approach. The fields are complimentary and parallel and many good programs continue to align them (as does mine). Our success is based on mutual respect.
— anonymous2 · May 8, 09:54 AM · #
‘‘Many of the studies which approach art from a sociological or an economic point of view lavish far more effort and attention on the factors that surround the art than the art itself, as if the setting, not the stone, were the important matter.’‘ —- Sydney Freeberg, Professor of Art History, Harvard, University, and Curator, National Gallery of Art
— A fan of REAL art historians · May 8, 08:13 PM · #
Fine….but I don’t read Freeberg as denying the importance of context, do you? Why such a vehement denial of its importance on the part of those writing in this forum? Art Historians approach one aspect of understanding art in relation to culture and society. Do you deny that there is such a relationship? You posit that art is created and exists in a vacuum, apart from the world?
— a REAL ART HISTORIAN · May 9, 08:50 AM · #
RAH is right. Prof. Freeberg did not deny the importance of context, without which it is impossible to appreciate a work of art fully. That said, he did emphasize that we are dealing with art—not cotton crops or tires—and implied (and stated more fully elsewhere) that aesthetic judgment is why we’re dealing with art in the first place. The best, most fully alive art historians know this and incorporate it into their writing and teaching. (I’ve benefitted lifelong from having taken a few classes from them.) Their aesthetic judgments are human, tentative, always arguable—not Olympian.
The avid contextualizers among art history professors tend to fall into two camps. One consists of the devotees of Foucault, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Butler, Habermas, et al., who have a genuine passion for deconstruction. They’ve been in the academic catbird seat for about 30 years now. There are lots of big brains among them and their research deserves examination. (I generally disagree with them, but I dutifully plow through a bit of their writing now and then.) The other camp consists of academic clerks, the equivalent of museum registrars rather than curators. They’re contextualists because it’s easier to dispense information than analysis, and because going out on a limb with aesthetic judgments is frightening to them. (The excuse that they don’t want to “impose” their aesthetic judgments on students is laughable. As the kids say, “As if…”)
The question to ask the quotidien contextualizers is “How do you pick the art you contextualize in your classes?” The honest answer is that they don’t think much about it and just use what’s already in the textbooks, and give it their context spin. The semi-honest answer is that they care more about “history” than “art” and that art is as good historical fodder as cotton crops or tires. Plus, it has the advantage of justifying summer trips to France and Italy. The deluded answer is that the whole racist/sexist/classist/elitist/imperialist/logocentric Western canon must be overthrown and their teaching is their equivalent of “To the barricades!”
Meanwhile, all those millions of people go to museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at the works of art because of aesthetics first, context second. (And the Met’s curators—REAL art historians all—have much the same priority.)
The question to me isn’t why there’s such denial of the importance of context in this forum, but the opposite: Why is there such denial of aesthetic judgment in this forum? Is it that irrelevant to art history? Is it that radioactive in class?
— A fan of REAL art historians · May 9, 01:39 PM · #
No, fan – it’s not about going to the barricades or being afraid to speak about it. It’s simply not the focus of the field. My preferred method is iconology – considered now quite old fashioned. But for me all ways of approaching art are interesting. I’ll gladly hear a lecture or read a book on an artist’s biography, listen to a painter speak about form and technique, etc. The knee-jerk reaction against contextual approaches from some within this forum seems to me, as I wrote earlier, predicated on some belief that “Art” should be treated as something beyond rational or logical comprehension. I certainly don’t deny that some artists have talents and abilities (even genius) beyond the level of others – my personal preference also goes to Michelangelo – but on what basis can I, as an Art Historian, justify my feeling? I am more attracted to his work than to Raphael’s for example. I also appreciate Goya, Pollock, and medieval tympanum sculpture. But these preferences are based on personal attractions which cannot be subjected to research method – can they? Art History is an academic field – which means we write and research and publish. We are not Art Critics nor Museum Curators. We all co-exist and create the larger world of art institutions – just as professors of literary history co-exist with poets, novelists, and reviewers who write for the NY Times. We don’t expect literary historians to act as poets and critics do we? Then why impose this on Art Historians? Yes, we are Historians first and foremost, and the subject of our study is the development of Art.
— a REAL ART HISTORIAN · May 9, 04:58 PM · #
The knee-jerk reaction is that of the contextualists against aesthetic judgment. They’re the ones who think one lil’ drop, one lil’ mention in class, one lil’ slip into it pollutes art history. Those of us who favor SOME aesthetic judgment in art history welcome context, too—even as the dominant component. We’re the open-minded ones.
“a REAL ART HISTORIAN’s” justification of his/her preference for Michelangelo over Raphael would make a fascinating read, or classroom lecture, especially if he/she included lots of context.
I presume that since somebody else’s “personal attractions” (e.g., the taste of a 16c. patron) can be subjected to “research method” by art historians, their own could, too. “Know thyself,” is, I believe, the operative imperative.
Let’s see: “a REAL ART HISTORIAN” says that art shouldn’t be “treated as something beyond rational or logical comprehension” and then invokes “genius” in a way that implies that it can’t be understood with “rational or logical comprehension.”
When scholars who hold Ph.D.s in art history switch from being curators to being professors, or from professors to curators, do they switch their aesthetic judgment off an on at will? (Academic art historians, by the way, used to look down their noses at curators. “Oh yes, he went into museum work,” they’d say derisively. Things have changed but, from the subtext of the previous comment, not all that much.)
No, we don’t expect literary historians to “act as poets and critics,” but we might expect them, with the aid of all the context they’ve come up with, to imagine how poets and critics think.
Art historian Donald Kuspit, a former A.D. White Professor at Large at Cornell (currently professor of art history at SUNY Stony Brook and the School of Visual Arts), recently wrote “A Critical History of 20th Century Art.” I presume he’ll now be blackballed from the art historians’ society.
— a fan of REAL art historians · May 10, 08:48 AM · #
Fan, 16c. patrons like the Medici didn’t decide to support artists like Donatello or the young Michelangelo because their work “had a good beat and I could dance to it”. Obviously, as any scholar of Renaiassance art could tell you, as Baxandall would tell you, patronage is much more complex than that. But then, that doesn’t matter to you. I will say this: when I teach art history I do bring up the question of what makes some art/artists perhaps different from others. For me, to be honest, it’s the ability of an artist to understand his/her tradition, to master it, and to go beyond it, adding something unique or new based on his/her own personal ability/voice. You are completely wrong if you think art historians on a personal level don’t respond deeply to art – but we are historians and when it comes to an academic discipline we attempt objectivity, as flawed as that concept may be. My students know which artists and works I am most enthused about ( I cannot hide my passion for certain works ) – but at the same time I do not disparage the works of other artists whose works may not be to my personal taste. Would you expect me to?
— a REAL ART HISTORIAN · May 10, 09:41 AM · #
By the way, “fan”, museum = money. I don’t know many art historians in the academic world who go into their field or choose their research area for the cash. The choice of works that are purchased for a museum and the choice of what to exhibit has to do with cash value. You’re deluding yourself if you think otherwise. Art has never been separate from economic considerations, as you know (at least, you should know, it if you’re at all informed). And what people who attend shows often do is shuffle through, hardly having a chance to look at the works, and afterwards say “I don’t know what the big deal is about Picasso – my 2 year old could do that…but at least I can say I’ve seen a Picasso so that I can impress my friends back home.”
— a REAL ART HISTORIAN · May 10, 09:59 AM · #
Now I know:
Aesthetic judgment = “had a good beat and I could dance to it.” (Well, to some people, I guess.)
Renaissance art patronage was complex, but apparently included no aesthetic judgment.
Artists are only “different” from one another, never better or worse. Courbet, meet your “different” equal, Bouguereau. (Presumably, art historians devote as much class time in 19c. European at to the latter as the former.)
Determining what constitutes an artist’s “something unique or new based on his/her own personal ability/voice” can be done without resorting to any aesthetic judgment at all.
As objective as art historians try to be, they still can’t “hide” their “passion” for certain works of art from their students. (If this is a bad thing, I recommend a cold shower before teaching class.)
If an art historian’s aesthetic judgment (unsuccessfully repressed) favors a certain artist, then he/she is required to “disparage” other artists who are unfavored. (Which would be about 99.999 percent of all the artists who ever existed, which would, in turn, make for a very long class or a very thick book.)
“The choice of works that are purchased for a museum and the choice of what to exhibit has to do with cash value.” (Philippe de Montebello, Gary Tinterow, John Elderfield, James Cuno, Anne d’Harnancourt, Kathy Halbreich, and a few hundred others ought to made aware of just how corrupt they are.)
The ordinary people who go to museum exhibitions “shuffle through” them so they can tell their friends they’ve seen Picasso, whom they despise. (There’s elitism, and then there’s ELITISM!!)
And finally, it may be a tower, but apparently it’s made of something else than ivory.
— A fan of REAL art historians · May 10, 11:21 AM · #
Aesthetic judgment = “had a good beat and I could dance to it.” (Well, to some people, I guess.) – that’s pretty much it, “fan”, unless you posit some objective standard exists…Paging Mr. Winckelmann, white courtesy phone….
Renaissance art patronage was complex, but apparently included no aesthetic judgment. Aesthetic judgment was one part – but the Inquisition was another.
Artists are only “different” from one another, never better or worse. Courbet, meet your “different” equal, Bouguereau. (Presumably, art historians devote as much class time in 19c. European at to the latter as the former.) Well…this may be too complex for you to grasp, “fan”, but to artists of the 19th century Courbet may have been more significant; to the average salon-goer in 19th-c. Paris Bouguereau’s works were, as they dominated the salons for years….so should we NOT talk about him because you “prefer” Courbet?
Determining what constitutes an artist’s “something unique or new based on his/her own personal ability/voice” can be done without resorting to any aesthetic judgment at all. It’s part – but a small part – do we talk about Duchamp because his works are a. pretty or b. because they challenge fundamental assumptions about art? I think, last time I checked, it was “b”.
As objective as art historians try to be, they still can’t “hide” their “passion” for certain works of art from their students. (If this is a bad thing, I recommend a cold shower before teaching class.) Because a responsible professor knows that the classroom isn’t a place to shove his/her ideas of good/bad down students’ throats, but to provide them with information sufficient so that they can think for themselves. Students will like what students will like. To get back to the origin of all this – it’s not the art historian’s job or field to instruct people on matters of “taste” – you can go to Ann Landers for that.
If an art historian’s aesthetic judgment (unsuccessfully repressed) favors a certain artist, then he/she is required to “disparage” other artists who are unfavored. (Which would be about 99.999 percent of all the artists who ever existed, which would, in turn, make for a very long class or a very thick book.) Well…think about it, “fan”, doesn’t preferring one artist to another necessarily imply some set of criteria which will then denigrate the work of others who don’t meet it? Art historians are not in the job of making those judgments. Those folks are called “art critics” in case you haven’t heard.
“The choice of works that are purchased for a museum and the choice of what to exhibit has to do with cash value.” (Philippe de Montebello, Gary Tinterow, John Elderfield, James Cuno, Anne d’Harnancourt, Kathy Halbreich, and a few hundred others ought to made aware of just how corrupt they are.) No offense to the above named people, but I’m sure they know that they’re in the “business of art” and that “art is the best business”….
The ordinary people who go to museum exhibitions “shuffle through” them so they can tell their friends they’ve seen Picasso, whom they despise. (There’s elitism, and then there’s ELITISM!!) Blockbuster museum shows are for quiet contemplation by those who truly understand what “good” art is…or better, to “educate” those who don’t understand about the elysian fields of “the good and the true and the beautiful”…oh boy! That’s a good one – have you thought of trying stand-up comedy?
And finally, it may be a tower, but apparently it’s made of something else than ivory. Well…I think you know what it’s made of because it’s populated by incredibly judgmental people like yourself, clearly over confident of their own narrow and elitist opinions. It’s so aggravating to you when others don’t adopt your views, isn’t it? So you resort to old boy bullying tactics – so clever!
— a REAL ART HISTORIAN · May 10, 01:18 PM · #
Time to go. He (or she) is thrashing and foaming. Attendant!
— a former fan of "real art historians" · May 10, 02:35 PM · #
Finally – “Fan” is down for the count! But is that “good” or “bad”…..I suppose we must consult the oracle to decide…..
— a REAL ART HISTORIAN · May 10, 02:59 PM · #
LB-too often students try and pass their professor’s feelings and judgments off as their own, but who is at fault? the professor for interjecting their opinions into the curriculum? or the student for absorbing everything their elders say without passing their own judgment?
— rae · May 19, 08:56 PM · #