For the most part, I have abandoned any in-term justification of our learning outcomes. There are venues for this discussion, of course: recruitment evenings, advising sessions, and planning exercises. Because we spend so much time teaching students to format, for example, there is hardly time to stop to reflect upon why it is important to pay attention to details.
But if a course progresses well, some of its practical significance should become clear, even before we undertake a summary. We had a week like that this week, when the perpetual relevance of a study of the historical avant-garde presented itself to us all.
One of the surrealist challenges to the institution of art questioned the standing of the artistic artifact. If one lived ones art, if it was impossible to make any distinction between art and life, was not the identification of a work of art – a book, a play, a film – a bogus activity? Do not get me wrong: the surrealists painted canvases, of course, but they rejected any distinction between that canvas and the artistic standing of a conversation they had with someone, or the creative activity of taking a walk in the park. When André Breton talks about the text he is writing, there is a palpable discomfort, but there existed for him no more appropriate nomenclature.
This examination of the artifact in conceptualizations of the institution of art leads us to a discussion of the artifact today. What standing do the actual manifestations of works have with our students? When Marcel Duchamps bought and signed a plumbing fixture, selling it as a piece of art, he was thumbing his nose at the idea of bourgeois appropriation of artistry. A fortnight ago, Imaginus brought their travelling caravan of poster reproductions to our campus and did a brisk trade. Except for the proliferation of images of women in their underwear kissing each other, very little has changed over the past generation. We have all hung Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, or at least its inexpensive reproduction. This is not the case with music. Dorm rooms used to be filled with album sleeves, eight-track tapes, cassettes, and compact discs. Students now download their music and store it electronically. Why do they no longer feel the need to possess their music, as they once did, to hold the commodity over the heads of their friends? On the other hand, when I was young we went to films and waited for them to be shown on television. The idea of “owning” a film was foreign to us. Dorm rooms now are littered with DVDs and Blu-Rays. What is the significance of this distinction? What does it tell us about the future of commerce and art?
Ultimately, the whole purpose of the historical avant-garde was to stand outside the society in which it existed to challenge the status quo. How is it possible to do so? It is as if one could levitate above a current along which one swims to watch fellow swimmers. This problem was encountered by “Occupy” protestors, dependent as they were on the electronic gadgetry rooted in a manifestation of the system of capital they hoped to renounce. These kinds of paradoxes presented themselves to the surrealists, as well. The still had magazines and exhibitions; they hoped to use the tools of the artistic trade to undermine that trade, itself. Are these protests valuable simply to draw attention to realities, or can they ever hope to achieve real change? Looking up from their desks this week, I think that some of the students thought anew about what they hope to do when they emerge into a world that expects, at some level, their conformity.
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