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The of Teaching and Teaching with Art 49

The Art of Teaching and Teaching with Art: Using Avant-garde Art to Foster Active Learning in the Classroom

Chris Mack State University of New York at Oswego

Avant-garde art and drawn from artists and authors were used to foster authentic learning in a History course. Students read assigned texts to situate the artists and their work in a historical context. They then engaged in a semiotic analysis of dress, viewed and analyzed Dada and , participated in the creation and reading of Dada poems, and considered the question: What is art? As a result, students actively engaged with the ways avant-garde artists challenged traditional ways of knowing and looking at the world and had an opportunity to consider how they can reflect upon, and change, their own views of themselves and their places in the world. ______

As every teacher knows, there are uncharted or rarely traveled territory. always new classes to teach, new (p.1-2) approaches to try, new materials to consider; In keeping with that counsel, I and new research that can inform our constantly try to vary the material presented teaching in ways we may never have to my students, including ideas and issues imagined five years, or even a semester, that some might argue are too complex and before. One of the best spurs that I have difficult for the average undergraduate. One found to encourage experimentation and example is the use of in my innovation in my own teaching comes from teaching. Many students are not very an article in The Teaching Professor sensitive to the aesthetic concerns and ideas entitled: "What Makes A Good Teacher?" of much modern and . To (Weimer, 1997). As I plan my classes before some, it is terra incognita, a strange, bizarre, each semester, I refer to the article as a way and confusing array of shapes, colors, and to restore my perspective of the teaching styles meant to baffle and elude them. That process and as a continuing challenge to is the perfect place for my class to start! The make my classes as stimulating, learner- students are thrown off balance by the centered, and fun, as they can be. material and their attempts to wrestle with it. Two statements in the article that I Their comfort zone has been breached; they find particularly helpful are, "Good teachers are ready to consider new ideas and take risks" (p.1-2), and "Good teachers try to approaches to not only grasp the material, keep students and themselves off balance" but to use it as a means of re-evaluating their (p.1-2). Weimer goes on to explain: way of looking at art and its place in their When teachers are comfortable, world. complacent, and certain about what But that is only the beginning. In they're doing, they're less likely to be addition, I use modern art in my classes to teaching at their best. The same can be introduce students to the challenge that said of students, who need to face artists and thinkers presented to the Western challenges they aren't quite sure they intellectual and artistic tradition in the late are ready to handle. It's about teachers nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I and students always moving on to want them to think about the efforts of

Journal of Authentic Learning, Volume 2, Number 2, Pages 49-58, 2005 The Art of Teaching and Teaching with Art 50 artists (in this particular case) to question the context, my narrative below describes how received wisdom of painting, photography, these tasks were presented and and thinking in general about art in the accomplished through the course of the West. What were the artists concerned with class. and about? How did they create new responses to the effects of and Historical Background the approach of World War II? How did their ideas reflect other thinkers’ concerns? Germany: 1.8 million dead. : These questions, among others, preoccupied 1.4 million dead. : 1.7 million dead. our most recent discussions of Dadaism and -Hungary: 1.2 million dead. Great . Britain and its Empire: nearly 1 million dead The preparatory material for the (Howard, 2002). Such were the costs of the discussion of Dadaism and Surrealism First World War for just some of the included assigned readings from our class countries involved. In addition, the war had texts, including both primary and secondary far-reaching political effects. It led to the sources from the period, and handouts of dissolution of political systems and ’s "" (1918). In aristocratic monarchies in Germany, Russia, addition, the students were asked to perform and Austria-Hungary. It prompted certain tasks requiring different learning revolutions in Russia and Germany. It approaches and skills designed to activate created new nations in Central and Eastern their active participation in the class. These Europe. And it undermined the old social tasks included: (a) decoding the signs order that had been dominated by hereditary present in the instructor’s attire; (b) viewing aristocracies throughout Europe, replacing it and analyzing Dadaist works of art and with either bourgeois, or in the case of the considering the ideas they advanced which Soviet Union, working class influences. In both reflected their experience of WWI and the midst of such incredible destruction and challenged traditional ideas of art; (c) rapid change, and reminded of it every day actively producing Dada art through the by the memories of friends and family lost manipulation of a "" handout and and the constant contact with the war’s thoughtful engagement with the Dadaists’ maimed and crippled, Dada was born. The claims regarding the artistic process and its rush by Europe’s citizens to slaughter one historical place in Western culture; (d) another prompted small, but increasingly continuing to consider the Dadaist approach influential, groups of artists in Zurich, New toward the artistic process by watching and York, , and Berlin to band together and critiquing the instructor’s own "tangerine question how such a horrific event could experiment" (explained later) and reflecting have occurred, and been tolerated, in on the question, "What is art?"; (e) engaging supposedly "civilized" Europe. students' attention and reflection through One of the artists who helped found their "" or reading of Dada and advance Dada was Richard writings and ; (f) fostering Huelsenbeck. He left Berlin in 1916 to go to cooperative learning through the production Zurich, at his parent’s urging, to avoid of a Dada poem by the class; (g) summing military service. His future brother-in-law's up what we learned about Dada and its experience of combat in and around Verdun relationship to the wider society and culture in 1916 and description of his own of Europe in the 1920s. Following a brief wounding in 1917 deepened Huelsenbeck's description of Dadaism and its historical conviction that the war belied all the former

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Christian virtues Europe had prided itself on after he became disenchanted with the possessing. In a letter, Huelsenbeck's avant-garde art scene in Paris. His painting, brother-in-law described the all too familiar "Nude Descending a Staircase no. 2", rocked horrors of the First World War. As he sat in American audiences at the of a tree on observation duty, Huelsenbeck's 1913 with its Cubist-influenced approach to brother-in-law was hit by a grenade: "It was the human body and its movement through like a great wind... a howling that turned space. into a screaming. The howling came from Teaming with another European the projectile, and the screams, I realized expatriate, (1879-1953), next, came from the wounded. They were Duchamp began to criticize the continued lying around all over the place, with arms allegiance of the artistic mainstream to and legs ripped off and stomachs split open, aesthetic ideas derived from traditional and the chaplains sniffing around them with Classical models. Reflecting the increasing their crucifixes so that they wouldn’t go to mechanization of society, Duchamp and heaven without the blessings of the Picabia created an aesthetic that fused the church..." (Huelsenbeck, 1991, p. 6)., human and the machine. Their experiments According to the Dadaists, these personal produced works such as Picabia’s and national demanded a "mechano-morphic" drawings and reckoning. What ideas and patterns of and Duchamp’s "The Bride Stripped Bare behavior had led to such desolation? By Her Bachelors, Even (or Large Glass)" The answer, for many, lay in a (Henderson, 1996, p. 228). combination of Western civilization's Duchamp went even farther by traditional beliefs and its faith in and questioning the visual and craft emphasis of reliance on , , and technology art; instead, he advanced ideas as the most and the cultural and social products and important factor in artistic creation. His relationships derived from them. To the "readymades" like the "Bicycle Wheel" artists who gathered under the label "Dada," (1913) manipulated found objects to realize the war revealed the bankruptcy of all of the his artistic ideas. Duchamp's experiments traditional assumptions about what was true, proved highly influential for future useful, and beautiful. Thus, a thoroughgoing generations of artists, giving credence to the critique, destruction, and rebuilding of claim that Duchamp was the founder of Western civilization had to be undertaken — (Hopkins, 2004, p. 9). Before and extreme measures were warranted. Art returning to Europe after the war, Duchamp served as the antidote to the old and corrupt; and Picabia's New York years helped jump- a consciously avant-garde group of artists start the careers of other aspiring American would produce, through their work, a path to artists, most notably, (1890-1976). a new, and hopefully better, world. Thus, Duchamp, Picabia, and their The first "gatherings" (for they collaborators developed a version of Dada embraced anarchic notions that eschewed that was internationalist in its vision, critical doctrinaire membership in movements or of the Western artistic tradition, and groups) of artists interested in the ideas that interested in placing ideas and their coalesced to become Dada appeared even execution at the heart of a new kind of art. before the war in New York and later in Not much later, in , Zurich. The New York group moved in and (1886-1927), his partner, Emmy around the French artist, Hennings (1885-1948), and the Romanian (1887-1968). Duchamp moved to New York Tristan Tzara (1896-1963), launched

Journal of Authentic Learning, Volume 2, Number 2, Pages 49-58, 2005 The Art of Teaching and Teaching with Art 52 the in Zurich. Ball, kinds by members who worked in Hennings, and Tzara attracted other those media. Along with the at collaborators, among them the Cabaret Voltaire, Dadaists in New York, (1895-1984) and Hans Arp (1887-1966), as Zurich, and later in Paris and Berlin, well as Ball's pre-war collaborator in the produced art exhibitions at galleries and German avant-garde in Munich, Richard printed journals to advance their criticisms Huelsenbeck (1892-1974). Indeed, it was of society and their alternative ways of Ball, Huelsenbeck, or a combination of the seeing and living in the world. Despite two — no one is completely certain — who closing only five months after its opening, gave their art and ideas the name, "Dada" — the Cabaret Voltaire and the artists who a nonsense word that could mean nearly were associated with it created a set of ideas anything to anyone, precisely as the young that became known as Dada, ideas that were artists intended. carried, after the war, to Paris and Berlin. The group who gathered at the Despite their numerous differences Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916 shared a and personal idiosyncrasies, the Dadaists similar set of artistic influences and shared a commitment to political experiences. They had been a part of avant- engagement and the creation of an art that garde art circles in their home countries sought to overturn not just the political and (influenced variously by and/or social status quo, but the entire edifice of ). They rejected the values Western culture. In the place of reason, they and political ideals that led to the First emphasized the irrational. Rather than World War (some had seen combat in it), homogeneity, they embraced the and they sought in neutral Switzerland an heterogeneous. And instead of an emphasis incubator for their alternative ideas and on continuity and enduring standards and visions. Hans Arp described the motivations values, they emphasized the new and the of many of his comrades: creative possibilities to be found in the Revolted by the butchery of the 1914 chaotic. Tristan Tzara summed up Dada's World War, we in Zurich devoted aims: ourselves to the . While the guns We have had enough of the intelligent rumbled in the distance, we sang, movements that have stretched beyond painted, made and wrote measure our credulity in the benefits poems with all of our might. We were of science. What we now want is seeking an art based on fundamentals, spontaneity. Not because it is better or to cure the madness of the age, and a more beautiful than anything else. new order of things that would restore [But] because everything that issues the balance between heaven and hell freely from ourselves, without the (Arp, 1948, p. 25). intervention of speculative ideas, The performances at the cabaret represents us... Art has not the included recitations and readings by celestial and general value that people like Ball, Tzara, and Huelsenbeck (among like to attribute to it. Life is far more others) — usually in outlandish costume and interesting. Dada knows the correct accompanied by some form of music or measure that should be given to art... noise. Musical numbers that satirized and The Beautiful and True in art do not lampooned bourgeois society and its exist; what interests me is the intensity deficiencies also appeared on the program, of a personality transposed directly, as did stage sets and artwork of various

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clearly into his work; the man and his rather, it was a common shoelace (in this vitality (Tzara, 1922, p. 68 - 70). case black, though any color will do). The students noticed and began to make Dada in the History Classroom comments about my unusual attire. That served my purpose: already they were Our classes on Dadaism and observing carefully and had been enticed to Surrealism took place on the last Tuesday think about what would happen during the and Thursday of the semester as a part of an class-- and be certain to pay close attention upper division course offering called to the details of the day's activities. "Europe Between the Wars, 1919-1939." To I gave each student a photocopy of keep the students engaged, and off balance, I Leonardo da Vinci's famous La Gioconda wanted to create a kind of , (The Mona Lisa). Their interest was piqued. a total or complete artwork, that in some What were they going to do with this? As I small way mimicked the Dada antics of the handed out the photocopies (giving them Cabaret Voltaire. My aim was to provide the plenty of time to observe my costume), I students with a variety of stimuli and explained that they were to use the activity: visual, tactile, aural, and certainly photocopies as their canvas. They were to do intellectual, that reflected Dada's anarchic what they would with them; they could take spirit. PowerPoint presentations of some notes on them, doodle on them, rend them, representative individuals and artworks bend them — whatever they liked for the formed the foundation of each class. two classes (or outside of class if they The Dada presentation included desired). I asked only that they bring them to sixteen slides, while the Surrealist the final exam and after they finished the presentation included thirteen. The test, to affix their copy to a "frame" that I'd presentations were intended to give the constructed from recycled textbook boxes. students an all-important look at the works Since we were talking about two of Dada and Surrealist artists. They needed varieties of modern art, I proposed that we an opportunity to see, and evaluate against make some "art" of our own (the finished their own understanding of art, how the product now adorns my office). I explained artists of the two movements created that we were replicating an artistic provocative and exciting new forms that experiment of Marcel Duchamp's. Duchamp challenged all of the old rules of what was, earned great notoriety when he produced a and was not, considered proper art and copy of the Mona Lisa and adorned it with a painting technique. mustache and goatee along with the initials, For the purposes of this paper, I will "L.H.O.O.Q" — an abbreviation of an confine my focus to our discussion of Dada. irreverent phrase used by French schoolboys As the students filed in for our Tuesday referring to the Mona Lisa's (of course class on Dadaism, they immediately noticed unseen) backside. What Duchamp intended that something was different— my dress, or was to poke fun at the seriousness and costume. Instead of my usual "uniform" of conventions of Western artistic production; khaki pants, button-down shirt or turtleneck, could we really call what he had done to a sweater vest, and sport jacket, my outfit copy of da Vinci's famous painting art? consisted of canvas work pants, white- Thus, in a humorous way I introduced our buttoned down shirt, sweater vest, "tie", and topic by asking them to consider the tweed sport jacket. But the tie was not like question that Duchamp was asking: What is those with which we are most familiar; Art?

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Before we examined that question, I reviewed our discussions about Europe after moved into the center of the classroom and the First World War. I asked the students to prepared to offer some introductory consider that for many of these artists, the comments on Dadaism; but, before I could horrors of the war permanently begin, a student asked: "Prof. Mack, what's compromised the traditional values and the deal with your clothes?" Eureka! An practices of Western society and culture. As entry into the world of Dada had been a result, they used humor, especially ironic provided for me! I replied that many Dada and satirical humor, as critical tools for a re- artists argued that art was everywhere and evaluation of society and the creation of new could be created from anything — even, values. I asked if anyone knew which Dada perhaps, one's choice of clothing. So, I (and Surrealist) artist wore such a tie? No asked, "What do you think it means? Why one answered the question correctly. "The am I wearing these pants today? What do answer," I told them, "is Man Ray. We'll see they represent? Who wears them?" They some of his sculpture, painting, and immediately recognized them as work pants, photography in our PowerPoint the type worn by roofers, construction presentation." Thus, the students soon had a workers, painters, etc. I asked them why "tie" between his work and some of the they thought that I wore them that day. A ideas that were characteristic of the period. perceptive student, who had clearly done the And, just as importantly, our "reading" of assigned reading, responded that many of my clothing has gotten them to think in the Dadaists were socialists and communists symbolic terms-- a good warm-up for our and interested in working class movements. impending discussion of Dada paintings. I responded affirmatively, and we reviewed I returned to the front of the our earlier discussions of revolutions that classroom and asked the question again: occurred during or after the First World What is art? To help answer the question, War: the Bolshevik and German revolutions. we viewed a few works from Dada artists: Briefly, we considered why avant-garde Picabia, Duchamp, Ernst, Haussmann, artists might be interested in the ideas Hoch, Schwitters, Arp, and Man Ray. As we offered by radical thinkers. We then looked at and talked about the art, I casually continued our deconstruction of my picked up a small, brown paper lunch bag clothing. As our dialogue continued, I from the desk and removed a tangerine from moved about the room, up and down the it. While we talked about the art, the artists, rows of seats, sitting down among the and the students' initial response to the students to continue the discussion (I question, I flattened the bag and began consciously try to manipulate the classroom peeling the tangerine. I didn't look down at space, to change it a bit each day, just to the tangerine or the bag; I maintained eye give them a different perspective, something contact with the students as we continued new to attract their interest). our discussion, allowing the tangerine peels We finished "reading" my clothing to drop on the bag below. After I'd finished with the tie. Many students looked at the peeling the tangerine and the peels lay shoelace, shook their heads, and said, "It's strewn about the bag, I carefully separated just goofy." "That's it!" I responded. I several sections of tangerine and placed explained that many Dada artists engaged in them on the peels and bag. I then asked, outrageous and silly behavior to make a "Given what you've said about your point. What would such an approach to life understanding of art, what do you think of say about the world in which they lived? We my creation? Is this art?"

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The students paused to consider their in front of us. The students came to these response. There was immediate conclusions with little guidance from me. I disagreement. Some said, "You can't merely presented them with situations and possibly argue that that is art! It takes no objects that were unfamiliar and skill or !" Others conceded that it is art challenging, asked a few questions, and because, "It is if you say it is." Or, they held allowed them to think and speak about them that art is in the eye of the beholder. We in their own way. talked about this for a bit; we didn't resolve Next, I varied the pace and anything, but at this point I wasn’t presentation again. I talked about the concerned if we did or didn't. Instead, I Cabaret Voltaire and the development of moved on by suggesting, "Well, let's look at Dada in Zurich during World War I. We some more of these artists' works and their read aloud selections from Tristan Tzara's understanding of what the artistic process is "Dada Manifesto." We talked about Tzara's all about — maybe that will give us some challenge to the old order and traditional clues." The class was active, puzzled, wisdom that had led to the horrors of the engaged. The students, whether they war. I concluded with Tzara's curt summary realized it or not, had become artists of their phrase from the "Dada Manifesto": "Kunst own learning. ist Scheisse!" (Art is sh-t!) Of course that I prepared to put up another slide, elicited giggles. Why would he say such a but first I gave it an introduction: "In a thing? What does it mean? Does it mean that recent survey, over 200 leading artists, art all art is empty? Or, as in Duchamp's critics, and academics chose the piece we're "," that art can be as common (and about to see as the single most influential profane) as human excrement? We talked work in the history of Western art." It is about how such statements and ideas were Duchamp's "readymade", "The Fountain" — received by mainstream society; we talked a urinal tipped upside down and signed, about the artists' response to their critics and "R.Mutt, 1917." Jaws dropped. "No way," their feeling that the social and political was heard throughout the room. "How could leaders of their nations had let them down. these learned folk make such a claim?" I They believed humanity had to make a new asked. "What is art?" I wondered aloud if start in order to save itself from future my "tangerine installation" didn't look better devastation; thus, the manifesto prompts yet now. We talked about it for a bit, then another discussion of the social and political returned to "The Fountain." situation in Europe that produced such a We puzzled over it before the class bitter critique. The art and reading actively recognized that Duchamp was saying that art engaged the class in a discussion of the isn't just about the mastery of technique and values and ideas of the period and materials. Nor is it about the faithful simultaneously brought them to reflect on depiction of the world around us; rather, it is their own notions and conceptions of art and about the creative act itself; the thoughts and their customary way of looking at the world. ideas of the artist are the source of At this point I put up an image of Duchamp's, and the Dadaists', project. The Jean (Hans) Arp's "The Laws of Chance." students realized that for Duchamp, art is Arp produced the work by tearing up strips about what the artist thinks and what the of paper and then dropping them onto artist does; he or she conceives of an idea another piece of paper on the floor, allowing and brings it into the world. The art is in them to form whatever patterns resulted. He some sense the idea. The idea is what we see then simply glued the torn pieces to the

Journal of Authentic Learning, Volume 2, Number 2, Pages 49-58, 2005 The Art of Teaching and Teaching with Art 56 paper that "caught" them. Is that art, I experiments in "" bypassed asked? Many now agreed that it was — and rational consciousness and allowed my tangerine piece looked much better. We unmediated access to the unconscious. talked about the Dada artists' focus on I asked the students how they would chance and why they might be interested in like me to read their work — standard left- such questions after the war. They better to-right, backwards, vertically, randomly, appreciated Duchamp's "readymades." They however. When they made their choice, I came to realize Duchamp's notion that art is read. I varied my cadence, sometimes fast, in the idea and in the process of realizing sometimes slow, lingering over a word, that idea as much as it is in the viewing. repeating, racing on, whatever. The class We turned to another activity and laughed, smiled, and shook their heads in Dada art form, poetry. Some students and I disbelief. It's crazy! It's nonsense! It's Dada! read Dada poems by Tzara, Hugo Ball, We ended the class with a brief , and . review of some of the ideas and concepts Now we listened instead of looking. The we'd learned about Dada: (a) it arose out of poems were bizarre, nonsensical, and the horrific experience of the First World absurd. For example, one of the poems we War and its chaotic aftermath; (b) the artists read is Richard Huelsenbeck's "The attracted to Dada called into question Primitives": traditional ways of seeing, describing, and indigo, indigo living in the world; (c) the Dadaists tramway sleeping bag developed alternative ways of understanding bug and flea art and its place in Western culture and indigo indigai society; (d) Dada artistic ideas helped shape umbaliska future art movements (Surrealism) and boom DADAI (Huelsenbeck, 1995, p. 66) continue to be influential today.

Most students, understandably, were Reflection confused. Why spout such nonsense? I asked them to consider the images that we'd The impact of the experiment was seen and what we'd said about them. How profound. The activities I offered during the was that art constructed? What purpose did class attracted, interested, and engaged the it serve? Were the Dada poets engaged in a students. They wrestled with some very similar sort of creative process? Heads difficult and abstract ideas, but in ways that nodded. Smiles of recognition appeared. they could relate to and enjoy. Whether or I concluded the Dada class with not they were fully persuaded of the value of another hands-on activity. I passed out Dada art, they had thought about and sticky-notes to each student and asked them evaluated the artists' ideas alongside their to close their eyes. I instructed them to clear own ways of looking at and understanding their minds and when I counted to three, to the world. open their eyes and write down the first Active learning had taken place, as word that came to mind. When I'd counted we met each of the objectives I outlined in and they'd recorded their responses, the the introduction. The value of using avant- students came to the chalkboard and affixed garde art in such classes is that it prompts their words, in no order, to the board. The students not only to question the place of exercise mimicked those of the Dadaists and avant-garde art in Western society and Surrealists who believed that such culture, but also to consider alternative ways

Journal of Authentic Learning, Volume 2, Number 2, Pages 49-58, 2005 The Art of Teaching and Teaching with Art 57 of thinking about themselves and their place depressing feeling. I think instead of in the world. It allows them to discover, or mourning, Dadaists learned that life re-discover, that the "world" in which they was short, so have fun. As for live, their society and culture, is constructed, Surrealists, I think they had a similar, a "made" thing; and, that they, like the Dada yet deeper look at life. I think they artists, can perhaps develop new ideas of wanted to show the world that even what society should be and how it might be though something may seem different, changed. it can be as normal as anything. They Finally, using avant-garde art encouraged an open mind in an era of allowed the class to take risks along with closed minded anger, hatred, and me. We kept one another off balance; we sadness. stretched ourselves beyond our usual comfort zones. Best of all, we did it all again I actually did learn a lot from the — but differently — when we considered Surrealist and Dada lectures. I learned Surrealism. that art is not just a realistic painting or photograph of a nice sunset. Art can Conclusion be a real and living thing, with mixed feelings and expressions. The whole To follow-up on the effectiveness of point of art is to express whatever the the experiments on Dada and Surrealism, I author needs to express or what he asked the students to briefly comment in feels, not just make something look as writing on what they had, or had not, learned real as possible. This is what the from the two classes. A few representative Dadaists and Surrealists did. I also examples appear below: think that making art out of everyday objects is real neat because things I learned that there is an interesting arranged a certain way do have relationship between art and historical meaning and it doesn't matter what events. The works of Dadaist and those objects are. If you were to paint Surrealist artists generally reflected a picture of those arranged objects it feelings shared by much of Europe at would be art, so why not the objects this time. Some of their concepts and themselves? images may have been strange but it really made sense in a historical I learned a lot! I was able to look at art context. in a completely different way and appreciate it on a much higher level! Much to my surprise, I learned a lot You should teach more classes with from the discussions on Dadaism and art too! I'd definitely take it! Surrealism. They focused on an obscure aspect of life during the time, Overall, 24 students gave positive which was the cultural and intellectual assessments of the classes. Two students, aspect to it. It was interesting to learn however, didn't glean much from our about the new ways of thinking people discussion. Three students did not respond adopted. Dadaism, in my opinion, (two were ill and missed the classes). The shows an enlightened view of the critical comments appear below: world. Everyone was tense and uptight about World War I, and it created a

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As interesting as the classes on Dada Trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of and Surrealism were, I honestly didn't California Press. learn anything useful from them. Most Henderson, L. D. (1996). Reflections of of the artwork seemed rather trivial and/or on Marcel Duchamp’s Large and worthless to me. Some of it was Glass. In F. M. Naumann and B. extremely well done and beautiful to Venn (Eds.), Making mischief: Dada me but most wasn't. As much as I hate invades New York. New York: to admit it, all I learned from those Whitney Museum of Art. classes was that the artists and poets Hopkins, D. (2004). Dada and Surrealism: from that time were crazy and A very short introduction. New anything could be sold on the art York: Oxford University Press. market. Even though I didn't get much Howard, M. (2002). The First World War. out of those specific classes, I did love New York: Oxford University Press. this course and would take it again in Huelsenbeck, R. (1991). Memoirs of a Dada a heartbeat. drummer. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. I learned that art is sh-t. It can be Huelsenbeck, R. (1995). The Primitives. In considered art if in the action of Blago Bung Blago Bung bosso making something, I have artistic fataka! London: Atlas Press. intent. I also learned that if I do drugs Miller, T. (1999). Late : Politics, and become impoverished that my art fiction, and the arts between the will be worth more. world wars. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ah, the critics! Now I have a spur to Tzara, T. (1918). Dada Manifesto. In Eugen make it new, take risks, and try some other Weber (Ed.), Movements, currents, approaches next time. Let our experiments trends: Aspects of European thought in creating active learning continue! in the 19th and 20th centuries. New York: Houghton Mifflin. References Tzara, T. (1922). Conference sur Dada. In R. Motherwell (Ed.), The Dada painters Arp, H. J.. (1948). Dadaland. In Hans and poets. New York: Wittenborn, Richter, Dada Art and Anti-Art. New Schulz. York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Verkauf, W. (Ed.). (1957). Dada: Ball, H. (1996). Flight out of time: A Dada Monograph of a movement. New diary by Hugo Ball. Berkeley, CA: York, NY: Wittenborn. University of California Press. Weimer, M. (1997). What makes a good Brendon, P. (2000). The dark valley: A teacher? The Teaching Professor, panorama of the 1930’s. New York, 11(1), 1-2. NY: Knopf. Camfield, W. (1979). Francis Picabia: His art, life, and times. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ernst, M. (1948). Beyond painting. New York: Wittenborn, Schulz. Grosz, G. (1998). : An Autobiography (Nora Hodges,

Journal of Authentic Learning, Volume 2, Number 2, Pages 49-58, 2005