DOCSLIB.ORG

Finding Black Mountain the Spirit of Progressive Education in the 21St Century

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Finding Black Mountain the Spirit of Progressive Education in the 21St Century FINDING BLACK MOUNTAIN THE SPIRIT OF PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY A Dissertation by JOHN HENSON Submitted to the Graduate School at Appalachian State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF EDUCATION December, 2019 Educational Leadership Doctoral Program Reich College of Education FINDING BLACK MOUNTAIN THE SPIRIT OF PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY A Dissertation by JOHN HENSON December, 2019 APPROVED BY: Dr. Chris Patti, Ph.D Chairperson, Dissertation Committee Dr. Vachel Miller, Ed.D Member, Dissertation Committee Dr. Kim Becnel, Ph.D Member, Dissertation Committee Dr. Vachel Miller, Ed.D Director, Educational Leadership Doctoral Program Dr. Michael McKenzie, Ph.D Dean, Cratis D. Williams School of Graduate Studies Copyright by John Henson 2019 All Rights Reserved Abstract FINDING BLACK MOUNTAIN THE SPIRIT OF PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY John Henson B.S., Appalachian State University M.Ed., Boston University Ed.D., Appalachian State University Dissertation Committee Chairperson: Dr. Chris Patti This study explores the phenomena of the Black Mountain College Semester (BMCS) as a means to locate the spirit of progressive education in the 21st Century. Through interviews with contemporary faculty who organized and participated in the BMCS, along with document analysis of texts related to the history and legacy of the BMC, this research seeks to identify effective strategies for cultivating innovation, creativity, and community in the classrooms of today and tomorrow. Using a thematic analysis of interviews and historical texts, this study illuminates the values that past and present educators hold as sacred, and the ways in which they put those values into practice in their classrooms. Findings illuminate persistent tensions between descriptions of optimal learning conditions, and the realities of the highly-structured nature of higher education. Specifically, a tension between academic structure and freedom was prominent along with an acknowledgement of the significant impact Information and Communication Technologies are having on our on all aspects of contemporary lived experiences. This study carries implications for the ways in which iv institutions of higher education, and the educators working within, go about establishing innovation, creativity, and community as values. v Acknowledgments Like all students before me, my dissertation research would not be not have been possible without the guidance and encouragement of a group of individuals I feel honored to call friends and mentors. I first want to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my wife and partner Theresa, who has given me her unwavering support and care throughout my graduate studies. To my two amazing young boys, who kept me fueled with a constant supply of hugs, but also demonstrated—at every opportunity—the power of curiosity and the wonder of the human imagination. You two will forever be my most important teachers. To my parents, whose love and compassion have shaped who I have am today, and who I strive to become tomorrow. You taught me to never give up on my goals and dreams and to above all bestow upon others respect, compassion, and warmth. To Tracy Smith, for working with me at perhaps the most essential stage of my dissertation journey—conceptualization. Thank you for your thoughtful dialogue and deep listening during long conversations in your office. Your mentorship was essential in helping me converge my overly divergent thinking as I worked to identify a topic and case. To the Faculty Fellows and coordinators of the Black Mountain College Semester who graciously agreed to participate in my research. Your stories, ideas, and perspectives are the foundation of my research. Thank you for sharing your time, your wisdom, and your enthusiasm for education. vi To my doctoral committee, whose great care and masterful touch have been essential in bringing this research to life. To Vachel, for being with me throughout my doctoral journey. Your warmth, scholarly perspective, and progressive teaching practices have been integral from the very beginning of my doctoral adventure. To Kim, whose fellowship during our time together in Cohort 2 of the Scholarly Teaching Academy was inspirational. Your thoughtful and critical perspective helped me refine the scope and focus of this project. To my dissertation chair Chris, with whom I have shared everything from philosophical dialogue, to scholarly-musical jam sessions, to a rope while rock climbing high above the Blue Ridge Parkway. I will forever be grateful to you for the countless hours you dedicated in both the conceptualization and revision phases. I feel fortunate to have experienced your hyper qualitative style of research and interviewing within my own work. Lastly, I wish to acknowledge all teachers who each day aspire to honor the interests, experiences, and skillsets of their students. Within your classrooms, the great ideas of tomorrow are incubated and nourished. vii Dedication I dedicate this research to the power and promise of the imagination—yours and mine. For through our dreams, we can transform the world’s greatest challenges into opportunities. viii Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... vi Dedication .............................................................................................................................. viii List of Tables ....................................................................................................................... xviii List of Figures ........................................................................................................................ xix Chapter 1: Introduction and Statement of the Problem ............................................................ 1 Rationale and Context of the Issues Facing Higher Education ............................................. 2 Purpose of Study ................................................................................................................... 7 Research Questions ............................................................................................................... 8 Overview of Methodology .................................................................................................... 9 Role and Assumptions of the Researcher ........................................................................... 10 Significance ......................................................................................................................... 12 Organization of the Dissertation ......................................................................................... 13 Chapter 2: Review of Literature ............................................................................................. 15 Progressive Education: Origins and Theory ....................................................................... 18 Critical Pedagogy: Origins & Theory ................................................................................. 23 ix Subverting oppression through praxis. ........................................................................... 24 Bringing critical pedagogy to the United States. ............................................................ 26 The persistence of the banking model. ........................................................................... 28 Higher Education in the 21st Century .................................................................................. 28 Locating Progressive Pedagogies in the 21st Century ......................................................... 33 Creativity in Education ....................................................................................................... 36 Histories of Black Mountain College ................................................................................. 41 The purpose of the college. ............................................................................................. 46 Student life at Black Mountain College. ......................................................................... 49 Born in the south and the 18th Century. .......................................................................... 53 The Black Mountain College Semester .............................................................................. 56 Summary ............................................................................................................................. 57 Chapter 3: Traversing Qualitative Methods ............................................................................ 59 Rationale for Research Approach ....................................................................................... 59 Research Context ................................................................................................................ 60 Research Sample and Data Sources .................................................................................... 60 Participant Profiles .............................................................................................................. 62 Data Collection Methods .................................................................................................... 66 x Interviews. ......................................................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain
    Reviews 1. Exhibition travelled to LEAP BEFORE YOU LOOK: BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE 1933–1957, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, BOSTON, 10 OCTOBER 2015– (21 February–15 May 24 JANUARY 20161 2016) and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (17 Reviewed by Johanna Gosse, Columbia University September 2016– 1 January 2017). What is an exhibition? Is it a machine for generating experience? Or rather, is it a specific medium, equipped with its own inherent logic, or to borrow Clement Greenberg’s famous phrase, a ‘unique and proper area of compe- tence’? Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933–1957, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, offers an opportunity to reconsider what an exhibition is, and, more to the point, what it can be expected to do. Black Mountain College was a short-lived experiment in liberal arts educa- tion located near Asheville, North Carolina. Though the school shut down in 1957, it has since achieved mythical status as a home-grown American avant- garde utopia. During its near quarter-century of existence, the College was host to catalytic encounters between an international cast of artists, writers and thinkers, many of whom influenced or directly participated in what Allan Kaprow called ‘the alchemies of the 1960s’ (1958). As a result, the name ‘Black Mountain’ refers not so much to a specific time and place or cohesive style, but rather, to an illustrious list of faculty and alumni who collectively have exerted a disproportionate influence on post-war American art. Beyond its influential diaspora, the College’s broader legacy (and its persistent utopian myth) is rooted in the communal ethos and intersecting practices that char- acterized campus life: experiential learning, interdisciplinary collaboration, the work programme, direct democracy, and the opportunity to create art in relative freedom from market pressures.
    [Show full text]
  • Rendering Rhythm and Motion in the Art of Black Mountain College
    A Lasting Imprint Rendering Rhythm and Motion in the Art of Black Mountain College Movement and music—both time-based activities—can be difficult to express in static media such as painting, drawing, and photography, yet many visual artists feel called to explore them. Some are driven to devise new techniques or new combinations of media in order to capture or suggest movement. Similarly, some visual artists utilize elements found in music—rhythms, patterns, repetitions, and variations—to endow their compositions with new expressive potency. In few places did movement, music, visual arts, and myriad other disciplines intermingle with such profound effect as they did at Black Mountain College (BMC), an experiment in higher education in the mountains of Western North Carolina that existed from 1933 to 1957. For many artists, their introduction to interdisciplinarity at the college resulted in a continued curiosity around those ideas throughout their careers. The works in the exhibition, selected from the Asheville Art Museum’s Black Mountain College Collection, highlight approaches to rendering a lasting imprint of the ephemeral. Artists such as Barbara Morgan and Clemens Kalischer seek to capture the motion of the human form, evoking a sense of elongated or contracted muscles, or of limbs moving through space. Others, like Lorna Blaine Halper or Sewell Sillman, approach the challenge through abstraction, foregoing representation yet communicating an atmosphere of dynamic change. Marianne Preger-Simon’s drawings of her fellow dancers at BMC from summer 1953 are not only portraits but also a dance of pencil on paper, created in the spirit of BMC professor Josef Albers’s line studies as she simultaneously worked with choreographer Merce Cunningham.
    [Show full text]
  • Black Mountain College As a Form of Life Lyubov Bugaeva
    BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE AS A FORM OF LIFE Education as Experience Lyubov Bugaeva Saint-Petersburg State University [email protected] Pragmatist ideas that were shaped and employed in unique practices of teaching and organizing students’ life ABSTRACT: The paper focuses on a unique experiment in in Black Mountain College came from several sources – education that was realized in Black Mountain College (North Carolina) in 1933–1957 and seeks to find answers directly from John Dewey’s writings, and indirectly chan- to a number of questions. What connects the notions of neled through John Andrew Rice and Josef Albers. In the democracy, education, and the arts? To what extent is Dewey’s version of pragmatism, known as instrumental- 1930s John Dewey visited the College on several occa- ism, applicable to education in the arts? And finally, what sions. In 1936 he was elected a member of the Advisory makes Black Mountain College a revolutionary experiment in education, the importance and memory of which con- Council of Black Mountain College and served for three siderably outlasts its less than a quarter of a century exist- years, and in 1939 was re-elected for the next term. The ence? library comprised many of Dewey’s writings donated by Keywords: Black Mountain College, John Andrew Rice, the author during his visits. Dewey attended classes, Joseph Albers, John Dewey, progressive education, art, advised on the curriculum, and enjoyed formal and democracy, democratic man informal communication with students and faculty, who had meals and extracurricular activities together. In a “The democratic man, we said, must be an artist” letter to Myrtle B.
    [Show full text]
  • Josef Albers: Josef Albers: to Open Eyes Para Abrir Ojos
    BRENDA DANILOWITZ BRENDA DANILOWITZ Josef Albers: Josef Albers: To Open Eyes Para abrir ojos To coincide with an exhibition of Josef Albers’s Para corresponder con la apertura de una exhibi- paintings opening at the Chinati Foundation ción de pinturas de Josef Albers en la Fundación in October 2006, the following pages feature Chinati este octubre, incluimos a continuación un an excerpt from Brenda Danilowitz’s essay in extracto del libro Josef Albers: To Open Eyes por Josef Albers: To Open Eyes, a study of Albers Brenda Danilowitz, un estudio de Albers como as teacher, and essays on the artist written by maestro, y ensayos sobre el artista escritos por Donald Judd over a 30-year period. Donald Judd a lo largo de treinta años. At the very moment Josef and Anni En el preciso momento cuando Josef y Albers found themselves unable to Anni Albers ya no podían imaginar su imagine their future in Germany, the futuro en Alemania, llegó la oferta de offer of a teaching position at Black una cátedra en la Universidad Black Mountain College arrived. This sur- Mountain. Esta sorprendente invitación, prising invitation, which came in the en forma de un telegrama mandado form of a telegram from Philip John- por Philip Johnson, director del nuevo son, then head of the fledgling de- Departamento de Arquitectura y Diseño partment of architecture and design del Museo de Arte Moderno de Nueva at New York’s Museum of Modern York, fue una consecuencia fortuita de Art, was an unintended consequence tres acontecimientos: la dimisión de of three events: John Andrew Rice’s John Andrew Rice de Rolins College en resignation from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, los concomitantes Winter Park, Florida; the attendant despidos y dimisiones solidarias de un dismissals and sympathetic resigna- grupo de colegas de Rice, y el estable- the curriculum] was natural to me.
    [Show full text]
  • An Oral Interpretation Script Illustrating the Influence
    379 AN ORAL INTERPRETATION SCRIPT ILLUSTRATING THE INFLUENCE ON CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY OF THE THREE BLACK MOUNTAIN POETS: CHARLES OLSON, ROBERT CREELEY, ROBERT DUNCAN THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE By H. Vance James, B.A. Denton, Texas August, 1981 J r James, H. Vance, An Oral Interpretation Script Illustrating the Influence on Contemporary American Poetry of the Three Black Mountain Poets: Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan. Master of Science (Speech Communication and Drama), August, 1981, 87 pp., bibliography, 23 titles. This oral interpretation thesis analyzes the impact that three poets from Black Mountain College had on contemporary American poetry. The study concentrates on the lives, works, poetic theories of Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan and culminates in a lecture recital compiled from historical data relating to Black Mountain College and to the three prominent poets. @ 1981 HAREL VANCE JAMES All Rights Reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . iv Chapter I. INTRODUCTION . 1 History of Black Mountain College Purpose of the Study Procedure II. BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION . 12 Introduction Charles Olson Robert Creeley Robert Duncan III. ANALYSIS . 31 IV. LECTURE RECITAL . 45 The Black Mountain Poets: Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan "These Days" (Olson) "The Conspiracy" (Creeley) "Come, Let Me Free Myself" (Duncan) "Thank You For Love" (Creeley) "The Door" (Creeley) "Letter 22" (Olson) "The Dance" (Duncan) "The Awakening" (Creeley) "Maximus, To Himself" (Olson) "Words" (Creeley) "Oh No" (Creeley) "The Kingfishers" (Olson) "These Days" (Olson) APPENDIX .
    [Show full text]
  • Download This PDF File
    Studi di estetica, anno XLVII, IV serie, 3/2019 ISSN 0585-4733, ISSN digitale 1825-8646, DOI 10.7413/18258646102 David A. Granger1 The legacy of John Dewey’s Art as experience: from Black Mountain College to “happenings” Abstract This is a companion piece to an article in a previous issue of the journal that offered an overview of the contrasts between John Dewey’s naturalistic aes- thetics, primarily as presented in his classic work Art as experience, and the more formalist aesthetics of art collector, philanthropist and educator Albert Barnes. This contrast was then used to explore and explain their disparate compatibilities and relationships with the pioneering work of the iconic 20th century American artists Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock. The cur- rent article does the same with respect to the avant-garde art and artistic legacy of the members of the creative community who lived and worked at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. As with the previous article, this examination ultimately underscores both the genuine catholicity of Dewey’s aesthetics and its deep roots in the endless meaning-making possibilities of everyday experience. The article then concludes with a brief discussion of the educational implications of these findings for our thinking about Dewey in the context of art and aesthetic education. Keywords Dewey, Aesthetics, Art education Dedicated to my mother, Julia Merriwether Arnold 1. Introduction There is perhaps no more intriguing aspect of John Dewey’s personal and professional life than his over thirty-year friendship with the in- imitable art collector, philanthropist and educator Albert Barnes.
    [Show full text]
  • 2019 Annual Report
    2019 ANNUAL REPORT Dear Friends, This has been another year of unparalleled exhibitions and performances, a celebration of what’s possible in our new home and with the support of our community. At the beginning of 2019, we were in the last few weeks of the inaugural exhibition at 120 College Street, Between Form and Content: Perspectives on Jacob Lawrence and Black Mountain College, which was a major accomplishment in its scope and its expansion of community partnerships. Next, we presented an intimate look at the school’s political dimensions, both internal and external, through the exhibition Politics at Black Mountain College. During the same time period, the exhibition Aaron Siskind: A Painter’s Photographer and Works on Paper by BMC Artists revealed the photographer’s elegant approach to abstraction alongside works by others in his circle of influence. From June through August, our galleries filled with sound as part of Materials, Sounds + Black Mountain College, an exploration of contemporary experimental and material-based processes rooted in theories and practices developed at Black Mountain College. We closed out the year with VanDerBeek + VanDerBeek, an exhibition that bridges the historic and contemporary through an intergenerational artistic conversation. 2019 also marked the 100th birthday of Merce Cunningham, and 100 years since the founding of the Bauhaus, which closed in the same year Black Mountain College opened, seeding the latter with its faculty and utopian values. Both centennials sparked global celebrations, transcending geographic and disciplinary boundaries to honor the impact of courageous communities and collaborators. Image credit: Come Hear NC (NCDNCR) | Ken Fitch We joined the world in these celebrations through a special installation of historic dance films of the Cunningham Dance Company at this year’s {Re}HAPPENING, the exhibition BAUHAUS 100, and a virtual reality exploration of the Bauhaus Dessau building, on loan from the Goethe- Institut.
    [Show full text]
  • Press Release
    For Immediate Release Contact: Kate Averett Outreach Manager [email protected] | 828.350.8484 ​ Please contact for high-resolution images Exhibition webpage: https://bit.ly/2Ruyb5x ​ “She [Black Mountain College] was born in controversy and died in controversy, splendid in the between, as she inspired and shattered ​ dreams of liberation and fulfillment. She lay on her side as the hills did across from Lake Eden, female in form. She hooted with the owls, and sat at peace with whatever her fate was to be.” - M.C. Richards, Black Mountain College: a personal view of creativity ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Asheville, NC (November 27, 2019) – Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) is pleased to announce the ​ ​ ​ Winter/Spring 2020 exhibition Question Everything! The Women of Black Mountain College, opening January 24th. ​ ​ This exhibition will celebrate the work and impact of the women associated with Black Mountain College, featuring borrowed works alongside pieces from the BMCM+AC collection by a wide-ranging group of artists. Highlights will include the never-before-exhibited ​ films of Hazel Larsen Archer and her students, showing daily life at Black Mountain College; textiles and prints by Anni Albers; a ​ ​ ​ ​ selection of woven wire sculptures and paper folded work by Ruth Asawa; an Elaine de Kooning work on paper; newly acquired ​ ​ ​ ​ additions to BMCM+AC's permanent collection from Abstract Expressionists Pat Passlof and Jo Sandman; and the first public showing ​ ​ ​ ​ of Faith Murray Britton's 1942 mural on the Studies Building art room door. ​ ​ Now is a timely moment for highlighting the stories of the women who made their way to Black Mountain College.
    [Show full text]
  • Print ED356702.TIF
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 356 702 HE 026 357 AUTHOR Townsend, Barbara K.; And Others TITLE Creating Distinctiveness: Lessons from Uncommon Colleges and Universities. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 6, 1992. INSTITUTION Association for the Study of Higher Education.; ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education, Washington, D.C.; George Washington Univ., Washington, DC. School of Education and Human Development. SPONS AGENCY Office of Educational Research and Improvement (ED), Washington, DC. REPORT NO ISBN-1-878380-19-2; ISSN-0884-0040 PUB DATE 92 CONTRACT RI88062014 NOTE 110p. AVAILABLE FROMPublications Department, ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Reports, The George Washington University, One Dupont Circle, N.W., Suite 630, Washington, DC 20036-1186 (Single copy prices, including 4th class postage and handling, are $17 regular and $12.75 for members of AERA, AAHE, AIR, and ASHE). PUB TYPE Information Analyses ERIC Clearinghouse Products (071) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC05 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Colleges; Differences; *Educational Innovation; Governance; Higher Education; *Institutional Mission; Institutional Survival; Models; Organizational Change; *School Based Management; School Policy; *Specialization; Undergraduate Study; *Universities; Values ABSTRACT Distinctive colleges and universities, as opposed to the great majority which fit into a more or less standardized mold, possess a unifying theme or vision which is expressed in all their activities. They often respond to newly emerging societal or community needs unmet by existing colleges and universities; they challenge conventional ideas about higher education and inspire greater engagement by students and faculty in undergraduate education. However, distinctiveness can also limit the institution to a very small market niche as well as sometimes making it more difficult for it to adapt to the changes necessary for survival.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Issue 43
    Issue 43 / 2019 Notes on Curating www.oncurating.org Revisiting Black Mountain Cross-Disciplinary Experiments and Their Potential for Democratization Contributions by Caroline Adler, Sascia Bailer, Lucy Bayley, Paolo Bianchi, Johanna Bruckner, Annemarie Bucher, Boris Buden, Brandon Farnsworth, Simon Fleury, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Martin Jaeggi, Andres Janser, Gilly Karjevsky, Susanne Kennedy, Ronald Kolb, Ronny Koren, Jochen Kiefer, Steven Henry Madoff, Mieke (Annemarie) Matzke, Daniel Späti, Raqs Media Collective, Dorothee Richter, Olga von Schubert, Bitten Stetter, Cornelia Sollfrank, Asli Uludag Contents Revisiting Black Mountain 2 64 Editorial Ambiguous Dramaturgies Dorothee Richter, Ronald Kolb and Crude Curation Jochen Kiefer 8 An E-mail Conversation on the Background of 67 the Revisiting Black Mountain Project at ZHdK Utopian Form of Communication with Bitten Stetter, Brandon Farnsworth, An Interview with Dorothee Richter, Jochen Kiefer, Martin Jaeggi, Mieke (Annemarie) Matzke, She She Pop Paolo Bianchi asked by Ronald Kolb 73 17 The Infinite Game of Becoming Revisiting Black Mountain × Museum Susanne Kennedy für Gestaltung Zürich Andres Janser 80 “We have created a parody of these 20 austere rituals which didn’t exist Shared Campus in the past”: Revisiting Music Education Daniel Späti Brandon Farnsworth 23 86 Black Mountain: Terra Vague: Pedagogy of the Hinge Against the Ghosts of Land Steven Henry Madoff Johanna Bruckner 35 93 Revisiting Black Mountain College. New Alphabet School Teaching to Transgress (Haus der Kulturen der Welt:
    [Show full text]
  • Black Mountain College
    California State University, San Bernardino CSUSB ScholarWorks Art Education Case Studies Art 10-2013 Black Mountain College April Baca Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/art-edu-study Recommended Citation Baca, April, "Black Mountain College" (2013). Art Education Case Studies. 7. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/art-edu-study/7 This Presentation is brought to you for free and open access by the Art at CSUSB ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art Education Case Studies by an authorized administrator of CSUSB ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Black Mountain College April Baca Art 399/400 Origins and teachings Initially founded by John A. Rice, a scholar with "an ingrained dissatisfaction with the status quo and authority figures"[2], Black Mountain College was conceived in 1933 in the town of Black Mountain, North Carolina in the midst of WWII. Birthed by a desire to create an ideal, forward thinking college whose philosophy was to be based on John Dewey's principles of progressive education, BMC's central mission utilized and embraced an unorthodox and interdisciplinary approach to art education in which the very study of art was considered key to any successful liberal arts education. The college's curriculum stressed the importance of educating the person as a whole while simultaneously emphasizing the role of the arts in association with creative thinking. • The liberal arts college use of an informal class structure continually encouraged self-expression as well as self-discipline while employing a vast curriculum that included the "visual arts, music, literature, drama, or dance" as well as offering courses on bookbinding, photography, color and design, and woodworking.
    [Show full text]
  • Rendering Rhythm and Motion in the Art Of
    A Lasting Imprint Rendering Rhythm and Motion in the Art of Black Mountain College Movement and music—both time-based activities—can be difficult to express in static media such as painting, drawing, and photography, yet many visual artists feel called to explore them. Some are driven to devise new techniques or new combinations of media in order to capture or suggest movement. Similarly, some visual artists utilize elements found in music—rhythms, patterns, repetitions, and variations—to endow their compositions with new expressive potency. In few places did movement, music, visual arts, and myriad other disciplines intermingle with such profound effect as they did at Black Mountain College (BMC), an experiment in higher education in the mountains of Western North Carolina that existed from 1933 to 1957. For many artists, their introduction to interdisciplinarity at the college resulted in a continued curiosity around those ideas throughout their careers. The works in the exhibition, selected from the Asheville Art Museum’s Black Mountain College Collection, highlight approaches to rendering a lasting imprint of the ephemeral. Artists such as Barbara Morgan and Clemens Kalischer seek to capture the motion of the human form, evoking a sense of elongated or contracted muscles, or of limbs moving through space. Others, like Lorna Blaine Halper or Sewell Sillman, approach the challenge through abstraction, foregoing representation yet communicating an atmosphere of dynamic change. Marianne Preger-Simon’s drawings of her fellow dancers at BMC from summer 1953 are not only portraits but also a dance of pencil on paper, created in the spirit of BMC professor Josef Albers’s line studies as she simultaneously worked with choreographer Merce Cunningham.
    [Show full text]