Primer compiled by Frances Stark on the occasion of The Claude & Alfred Mann Symposium “On the Future of Art School” Saturday January 27, 2007 at the University of Southern California Los Angeles with texts written by the participants: Mai Abu ElDahab Stuart Bailey Howard Singerman Jan Verwoert Lane Relyea and Robert Linsley Published by Dexter Sinister (NYC) through the Print-On-Demand channel www.lulu.com available as a printed book or downloadable PDFs (search “USC” or “art school”) USC Gayle Garner Roski School of Fine Arts Watt Hall 104 University Park Campus Los Angeles California 90089-0292 Tel: 213 740 2787 http://roski.usc.edu Dean: Ruth Weisberg Chair, Studio Art: Margaret Lazzari Director, Master of Fine Arts Program: Sharon Lockhart Director of Development: Donna Stein Communications Manager: Michael Ned Holte Development & Communications Assistant: Malika Williams Symposium organized by Frances Stark Publication designed/published by Dexter Sinister Special acknowledgements to Claude & Alfred Mann, The USC 125th Anniversary Fund, and USC Spectrum for their generous support. Many thanks to Mai Abu ElDahab, Jan Verwoert, Howard Singerman, Lane Relyea, Robert Linsley, Stuart Bailey, LouAnne Greenwald, Tomo Isoyama, Caryl Levy, Laura Stickney, Leonardo Bravo, Ramsey McDaniel, Nancy Hodgson, David Judson, Elad Lassry, Rene Martin, Margaret Lazzari, Sharon Lockhart, and Robbert Flick. Introduction Frances Stark p.9 How to Fall with Grace or Fall Flat on Your Face Mai Abu ElDahab p.19 Towards a Critical Faculty Stuart Bailey p.27 Excellence and Pluralism Howard Singerman p.37 School’s Out!-? Jan Verwoert p.59 Your Art World, or The Limits of Connectivity Lane Relyea p.69 Creative Laboratories in the University Robert Linsley p.77 When Form Has Become Attitude —and Beyond Thierry de Duve p.85 The texts are reproduced from the following A note on the design of this publication: publications with kind permission from the participants: Each piece in this Primer was scanned from the existing format listed here, maintaining ‘How to Fall with Grace or Fall Flat on Your Face’: the original (occasionally eccentric) typesetting Mai Abu ElDahab, Anton Vidokle and Florian and margins. This emphasizes the recycling Waldvogel (eds.), Notes for an Art School and sharing of recent ideas on which both (International Foundation Manifesta, symposium and Primer are founded, but is Amsterdam, 2006) also simply the most effi cient and economic means of production —bypassing any extra ‘Towards a Critical Faculty’: time and money potentially wasted re-setting Forthcoming pamphlet for faculty at or re-proofi ng. This is in tune with its wider Parsons School of Design, The New School, mode of production and distribution, Print-On- New York City, 2007 Demand (P-O-D), meaning the publication is produced within limited, standardized parameters ‘Excellence and Pluralism’: and made freely available online to immediately Emergences, vol. 12, no.1, 2002 order (as a book) or download (as PDF fi les) for a price which eliminates royalties and ‘Your Art World, or The Limits of Connectivity’: overheads, and rises exponentially. A near- Afterall, no.14, Autumn/Winter 2006 instant speed of turnaround also accomodates its necessarily last-minute nature. As well as ‘School’s Out!-?’: counteracting the generally overproduced, Mai Abu ElDahab, Anton Vidokle and Florian expensive tendencies of this sort of document, Waldvogel (eds.), Notes for an Art School fi nally this Primer is intended as a gesture (International Foundation Manifesta, towards the sharing of such material and Amsterdam, 2006) conversation beyond the confi nes of its founding and benefacting institution, USC, in search of ‘Creative Laboratories in the University’: an international audience concerned with both Draft paper art and education. (Dexter Sinister) ‘When Form Has Become Attitude—and Beyond’: Stephen Foster and Nicholas deVille (eds.), The Artist and the Academy: Issues in Fine Art Education and The Wider Cultural Context (John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, 1994), reproduced in Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung (eds.), Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985, (Blackwell, Malden/Oxford/Carlton, 2005) Introduction by FRANCES STARK Introducing a symposium that I put together seems to call for an air of dignifi ed, objective professionalism but inevitably I fi nd myself employing the fi rst-person, not merely because it seems necessary and effi cient to simply be myself, so to speak, but because the ensuing discussion regarding the future of art school presupposes that what I am and what I do—whether by convention, conviction or circumstance —requires frank examination. I am one of the many contemporary American artists who went into startling debt to earn an MFA from an institution of higher learning. After receiving the degree, I exhibited my artwork in both commercial and non-commercial venues in the US and abroad and have consistently given “artist talks” at various art schools where I would typically make studio visits with art students. On occasion, I would be invited to teach a class. Whenever I was asked to come “teach,” detailed interest or concern was rarely exhibited for my pedagogical strengths or methods, neither before nor after the fact. Since I was often invited back and continued to receive invitations I fi gured I must’ve been doing something right. It feels impossible to say what that right something was or if it was even “right” at all. Perhaps openings just needed to be fi lled and I was there to fi ll them. Nevertheless I continued, as so many of us do, to teach, or rather, to engage with art students, from the short-haul perspective of a free-agent. That changed two years ago when I decided to compete for the position of tenure track Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Southern California. When I mentioned having applied for the job to one of my former teachers (better known for his writing than his painting) he exclaimed, “now that’s a long shot” and punctuated his apparently hilarious doubt with a brutal guffaw. I don’t mention this to send an I-told-you-so message, but because his doubt—or rather, the unlikelihood of an artist who makes no claims to being an expert at painting or drawing fi lling the role of “Professor” of those things—reminds us how theory and practice often fail to align. Probing the many gaps between rhetoric and reality may be the fi rst step in coming to terms—literally—with what we as teachers and students in art school say we do, what we actually do, and what we hope to do. Splitting hairs about one’s own identity or practice within one’s fi eld could very well be a starting point for understanding one’s possibilities and/or abilities to effectively engage that fi eld, especially if one has the desire or responsibility to consciously steer the evolution of institutions that perpetuate that fi eld. Ever since being asked to plan a symposium, another remark of my aforementioned former teacher has been reverberating in my head. It was at the close of a panel discussion hosted by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, meant to address the status of theory in art school today. After each panelist had delivered his or her respective paper, he commented, rather drolly, “Not a single art theory has been referred to all evening.” This cautionary last word underscores the slipperiness of “theory” and the way it doubles for “language,” both of which have so often taken the blame 9 for an overly academic art. But such a public missing-the-mark about theory, (be it art- or any other kind) also suggests, paradoxically, that the act of theorizing itself is, if anything, under- rather than over-utilized in art school. And of course, my teacher’s conclusion also warns of the potential for monumental misunderstandings to go unchecked because, unfortunately we have just run out of time. Since the word symposium actually means drinking together, not reading one after another, papers written by the participants have been compiled here in this publication to essentially free up time so that our conversation can gain momentum on the day of the event. After reading their texts, I think it will become quite clear to you that the art professionals I invited here were chosen on the basis of the sincerity, depth and criticality of the concern they have exhibited for the future of the fi eld of art, indeed for their explicit questioning of their own roles within that fi eld. I brought together the artists and thinkers I did because they seem to register the fact that we appear on the verge of a paradigm shift (or at least a complicated overlap) but have yet to fully accommodate for this shift in our own teaching practices, or have struggled to achieve effi cacy within institutions which often seem to be at dual purposes. And so it seems imperative to look closely at the meaning and value of the degrees granted by art schools, and particularly the pedagogies appropriate to the shifting defi nitions of the fi eld of art assumed by each level of degree. It also seems important to debate the need for defi ning and teaching the role of the market in the fi eld of art and in school itself. And fi nally, in light of de-skilling as a legacy of the avant-garde, I want to consider the possibility of teaching and developing a “critical faculty,” in terms of both mental ability—a transferable skill—and teaching staff—effective and refl ective teachers. While I am grateful that my position at USC affords me the opportunity to stage such an event, and make available this Primer, it also needs to be said how much I have allowed my newcomer status to contribute to its tone and shape.