David Quigley In an essay published in 2009, Boris could play in a broader social context influenced the founding director John Groys makes the claim that “today art beyond the narrow realm of the art Andrew Rice, as well as the professors Learning to Live: education has no definite goal, no world. Josef Albers, Merce Cunningham, Robert Preliminary Notes method, no particular content that can Motherwell, John Cage, and the poets be taught, no tradition that can be Performing Pragmatism: Robert Creeley and Charles Olson. for a Program of Art transmitted to a new generation—which Art as Experience Unlike other trajectories of the critique Education for the is to say, it has too many.”69 While one On the first pages of Dewey’s Art as of the art object, the Deweyian tradition might agree with this diagnosis, one Experience from 1934, we read: did not deny the special status of art in 21st Century. immediately wonders how we should itself but rather resituated it within a Après John Dewey assess it. Are we to merely tacitly “By one of the ironic perversities that continuum of human experience. Dewey, acknowledge this situation or does this often attend the course of affairs, the as a thinker of egalitarianism and critique imply a call for change? Is this existence of the works of art upon which democracy, created a theory of art lack (or paradoxical overabundance) of the formation of an aesthetic theory based on the fundamental continuity goals, methods or content inherent to depends has become an obstruction of experience and practice, making the very essence of art education, or is to theory about them. For one reason: all socially constructed distinctions this a problem or historical impasse that these works are products that exist permanently open to renegotiation. we must overcome? At the conclusion of externally and physically. In common Likewise, in spite of his frequent the same paragraph, Groys offers an conception, the work of art is often reference to the English romantic writers idea that I would like to develop further identified with the building, book, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats, he and argue could serve as a goal for art painting, or statue in its existence was not a subjectivist. His philosophy and art education today: apart from human experience.”70 of art was rather framed within the pragmatist critique of an idealized “Ultimately, teaching art means teaching It is precisely this problematization of subject/object dualism. Consequently, life.” the art object in favor of a theory of art his notion of “experience” was based on as experience that defined an important the interrelationship of the subject and Beginning with this thought—that art has tradition of artistic practice and art object, where the “live creature” was something to do with teaching us how to education during the 20th century. In directly implicated in the world, and art live—I would like to propose that it is, in stressing the experiential quality of art, was understood as a conscious process fact, imperative that we reconsider the this tradition argued ‘from both sides’ of “interaction” that participated in and goals, methods and content of art bringing art practice closer to everyday constructed both personal experience education—especially as these could be life and at the same time valorizing and and social reality. While Dewey ulti- used to redefine our concept of public re-thinking all human activity: to think mately accepted (and in fact worked life. To do this I would like to return to art in terms of experience but also to with) the differences between art and the work of the philosopher John Dewey think experience in terms of art. other human activities, and likewise and to a historical trajectory that explic- between the fine arts and the useful or itly draws upon his theory of experiential Historically, John Dewey had a broad applied arts, the differences were a art. After briefly introducing this context, influence as a philosopher and writer on question of degree and not of kind. I will propose a list of goals, concepts artists between the 1920s and 1960s. and ideals for a program for 21st century More specifically, Dewey was on the Black Mountain College art education derived from Dewey that board of the relatively short-lived but With its numerous contributions to not only address the situation in art immensely influential Black Mountain the field of art, it is easy to overlook 142 schools, but also show what role art College, where his thought profoundly that Black Mountain College was not specifically conceived as an art school. It an immediate reaction to the complexity significance of works of art was first was rather a liberal arts school with art of the phenomenology of perception and and foremost what we do with them and at the center of its pedagogical philoso- an invitation to understand vision in what they do with us, looking at art as phy acting as a model for an underlying much broader terms: a specific kind of interaction between logic of practice and experience that the artist, a community of viewers moved between the humanities, manual “If we accept education as life and as and the sounds, actions and materials labor and the fine and applied arts.71 preparation for life, we must relate all of expression. When Black Mountain College opened in school work, including work in art, as 1933, it only had 21 students and four closely as possible to modern problems. Theater Piece No 1 faculty members, although it eventually […] In short, our art instruction attempts It is appropriate that we do not know grew to be slightly larger. Still, over its 24 first to teach the student to see in the what actually happened during the event years, fewer than 1200 students studied widest sense: to open his eyes to the that has since been heralded as the first at Black Mountain College (roughly the phenomena about him and, most intermedia “Happening.” We do not same number who studied at Bauhaus).72 important of all, to open his eyes to his know the specific date (the year yes, However, as numerous publications and own living, being, and doing.”74 1952), whether an actual score existed exhibitions since its closing attest, Black (perhaps still tucked away in some North Mountain College was, along with the Learning to see. Learning to create art. Carolinian attic)—we do not even Bauhaus, one of the most influential art Learning to live. This is pedagogy in really know its name, and the various education projects of the 20th critical existential terms. Learning to see recollections about what actually tran- century—and John Dewey’s philosophy for Albers meant learning what it means spired often differ in some important was at the core of its mission. to be alive. details. Theater Piece No. 1, sometimes also referred to as “The Untitled Event at Josef Albers and the Vorkurs Après John Cage Black Mountain College,” nonetheless First developed together with László John Cage and the countless artists remains at a nodal point in the history of Moholy-Nagy following Johannes Itten at influenced by him, Fluxus, multiple 20th century art.75 Set in the dining hall the Bauhaus from 1923 to 1933, then projects of experimental and “expanded” of the College, John Cage stood atop a at Black Mountain College until 1949 cinema, theatre, dance and performance ladder and held a lecture (‘interrupted’ and at Yale from 1950-1958, Josef during the second half of the 20th sporadically by silence),76 with Robert Albers’s Vorkurs has continued to be a century began with the assumption Rauschenberg’s paintings (The White reference for art pedagogy in the 20th that artworks themselves are secondary Paintings) hanging above the audience, century. Albers based his course on to the experience of making or partici- Mary C. Richards (translator of Artaud’s studies and experiments that were pating in the making of art. In the The Theater and Its Double, now known intended to make artists learn “to see tradition of John Dewey, art was seen for her philosophy of pottery) and the directly” through heightening immediate as being neither purely physical nor poet Charles Olson reading various awareness and shedding one’s visual representational (what is portrayed) pieces of poetry, Merce Cunningham and other perceptual habits. But what is nor as merely subjective, but rather as dancing (together with unnamed often underappreciated is that Albers part of a process of making, reflecting dancers) amidst the audience (there is understood this process of “learning to and interacting within a field of common mention of a barking dog following him), see” in terms that went well beyond the experience and the physical world. In David Tudor playing prepared piano and concerns of design or the visual arts.73 this tradition, it was not a question of Rauschenberg playing Edith Piaf records Not merely an exercise in gaining artistic neglecting the artwork entirely, what on an old-fashioned record player proficiency, these experiments were both was important was to stress that the (although there is disagreement about 145 what records he actually played)—each In spite of Cage’s insistence on chance not admit his influence. But the fact is participant acted at assigned times but and indeterminacy (or, one might claim, there, that those groups formed after his doing whatever they wanted. There was because of it), the event emerges as a visits.”79 a slide projector showing abstract colors discrete moment, a uniquely demarcated and photographs (of trees?) and a movie point in time, a delineated interaction Après John Cage was the title of the first projector showing various films.