According to Kleiner Author of the Book Gardnerã¢ââ¢s Art Through the Ages Art Is Art if There Is
Art in our Schools: A conversation with Fred Kleiner
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| Fred Kleiner is a professor of art history at Boston University | |
March is Art in our Schools Month, and who better to talk with than the master author of the well-nigh widely read introduction to art history in English language for 75 years? Harcourt College Publishers recently released the 11th edition of Helen Gardner's "Art through the Ages," a volume on the history of international art from its ancestry, co-authored by Fred S. Kleiner -- a professor of fine art history and archaeology at Boston Academy. Senior educational activity editor Lynn McBrien asked Kleiner about his interest in art and his perspective on educational needs in the areas of fine art and fine art history.
CNNfyi: How did you become interested in art history?
Fred Kleiner: I grew up in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s -- a very dynamic period in the art earth, when Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art were new phenomena and the galleries on Madison Avenue were exhibiting the piece of work of younger artists who are household names today. When I was a boy, Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum also opened on Fifth Avenue, a curt walk from the fabulous Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had never been in a more revolutionary interior infinite or a more heady environment in which to view art. It was hard Not to be interested in fine art in a urban center where there was so much of information technology, both in the museums and in the galleries.
When I entered higher (at the University of Pennsylvania), all I knew was that I wanted to be a teacher. I loved school (and yet consider myself a pupil), merely I didn't know what I wanted to teach. I studied several areas of the humanities before settling on art history as an undergraduate major. I never took an art history course earlier my sophomore year, only I quickly became "hooked." I found, however, that on an intellectual basis I was more drawn to earlier historical eras than to contemporary art or even the work of early modernistic masters similar Van Gogh and Picasso. I came out at the other stop -- as a Classicist specializing in the art of ancient Greece and particularly Rome -- and I completed my Ph.D. in 1973 at Columbia University, spending nigh two years in Rome working on my dissertation, and then took a position at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece, as a member of their excavation staff. From at that place I went on to teach art history at the University of Virginia and, since 1978, at Boston University.
I've been uniquely fortunate to have had the opportunity not only to live in Rome and Athens, but to have washed two things professionally that few ever get to do. 1, of form, is to take been invited well-nigh a decade agone to become co-author of the classic (and still most widely read) introduction to art history, Helen Gardner'south "Art through the Ages," first published in 1926. That start edition was a textbook that was manner, style ahead of its time in many means, non the least of which existence its global approach to the history of art. I have likewise had the great privilege of serving 3 terms (1985-1998) every bit editor-in-primary of the American Journal of Archæology, the leading scholarly journal in the field of aboriginal art and archæology.
CNNfyi: In Gardner's "Art through the Ages," the question "What is art?" is explored right away. How do yous answer this question?
Kleiner: I adopt to reply that question quite liberally, making room both for traditional and universally recognized kinds of "artworks," such as paintings and statues and buildings, besides as media that less oft detect their way into general surveys of the fine art of the world, such every bit Gardner's "Fine art through the Ages." Here I am thinking of such things as textiles, jewelry, photography, coins, pottery, and so forth, all of which we treat more than fully in the latest edition of our book. You no doubt ask the question, notwithstanding, in the context of the very outset item in chapter one, a remarkable pebble found in Due south Africa that bears an uncanny resemblance to a homo confront and that is about three million years quondam. Considering of the type of stone, the "sculpture" must have been found by a prehistoric man or adult female at a site at least xx miles from the rock shelter in which information technology was discovered and then "brought home" because of its striking appearance and, perhaps, considering of its perceived magical quality. Simply I don't consider the pebble to exist "art." Art, in my view, requires -- at a bare minimum -- human intervention in the modification of natural form. This is but a case of "selection" and not of "manufacture." The latter is a prerequisite for "art" in my heed. So, to go to the opposite end of the timeline, placing a Coca Cola canteen on a pedestal does not brand information technology an "artwork," but when Andy Warhol painted Coke bottles, he created "art."
CNNfyi: Paleolithic art found in Africa from 30,000 B.C. is described as the kickoff appearance of art in the Gardner book. Personally, I tin can't imagine how there could be human life without art. Take you thought about the notion of human being life with no art? Is the theory that, previous to this fourth dimension, humans were not sufficiently evolved to conceive of inventiveness?
Kleiner: I am not a physical anthropologist, just in that location is no question that abstruse thought (and fine art) requires a encephalon that is highly evolved and that the homo brain attained this capacity only after a long period of development. The more important question for the art historian is whether or non the first "artworks" we possess, namely paintings and sculptures in Africa and Europe dating effectually 30,000 B.C., can be considered "art" in the normal sense of the term. We will probably never settle the question because the people who produced these works didn't go out any written explanations for us to read, but I don't think anyone would argue that the notion of "art for fine art'due south sake" played a role in the creation of Paleolithic wall paintings or sculptures. These were not "interior decorations" for homes. The statues and paintings must have had some ritual or magical significance at a time when mere survival in a hostile environment was a central concern of the human being race.
CNNfyi: Briefly explain the differences between the study of art and the written report of art history.
Kleiner: Art history IS the report of art, just "art history" differs from what is normally called "fine art appreciation" because fine art historians believe that artworks tin can only be fully understood in their historical contexts. Although one can derive great pleasure from the purely aesthetic and tactile qualities of paintings, sculpture, and other objects, one cannot truly understand why the objects were made or why they look the way they do without knowing the circumstances of their creation. That'due south the "business" of the fine art historian. We want to know not merely why things await the way they do but why they were made at all. Today, for example, it is common for an artist to piece of work in a private studio and create a painting for auction in a commercial gallery that will somewhen be purchased by a person the artist has never met and exhibited in a identify the artist has never seen. Simply for nearly of the history of art, artists worked in the employ of specific patrons (sometimes individuals, sometimes institutions like the Church or the State) who deputed works of art for specific purposes and specific places. Information technology is impossible to sympathize those works without finding out what the patrons wished to achieve.
CNNfyi: In the preface to "Art through the Ages" is stated, "the history of fine art is essential to a liberal education." In what ways is this study essential to a consummate education? What do you think that all students should know about art and about art history by the time they graduate from loftier school?
Kleiner: That'southward an interesting question and i that I've never really considered before, although I have some ideas about what ane ought to know upon graduating college. The fact is that formal education in the history of art remains a rarity at the loftier school level, although the number of such courses has increased dramatically over the past several years in tandem with the phenomenal growth in Avant-garde Placement examinations. AP Art History courses tin now be found not merely in elite private schools but in many, many public schools throughout the United States. I don't have exact numbers at my disposal, but I believe information technology is accurate to say that about 10,000 students took the College Board's Fine art History Advanced Placement test in the spring semester concluding twelvemonth and that the numbers are growing at about a 10 percent chemical compound rate annually.
The growth in the study of fine art history at the loftier school level is very gratifying. Information technology also gives me great personal satisfaction to know that through the Gardner textbook I am educational activity high schoolhouse likewise as higher students. Now to answer the other aspect of your question, namely what students should glean from an introductory grade in art history, if one is offered at their schoolhouse. I think instructors should have two paramount goals. The outset is to "turn students on" to fine art and so that they will proceed looking at art and reading and thinking about art throughout their adult lives, long after their formal education has been completed. The other goal is to introduce students to as wide a diversity of art as possible, chronologically and geographically, non sticking to the traditional canon of smashing works of western art (although they are essential), merely taking the global approach that Helen Gardner pioneered 75 years ago, and then that students can see how closely art forms are tied to specific cultures. A global history of art tin also be a tool for pedagogy students about such other subjects equally geography, history, religion, etc. I can't begin to count the number of times in my own life that I've become interested in a place, person or outcome through a work of fine art that start appealed to me on purely aesthetic grounds. Fine art history can be a "stealth weapon" in a teacher'south "arsenal."
CNNfyi: Art is ane of the kickoff things dropped from schoolhouse budgets. What are some arguments for insisting that the written report of art remain in K-12 education?
Kleiner: I suppose I've answered this question in office already in my previous reply. Merely I would add that although I never aspired to be either a professional creative person or a professional musician or singer or actor, I can't imagine having grown up with a curriculum that excluded art, music and drama. Music and drama teachers and studio art teachers have articulated a host of arguments why these subjects belong in a G-12 curriculum. I that is infrequently heard, however, and one that is special to art history, is, in my judgment, of not bad importance -- and it is only gaining in importance as people gather more and more data from television and the Internet rather than from the printed word. The written report of art history teaches i almost how art tin be used to convey messages, whether it is the political propaganda a Roman emperor displays on his triumphal arches, the message of the Terminal Judgment in a medieval church portal or mod depictions of the horrors of war or of working conditions in factories as political and social protest. Since nosotros are all on the receiving finish of such pictorial messages -- peculiarly during election campaigns -- information technology is essential that we all learn how to read those letters and learn how images tin be used to manipulate public opinion.
Before long later on this interview was conducted, the 11th edition of Fine art through the Ages received the ii most prestigious prizes that a textbook tin be awarded: the Texty and McGuffey Prizes of the Text and Academic Authors Association. The Texty goes to the all-time college textbook of the twelvemonth in the humanities and social sciences and the McGuffey is a special prize for a textbook that has demonstrated excellence over several editions.
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Source: http://www.cnn.com/2001/fyi/teachers.tools/03/21/fred.kleiner/index.html
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