Art needn't be battleground of values

Most of us probably remember an art teacher from way back when who was a little oddball.

Many such teachers set standards that are hard to understand. They seem to be such judgmental creatures too.

The discipline of art would be just fine if its main purpose was to just teach the tools of art. This in itself is very challenging.

But once we get into standards for judging art, hoo boy. . .

"But is it art?" is a gag line.

People with advanced art credentials can judge art from the whole gamut of angles. Often they'll put forward their standards with an iron fist. They belittle those who disagree.

Art is fascinating but it needn't be such a battleground.

These thoughts are prompted by some research I did on an art teacher from my college days. Unfortunately he's no longer with us.
He fit right in with the prevailing ethos on campuses in the 1970s.
We were supposed to dismiss everything we thought we knew. Everyone seemed to want to "break through to the other side," inspired by Jim Morrison of the Doors, but we were just dreaming.

We were coming of age in the rubble of the Viet Nam War. Somehow we got by even without smartphones.

Heaven forbid that anyone try to make money in art. This was an attitude encouraged by the teacher who is flickering in my memory.

He mentioned Leroy Neiman with a snicker. The students were all too willing to join in with disparagement toward an artist who "went commercial."

The teacher opined one day that the best artist around might be some "bank teller, just in the way he uses space."

It was an oddly pejorative comment, as if we should be surprised that a "bank teller" would have an artistic eye.

Today's young people probably don't get familiar with the term "teller." We used to see a series of such windows at the downtown bank, each with a line. You'd pick the shortest line. Waiting was expected.

Today bank employees are diversified in their duties and they don't just stand as automatons at "teller windows."

My art teacher of days gone by hated cliches. He scoffed at the expression "all the tea in China."

"What does that mean?" he asked.

Well, I could have answered him.

Oh, and he decried "visual shorthand." This was a putdown of the ways an artist using pencil or pen and ink might present the human mouth, for example. Generally you do it with two wavy lines, as we see in comic strips.

But how else would you do it? Of course comics are commercial. Let's belittle it?

We use these methods and speak cliches because they are practical, not because they are crass.

One day this old mentor said he was planning an informal gathering at his residence and invited us. But he was quick to add "You won't get a higher grade."

Oh c'mon, stop being such a Caesar in your palace. It's just a college art class.

I remember one of his colleagues, teaching art history, who said "The prevalence of right angles in western architecture might be a reflection of fascist leanings."

No kidding.

Once again, this was in the rubble of the Viet Nam War debacle. We were all inspecting our naval.

Whoever designed the science auditorium on our University of Minnesota-Morris campus was averse to right angles. I wonder if that was political.

Today's young people would have their jaw drop when realizing that people once thought like this. Right wingers were afraid of fluoridation. Left wingers were afraid of right angles.

What a time to grow up.

"Middle boomers" - I am one - are known to have had much cynicism instilled in them.

It didn't help to take art classes in which it was impossible to really know what the standards were.

I took two classes from the the mentor I'm skewering here just a little. One was a drawing class. He had a female nude come in for that.

He projected a lot of the hippie ethos. Throw in a little of the New Left.

History has judged that the counterculture won but the New Left lost. That's why it's just fine to hear rock-sounding music as a theme with the Rush Limbaugh program.

The teacher looked scruffy. He addressed the class not by standing next to his desk but sitting on his rear end on a countertop.
He played the role for his time nicely. Let's laugh at the idea of selling art. Let's laugh at "visual shorthand" which we know is just a way of portraying things accurately.

So what is art supposed to accomplish? Apparently it isn't supposed to follow any rigid system of rules or orthodoxy, because rules and orthodoxy were causing bad things in America. Or so it seemed.

As if a college art class could solve such a situation.

The design of the UMM science auditorium reaches no new vistas. It just makes us wonder what the architect was smoking.

"Oh, that must've been designed in the 1970s."

The backlash to the heavy-handed highbrow elite was those "Smokey and the Bandit" movies. Let's consider "Laverne and Shirley" on TV.

There has always been a drift toward anti-intellectualism. Look at Sarah Palin. It does serve a purpose, sometimes.

We're not experiencing a repeat of the 1960s or 1970s. Analogies are dangerous. (I think that's a famous quote.)

We know not what kind of world we're entering now. The nature of any crises lying ahead will likely be unique.

I'm not sure what art is going to say about it.

The artist I'm remembering died in 2007 at age 74. His body was found in his crumbling barrio house in Tucson, Arizona.

He was a neighbor of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The two were friends, and "Gabby" helped the artist get Social Security. The artist said his ID papers had been burned in some sort of mishap.

Knowing more about his background, I'm more inclined to feel sympathetic. He was born in Latvia in 1933. He was a WWII refugee who suffered with his family in a displaced persons camp. He came to the U.S. in 1949.

He followed society's rules for a time, joining the U.S. Army and taking steps to be an art professor. Even in that iconoclastic field, there is an established regimen to become a teacher.

He landed at St. Cloud State University where he was a tenured professor. He taught at the Kiehle building which overlooks the Mississippi River. It's a pleasant building.

"But he gave up that secure berth in 1978 for a free-form life," an archived article reads.

The artist said "There's very little art in university art departments."

His convictions and 50 cents might buy him a cup of coffee.

"Plus, everybody tends to buy into the mainstream," he continued.

"The mainstream" was anathema to the prevailing ethos on campus in the 1970s.

Personally, I began seeing that ethos crumble at about the time this professor left SCSU. I graduated that year. But I still kept my finger on the pulse.

America was "moving on" at the end of the 1970s. Finally we elected Ronald Reagan and it was "morning in America" which I suppose is the kind of cliche the artist would abhor.

I suspect art teachers today are pretty much just expected to "do the job."

That was a pretty good gig that teacher left. Did he really know what he was doing? Was it even all his idea?

Yes, I know he had tenure but don't think it's a completely impenetrable barrier. If the teacher remained sullen about conventional values, the need for logical standards etc., he might have touched rough waters.

Maybe he was encouraged to mosey on down the road.

He may have said he found contentment later, but I wonder. In my research I learned he "lived in abject poverty the last three decades of his life."

He moved into his adobe home in 1988. It was a condemned building. It had minimal electricity - just one 20-amp fuse outlet. He showed his art but "his art hardly ever sold," it was reported.

"A lot of his work was political and blasphemous," a friend of his said.

He apparently wasn't kind to the Catholic Church. So, St. Cloud really wasn't the best place for him!

"Even progressives balked at his unapologetic sexual imagery," the archived material reported.

An art dealer who was a friend said "We knew the work was not saleable."

But in 2003 the artist won the $25,000 Arizona Arts Award.
A strange field, art.

"He needed it," someone said of the monetary award.

Another quote: "He was a contrarian and complicated."

By now I think I've presented a pretty clear picture. He was the type of person I'd find fascinating to know. But as a teacher? Where he wears the mantle of power vs. me?

I don't know. My feelings are mixed.

He frustrated me in many ways and I got only a "B" grade in the two classes. I showed up all the time and completed assignments enthusiastically.

Maybe he viewed me as a white boy from outstate Minnesota with a background, probably, of upper middle class affluence. We were the most disdained class of students back then.

Professors respected everything that happened in the Third World. But growing up in outstate Minnesota and coming from a typical Lutheran or Catholic church? Not so impressive.

I suspect my teacher was riding the zeitgeist to a degree. He can be forgiven for that.

In the end he softened toward me. As one of those classes wound down, some of my classmates and I were feeling him out on what kind of grade we'd get. I got my chance.

"I'm giving you a 'B'," he said. There was a slight pause, and then with a little twinkle in his eye, he said "Is that OK?" with his voice rising at the end.

I'll never forget that. He saw there was hope in me. Even if I didn't attend his party.

I was going to type his name here at the end, with a dramatic flourish (LOL). I'll refrain.
I wouldn't have written this post if I didn't feel some affection for him. But the tone of much of this has been skeptical, though I do try to present it in historical context.
I'll just conclude by saying "rest in peace."

- Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com