Readings for "pre-students"
Cross posting this from my journal, with a little background:
The arts instructor for our summer program asked me to do a visual arts guest lecture. Woo! She also wanted to know if I could come up with an essay or reading to prepare the students. I immediately went to John Berger's Ways of Seeing, but after a couple minutes flipping through it, I remember why I hated it. Schizoid layout, all the way. Plus, he is restating ideas from Benjamin's Work of Art in the Age of It's mechanical reproduction (reproducibility) - so it seems I should just throw that at them anyway.
They'll be talking about myth in that week, and getting an intro to my work (the standard slideshow that I give as a guest lecturer, with my work, and work that relates) and it seems that the Benjamin article is a good, challenging piece that would allow them to really dig into the idea of art as object, the myth of the object, and so on...
Other options I'm considering: Abigail Solomon-Godeau's Photography after Art Photography...or a selection from Charlotte Cotton's Photograph as Contemporary art (since that's really more of a 'popular' approach to art history?) Or, perhaps a Dave Hickey interview (I sadly don't have Air Guitar, because twice now my copy's been pilfered)...or I was considering using the Errol Morris columns about the Mickey Mouse photo in Israel.
The real question here is that they're not even freshmen yet. And I'm not their professor. They're also not visual arts students. The instructor is looking to me as an authority on visual art - she's a performance MFA, with experience in theater. She's already had a guest lecturer in music. I emailed her to see how specifically she wanted me to present the talk, and the reading, but the critical bit is that the talk is in a week and a half - but I'll be gone for a week in between, and need to give her the readings tomorrow.
So my question, after all that: How much is too much for students who have been admitted into an "academic bootcamp" pre-college program (they've all been admitted into our Big Research University for the fall, and are in our special academic program based on their application and experience), and how much is too much for me to put together as someone who is *just* a guest lecturer?
Thanks in advance - and I apologize if this really doesn't make sense! :)
EDIT: Ok - I found what I needed - "Principles of Interpretation" from Criticizing Art by Terry Barrett. (page 14-19 of this pdf) But I'm leaving up the post in order to see if any other responses come along that might be interesting, useful, etc. Cheers! And here is a pina colada.
The arts instructor for our summer program asked me to do a visual arts guest lecture. Woo! She also wanted to know if I could come up with an essay or reading to prepare the students. I immediately went to John Berger's Ways of Seeing, but after a couple minutes flipping through it, I remember why I hated it. Schizoid layout, all the way. Plus, he is restating ideas from Benjamin's Work of Art in the Age of It's mechanical reproduction (reproducibility) - so it seems I should just throw that at them anyway.
They'll be talking about myth in that week, and getting an intro to my work (the standard slideshow that I give as a guest lecturer, with my work, and work that relates) and it seems that the Benjamin article is a good, challenging piece that would allow them to really dig into the idea of art as object, the myth of the object, and so on...
Other options I'm considering: Abigail Solomon-Godeau's Photography after Art Photography...or a selection from Charlotte Cotton's Photograph as Contemporary art (since that's really more of a 'popular' approach to art history?) Or, perhaps a Dave Hickey interview (I sadly don't have Air Guitar, because twice now my copy's been pilfered)...or I was considering using the Errol Morris columns about the Mickey Mouse photo in Israel.
The real question here is that they're not even freshmen yet. And I'm not their professor. They're also not visual arts students. The instructor is looking to me as an authority on visual art - she's a performance MFA, with experience in theater. She's already had a guest lecturer in music. I emailed her to see how specifically she wanted me to present the talk, and the reading, but the critical bit is that the talk is in a week and a half - but I'll be gone for a week in between, and need to give her the readings tomorrow.
So my question, after all that: How much is too much for students who have been admitted into an "academic bootcamp" pre-college program (they've all been admitted into our Big Research University for the fall, and are in our special academic program based on their application and experience), and how much is too much for me to put together as someone who is *just* a guest lecturer?
Thanks in advance - and I apologize if this really doesn't make sense! :)
EDIT: Ok - I found what I needed - "Principles of Interpretation" from Criticizing Art by Terry Barrett. (page 14-19 of this pdf) But I'm leaving up the post in order to see if any other responses come along that might be interesting, useful, etc. Cheers! And here is a pina colada.