James Elkins @ RISD...

The number of visiting artists at RISD is somewhat ridiculous. Our first day of class Dean (chair of sculpture, deansnyder.net), told us last academic year there were 240 lectures at RISD and it was impossible to attend them all (seeing as they at times overlap, that's a very true statement). Needless to say, I went to yet another lecture yesterday. Here's the scoop...

Art historian James Elkins is from the Chicago Art Institute (the second best art school in the country). He's an art historian that is super smart (Painting MFA+Phd=artistic genius), having written 19 books and published at least three times that many articles. He falls into the category of art historians that therorize and draw original conclussions, which much like critics that criticize seem to be lacking these days. So, I was looking forward to hearing him speak. His lecture was based upon the history of first year art studio teaching; and over the course of the lecture we were (twice) informed many of his other lectures (One on drawing and if we can critique it as a specific medium, in particular) would've been more interesting. But, he was brought in by the Foundations department who instructed him to do this lecture; which in actuality was quite interesting.

James proceeded to outline the 4 models of first year art instruction (The Roman, The French Academy, The Bauhaus, and the Post-war Art School.), then gave his ideas for a better method of teaching 1st year art. The core of his teaching suggestions revolved around actually telling first year students about the history of teaching first year art, and that, in reality no one knew how to actually teach it properly.

The talk was interesting and throughout it he gave tons of names about art instruction and critical theory; Which when I get the time I'll sort out and look into.

Ramirez-Jonas today, midterms on Thursday...