Wow as a painter and sculptor I can really relate to this. 45 years ago when I shedded my fundamentalist Christianity. I felt truly reborn and could truly see what myth (religion) really is. And it’s symbolism that is in the core of our being.
Yes!! We need interdisciplinary study! I also wonder if some of this is a result of the advent of the internet. We no longer have a set prescription of these are the pieces of art, literature and film that make you a well-cultured or learned person. Now everyone has their own frame of reference. In many ways this is good because we now have a more diverse, inclusive range of texts to go on. But rather than expanding the list of things that are culturally important we’ve kind of siloed off into niches
I think this problem started before the internet (I have argued elsewhere that the art world has been in decline since Duchamp), but you may well be right that it was an accelerant... although on the other hand, it enables autodidacts like no other technology!
Hopefully this comment is fashionably late . . . have been sitting on this for awhile, keep coming back, and then never coming through.
I work in STEM, but have a passion for the arts. Something that comes up a lot in current discourse in my field(s) is that (1) the cost of college is too high, and reducing general education requirements allows for earlier graduation (less students) and (2) K-12 education, especially elementary school, disempowers the most gifted students, especially in, for example math. Students who could be well ahead in math are stuck and not accelerated-their education is repetitive year to year. Do you think a similar strategy can apply to the arts-exploring more of the breadth axis earlier on?
Looking more at K-12 education. I'm aware there is now a "homework bill" under review in California. When I was last in high school (2010), my understanding was that the US had one of the shortest school years (days of attendance) but in certain localities, had much more homework required than peer countries. Is a longer school year necessary, perhaps in general? To include the arts (which to my understanding are one of the first things cut due to budget shortfalls) and also perhaps even a re-introduction of vocational skills given the "crisis of adulting" occurring, would certainly require more time in school, or other things cut. Or, on the other hand, (and there was a Twitter firestorm because of a Vivek Ramaswamy tweet on this subject during the H1-B debate), is leisure necessary, perhaps especially for the arts. Is time spent socializing, on athletics, on personal projects and interests, etc. more valuable than more time in school for K-12?
In terms of topical coverage, I agree there's a broader rot in lack of knowledge of history, culture, etc. that prevents current students from understanding works whose "proper" interpretation is contingent on understanding earlier works. I'm a bit less worried though about shifts in focus on topical coverage-old works are always waiting to (and should) be rediscovered and I generally favor the inclusion of cultures, etc. which have not historically been well represented in the curriculum. The selection (and intent behind) which mode of art to study is a bit more concerning for me. For example, in reading and writing, there is a focus on reading excerpts of larger works rather than full novels, as you've covered. While we need to shift curriculum to stay relevant (such as, in potential reintroduction of vocational training, prioritizing cooking over car repair), this particular shift points towards a general deterioration in skills related to attention and task persistence. More generally, we should know why we choose a particular art form for expression-what aspect of human psychology do, for example, 2D vs. 3D physical art appeal to? (2D gaming has persistently remained a fixture-why? What is being appealed to here beyond the lower price?) There could be some good news here. There's been a pull back from (i) fully immersive virtual realities as well as (ii) the biggest budget blockbusters so there's an opportunity here to go back to the basics of selectivity in appealing to the senses, in order to appeal to different aspects of human psychology.
[Likely commingled your article with other things I'm associating it with, and responded to this, in turn. The spelling and grammar are likely also quite bad, but I simply needed to get this done before your next article(s).]
Higher ed is indeed unnecesarily expensive, and fixing it would likely help resurrect a true liberal arts education. I would love for young students to encounter the liberal arts at the youngest possible age, but in so far as the arts suffer from an anti-gifted attitude, I see that problem most in the devaluing of technical virituosity (such as drawing skills) more so than how early the arts are introduced.
For a variety of reasons, I'm in favor of a year-round school year with 2-4 week breaks (max length) at regular intervals, and perhaps that additional time would indeed help retain or renintroduce arts education. But the U.S. spends more per student than most (all?) other peer countries, so even with a longer school year, I'm not sure that our mis-managed education budgets would recover, so that might not be enough to bring back more arts and humanities classes. I'm also in favor of leisure time -- let's give kids longer recess, and just have a little bit longer school day! -- but for kids to successfully use it for arts/humanities, we would also need to tackle problems like phone addictions + inspire them to want to use their time creatively.
I would love for our liberal arts education to also include the Eastern Canon, etc. But I would continue emphasizing the older classics from our global tradition, which have stood the test of time for good reason. We should include some contemporary writing/art, but anything that survives the centuries to retain relevance is crucial.
My pet theory for why simpler video game graphics are more popular, which I'm drawing from Scott McCloud's theories about comics: we project ourselves into figures drawn simply, and the simpler depictions of characters in comics help us imagine ourselves as the protagonists in those stories; notice how comics will often employ more detailed realism to draw our attention to objects that we aren't supposed to be empathizing with as much as observing. So perhaps because video games require utmost projection into the characters we are playing as, simplicity is uniquely useful for helping us immerse ourselves in the game.
I mean, it's the whole political thing, you know that. All that old stuff's right-coded and our educational establishment leans left. You've got your occasional Western Culture fan in a Republican administration, but usually it's about tax cuts.
(I have to say if they kill modernist architecture it will be one of the few positive legacies that may live after them--look at the Chrysler Building, it's still standing 100 years later, though in awful condition as your other article points out.)
As for the Eastern Canon...you run into the problem that 'the East' covers Islam, India, and East Asia, each of which have their own lengthy traditions, and there's only so much time. For China, for example, you could probably do the Art of War, the Analects, and the Tao Te Ching, but if you want the kids to read Journey to the West or the Romance of the Three Kingdoms you're going to have to throw out a lot of stuff.
That said I've heard the Army's now reading the Art of War...but their motivation is obvious.
Yes, it's quite unfortunate that the canon is right-coded. And it's also true that adding the Eastern Canon would take time, and I think it would be reasonable to sacrifice some lesser parts of the Western Canon to teach some highlights from the East -- although, that is not the only trad-off we can make, and it should be a last resort. Students get a lot of elective classes, they're taught a lot of rubbish like Judith Butler (easy target, I know)... we could manage at least one or two required introductory surveys to the Eastern Canon without sacrificing any of the Western Canon.
I don't know if it's true that the Chrysler is in awful condition! The lobby looks wonderful, I didn't have access to all the upper floors. The doormen claimed the NYT piece was full of shit. I'm agnostic on this point.
Ah, I'd trust the doormen over the newspapermen--they're there and have less to gain from inventing problems.
I think you're probably right. I don't know if I know quite enough of the Eastern Canon to figure out exactly what to add. I would guess focusing on China (our main global archrival, and something like 20% of the global population) and Japan (which went from swords to steamships in 50 years, and produces all the anime the kids love) might be a place to start. The Art of War, for example, might be a place to start questioning the Western cult of authenticity. But I feel like we'd really need a specialist in this field.
The way the politics shake out, you might have a surprising number of recruits from the sciences and engineering for attempts to resurrect the canon. Usually the 'hard sciences' and allied fields are the least politicized, and the idea of 'objective beauty' is less offensive to people who assume there is a universe outside of our observations (even if you can't exactly nail down its position and momentum at the same time to within Planck's constant over 2 times pi).
I’m loving your essay so far but I need to jump in and disagree with the first bit before I continue.
I don’t think learning to appreciate Debussy makes you any more able to appreciate LS Lowry. Better, I think to learn what appeals to you. If enjoy literature, study literature. If you are moved by Larkin, read him. If you like engineering or maths, be the best engineer or mathematician that you can be. You have a whole lifetime to study the other stuff and you don’t need a professor to guide you.
P.S. I am big fan of Breughel but I was not familiar with the Auden poem that weaves itself around his art so beautifully. I shall read it again once I finish your essay.
Because our primary target is how liberal arts education is taught, if someone is choosing to go to university for that kind of education, then the professors ought to take our advice.
Putting aside the university context, I agree that people are served best by chasing their interests. One rabbit hole naturally leads toward the next. In another comment on this post, this is exactly how I recommend someone self-educate about art: go to a museum, wander around until something captures you, snap a photo of the artwork and its wall text to read more about it later... rinse and repeat! (Or pick up an art book if you can't go to a museum; same process.)
I do think that scientists, engineers, etc would also be served well by learning about the humanities -- and vice versa. There is too much animosity between what C. P. Snow called "the two cultures," where artists and scientists sneer at each other before bothering to try to understand the other's cultures. While there are people on extreme ends of the bell curve between highly "artistic" vs "mathematical" minds, most people can learn to appreciate both. It would behove them to do so, because both perspectives are edifying. But someone like my little brother has always struggled in the extreme with reading and writing, while he's brilliant at math and fixing computers -- he's an extreme case, and I don't think he would benefit much from trying to force himself to learn about the humanities.
Erik Hoel recently had a nice piece about how it's the most intuitive and creative scientists that made the most brilliant breakthroughs. Einstein is the classic example. There is much to admire about Renaissance men and women who can incorporate both cultures into their point of view, even if we should not expect everyone to be like that.
I went to school back when you could specialise early and I dropped history and literature as fast as I could to focus on maths and science. I don't think it would have helped me at all were I required to study either. I love both now but that is despite my experience at school rather than because of it.
PS. I have been working on a quiz based on Snow's The Two Cultures that I hope to release later this year.
But see, most teachers are average by definition. (In the colloquial sense--half are definitely below the median, etc.) You can't get the best teachers everywhere, most kids are going to be taught by mediocre people.
Also, if you want the brightest people, you have to pay them more, and a lot of men are afraid of going anywhere near kids these days, so there's half your applicant pool.
True, and a good argument for above average people creating a bitchin' curriculum for the average and below average to follow... such as teaching the canon! So unfashionable nowadays...
I actually had a similar experience, I had pretty good grades in both groups of subjects (SATs were about the same for what that's worth) but the science/math stuff paid better and I figured my parents weren't that rich.
Now I'm in my mid-40s and could theoretically FIRE (though I'm waiting to see what happens to the ACA) but I don't really have the diversity points to publish a novel even if I wrote one.
I do sort of feel like you'd wind up being 'jack of all trades, master (or mistress) of none'. There's only so many hours in the day and so many years in a life. You won't do art well enough to be an artist or science well enough to be a scientist. I actually had a pretty balanced profile but threw in with the sciences because my parents weren't rich and it was a better living.
You don't have to become an expert in all fields, or go so far that you are a "master of none" -- the issue in our essay is that you won't become an expert in ANY part of the liberal arts unless you learn relevant info from all of them. To stick with our example: you can't become an expert on W. H. Auden without learning about Brueghel. For anyone getting a liberal arts education, they should get a genuine version of that!
This is separate from the question of how much artists and scientists should learn about each other's fields (and what people who are not pursuing a liberal arts education should do) -- with some exceptions, I think they would benefit from doing so, but I would not expect an artist to learn as much about science as they should about the arts and humanities, and vice versa.
And in terms of available time, of course we can't learn everything, but just as obviously plenty of people have pulled off becoming an expert while developing a well rounded liberal arts knowledge base, or becoming a ground breaking scientist who also has interest in the arts, etc... if we're going to maximize time, we can start with the low hanging fruit of less scrolling through twitter, etc
Even though I’m a painter and trained 20 years ago, It is only very recently (maybe in the last 5 years) that I have become really interested in art history and the broader historical picture and I often wonder whether for some people it really does take this long to ‘get it’. I have sympathy for kids and young adults who say they are just not interested, because that was me. I just wanted to paint and draw, I didn’t particularly want to think about the work of other artists. When people say we should be focussing on teaching history in schools I half agree as I know how important it is, but practically speaking, I also know that in order to learn and retain knowledge, one has to be interested. That said, I was given quite a good liberal arts education (rather against my will!) by my parents and in good schools and so I had Shakespeare (for example) drilled into me. I heard someone recently (I think it might have been the comedian Andrew Doyle) say that we should be teaching children Shakespeare even if they don’t really understand it and I think he might be onto something. Now that I have become more interested in wider questions about Great Art and how concepts transcend art forms I am so thankful for my basic knowledge of Shakespeare which I can relate to the elements of Great Art that I am realising are most important.
Haha I'm glad you were forced to learn Shakespeare. Did you have any teachers who tried to inspire excitement for a liberal arts eduction, or was it just "now you must study this"? I'm sure the vast majority of my university students would resist too. Perhaps a twofold issue:
(1) History is a riveting story! So much fiction people love is based on it for that reason, but students likely aren't taught it by good story tellers often enough. Any art student learning about Renaissance painters in Florence who aren't also taught about the power struggles, intrigue, and sexual affairs of the Medici, and that crazy monk Savonarola trying to burn it all down, are missing out on so much juicy drama. Educators have a responsibility to try to show students why history is worth learning.
(2) Students have a responsibility to treat their education as serious work, and even if they have the best teachers, of course it will still feel like work sometimes. Not every point in history can be AS riveting as Florence in the Medici Era (although I do think most are fascinating). If a physics student said, "I just want to contemplate the nature of reality. Math is boring," then we would say, "I guess you won't become a physicist, then, and you won't learn how to contemplate the nature of reality very well without math skills." But we don't hold art students to the same expectations as STEM students, and that's a disservice. Studio art students aren't learning painting techniques as well, if they aren't taught how the Masters painted.
Most young students are by their nature immature and unappreciative — this is just what it means to be young! It's a description more than a criticism; how could they know better? This is why I list this as the second part of the problem, because ultimately this responsibility of the student also becomes the educator's responsibility: it is their job to require students to measure up, but humanities educational standards have slipped.
I think that is right and I do agree with the bit about students taking responsibility. I have such a bad memory, I find it hard to recall what my teachers tried to say to me when I was young, although I do remember some really great teachers. I remember my time at art school much better. Since I’ve been thinking more about Great Art and what the characteristics of Great Art are it has occurred to me that we just didn’t frame discussions in that way at art school. We didn’t discuss the wider recurring themes that transcend art forms and I wonder what might have been different if we had, especially if this was alongside practical tuition. I mean by that point we weren’t really getting taught anything as the idea of self learning had already taken over art schools (this is in the UK). On a side note, do you have a favourite book about the Medicis that you’d recommend?
I really out to have a favorite Medici book in mind! I learned a lot about them, the Italian Renaissance artists they commissioned, and the fanatic Savonarola way back when I was a teenager living in Italy (I lived in Vicenza for 6yr between the ages of 12-18) — in my own art education, unfortunately, they were hardly mentioned. But I don't remember what materials my teachers used back then, although the Medici story impacted me a great deal at a young age.
I revisited this era recently to write another piece (linked below) for Quillette, and when I was verifying my memory of the details about Sandro Botticelli becoming a follower of Savonarola, I turned to Giorgio Vasari's (1511–74) "The Lives of the Artists" because that is the closest thing we have to a contemporaneous account about what happened to Botticelli, who allegedly burned his own artwork in the bonfires of the vanities.
What got me the most in college was learning that Michelangelo's David was made as a middle finger to the Goliath of the Medici. Political art is older than we thought--in my 19-year-old arrogant ignorance I had assumed it was invented in 1960s by dirty hippies.
Of course, the fact that it's Great Art means you can appreciate it a half-millennium later, when the politics are long-forgotten.
I wrote a piece for Quillette about how political/ideological art became a problem once the art world turned away from beauty. I'll be republishing it here in a couple weeks!
Substack has a couple people who recommend a "Great Works" list for literary classical education, but I haven't seen any recommendations for people who want to self-educate on the arts as a whole. Are there any suggestions on how to integrate other artforms (such as paintings, etc) for self-directed learning? Thanks!
Maybe I should start doing art history explainers like how Liza breaks down poetry and literature. I am working on a piece about Impressionism, so stay tuned! It's not meant to be an explainer, but you'll learn about Impressionism if you read it; it won't be out for quite a few weeks, but it's definitely coming relatively soon.
The best approach to self-directed learning about visual art is visiting museums like the Met, the Louvre, and the Philly art museum with the Rocky steps; most cities have smaller versions if you can't easily or often visit the big name museums. Start by taking a snapshot of artwork that wows you + its wall text, then you will have the information handy to look up that artist later to read in more depth than wall text can provide. Read a lot about the artists who grip you, then about the era they belong to and their contemporaries. Rinse and repeat!
If visiting museums in person is not feasible, then visit your local bookstore and pick up fine art books that catch your attention (you can also get a vetted selection of art books at the museum giftshop if you can visit in person, and if those aren't in your budget, look up the books you're interested in online for a cheaper used copy). Follow the same process of going down rabbit holes about the artists that you gravitate towards.
If you want a survey book about all of art history, then Janson's History of Art is the classic choice (it's a two volume set, unless that's changed since I graduated undergrad in 2011). You can rifle through it to find artists that you like, and if you read it through, then you'll get a very solid introduction to all of art history. You can then find books about particular artists and eras you enjoy most.
I don't think it's necessary to go through art history in chronological order, by the way. You'll probably go farther if you follow your interests, so it doesn't start feeling like a chore... unless you're the kind of person who prefers to read from start to finish! Then I'd say read Janson's from beginning to end.
He's one of these guys who's too big to ignore. Us scifi-horror fans have to spend a lot of time talking around Lovecraft's prejudices. (Though mercifully Lovecraft failed to inspire any movements capable of genocide. Until someone tells the AI to emulate Cthulhu, of course.)
Had the Nazis been inspired by Lovecraft rather than Wagner it would have definitely given the Nuremberg Rallies a different vibe….
But wasn’t there a major SF&F award that was still a bust of Lovecraft until quite recently? I think I recall China Mieville not accepting it for that reason.
Given Lovecraft was ambivalent enough to marry a Jewish girl I think they would have been on much weaker grounds with the antisemitism...of course if they had picked another group to hate they might have gotten the Bomb and won.
British Fantasy Society, I think, they turned it into a tree.
Didn't make that much sense IMHO as HPL was sci-fi/horror.
"The Romantic Revolution we are discussing brought with it a new interaction of poetry and music, in fact, of all the arts. It's as though the arts became more interested in one another, as did the artists themselves. They began to intermingle, their diverse artistic media drawing closer together in mutual influence. Artists were now painters of words, composers of pictures, poets of tones. Any aesthetic innovation, such as heightened chromaticism in music, would immediately find its counterpart in painting, or exert an observable influence on poetry. The chromatic outpourings of Berlioz are mirrored in the slashing expressionism of Delacroix, or in the multicolored visions of Shelley. We begin to see a movement taking place, the Romantic Movement. We begin to see artists as interrelated groups: Berlioz with Byron, Chopin with Georges Sand and Delacroix, Schumann with E.T.A. Hoffmann and Jean Paul. Stendhal was writing of Mozart and Rossini; Schubert and Schumann were setting their favorite poets, especially Heine. Composers like Liszt and Wagner were omnivorous readers. And they not only read, but they Wrote - Words! - criticism, memoirs, poetry, and, in some cases, the entire texts of their own operas. This was a Romantic breakthrough." - Leonard Bernstein, Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
**
William Carlos Williams, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus"
Wow as a painter and sculptor I can really relate to this. 45 years ago when I shedded my fundamentalist Christianity. I felt truly reborn and could truly see what myth (religion) really is. And it’s symbolism that is in the core of our being.
I sort of feel like this is what Tolkien wound up doing by accident. The culture was hungry for myth and he accidentally made a new one.
Just at the right time in history.
Yes!! We need interdisciplinary study! I also wonder if some of this is a result of the advent of the internet. We no longer have a set prescription of these are the pieces of art, literature and film that make you a well-cultured or learned person. Now everyone has their own frame of reference. In many ways this is good because we now have a more diverse, inclusive range of texts to go on. But rather than expanding the list of things that are culturally important we’ve kind of siloed off into niches
I think this problem started before the internet (I have argued elsewhere that the art world has been in decline since Duchamp), but you may well be right that it was an accelerant... although on the other hand, it enables autodidacts like no other technology!
Loved this! ♥️
Thanks for always being so supportive, Sherry!
Fine essay. Thank you.
Hopefully this comment is fashionably late . . . have been sitting on this for awhile, keep coming back, and then never coming through.
I work in STEM, but have a passion for the arts. Something that comes up a lot in current discourse in my field(s) is that (1) the cost of college is too high, and reducing general education requirements allows for earlier graduation (less students) and (2) K-12 education, especially elementary school, disempowers the most gifted students, especially in, for example math. Students who could be well ahead in math are stuck and not accelerated-their education is repetitive year to year. Do you think a similar strategy can apply to the arts-exploring more of the breadth axis earlier on?
Looking more at K-12 education. I'm aware there is now a "homework bill" under review in California. When I was last in high school (2010), my understanding was that the US had one of the shortest school years (days of attendance) but in certain localities, had much more homework required than peer countries. Is a longer school year necessary, perhaps in general? To include the arts (which to my understanding are one of the first things cut due to budget shortfalls) and also perhaps even a re-introduction of vocational skills given the "crisis of adulting" occurring, would certainly require more time in school, or other things cut. Or, on the other hand, (and there was a Twitter firestorm because of a Vivek Ramaswamy tweet on this subject during the H1-B debate), is leisure necessary, perhaps especially for the arts. Is time spent socializing, on athletics, on personal projects and interests, etc. more valuable than more time in school for K-12?
In terms of topical coverage, I agree there's a broader rot in lack of knowledge of history, culture, etc. that prevents current students from understanding works whose "proper" interpretation is contingent on understanding earlier works. I'm a bit less worried though about shifts in focus on topical coverage-old works are always waiting to (and should) be rediscovered and I generally favor the inclusion of cultures, etc. which have not historically been well represented in the curriculum. The selection (and intent behind) which mode of art to study is a bit more concerning for me. For example, in reading and writing, there is a focus on reading excerpts of larger works rather than full novels, as you've covered. While we need to shift curriculum to stay relevant (such as, in potential reintroduction of vocational training, prioritizing cooking over car repair), this particular shift points towards a general deterioration in skills related to attention and task persistence. More generally, we should know why we choose a particular art form for expression-what aspect of human psychology do, for example, 2D vs. 3D physical art appeal to? (2D gaming has persistently remained a fixture-why? What is being appealed to here beyond the lower price?) There could be some good news here. There's been a pull back from (i) fully immersive virtual realities as well as (ii) the biggest budget blockbusters so there's an opportunity here to go back to the basics of selectivity in appealing to the senses, in order to appeal to different aspects of human psychology.
[Likely commingled your article with other things I'm associating it with, and responded to this, in turn. The spelling and grammar are likely also quite bad, but I simply needed to get this done before your next article(s).]
Fashionbly late comments are most welcome here!
Higher ed is indeed unnecesarily expensive, and fixing it would likely help resurrect a true liberal arts education. I would love for young students to encounter the liberal arts at the youngest possible age, but in so far as the arts suffer from an anti-gifted attitude, I see that problem most in the devaluing of technical virituosity (such as drawing skills) more so than how early the arts are introduced.
For a variety of reasons, I'm in favor of a year-round school year with 2-4 week breaks (max length) at regular intervals, and perhaps that additional time would indeed help retain or renintroduce arts education. But the U.S. spends more per student than most (all?) other peer countries, so even with a longer school year, I'm not sure that our mis-managed education budgets would recover, so that might not be enough to bring back more arts and humanities classes. I'm also in favor of leisure time -- let's give kids longer recess, and just have a little bit longer school day! -- but for kids to successfully use it for arts/humanities, we would also need to tackle problems like phone addictions + inspire them to want to use their time creatively.
I would love for our liberal arts education to also include the Eastern Canon, etc. But I would continue emphasizing the older classics from our global tradition, which have stood the test of time for good reason. We should include some contemporary writing/art, but anything that survives the centuries to retain relevance is crucial.
My pet theory for why simpler video game graphics are more popular, which I'm drawing from Scott McCloud's theories about comics: we project ourselves into figures drawn simply, and the simpler depictions of characters in comics help us imagine ourselves as the protagonists in those stories; notice how comics will often employ more detailed realism to draw our attention to objects that we aren't supposed to be empathizing with as much as observing. So perhaps because video games require utmost projection into the characters we are playing as, simplicity is uniquely useful for helping us immerse ourselves in the game.
I mean, it's the whole political thing, you know that. All that old stuff's right-coded and our educational establishment leans left. You've got your occasional Western Culture fan in a Republican administration, but usually it's about tax cuts.
(I have to say if they kill modernist architecture it will be one of the few positive legacies that may live after them--look at the Chrysler Building, it's still standing 100 years later, though in awful condition as your other article points out.)
As for the Eastern Canon...you run into the problem that 'the East' covers Islam, India, and East Asia, each of which have their own lengthy traditions, and there's only so much time. For China, for example, you could probably do the Art of War, the Analects, and the Tao Te Ching, but if you want the kids to read Journey to the West or the Romance of the Three Kingdoms you're going to have to throw out a lot of stuff.
That said I've heard the Army's now reading the Art of War...but their motivation is obvious.
Yes, it's quite unfortunate that the canon is right-coded. And it's also true that adding the Eastern Canon would take time, and I think it would be reasonable to sacrifice some lesser parts of the Western Canon to teach some highlights from the East -- although, that is not the only trad-off we can make, and it should be a last resort. Students get a lot of elective classes, they're taught a lot of rubbish like Judith Butler (easy target, I know)... we could manage at least one or two required introductory surveys to the Eastern Canon without sacrificing any of the Western Canon.
I don't know if it's true that the Chrysler is in awful condition! The lobby looks wonderful, I didn't have access to all the upper floors. The doormen claimed the NYT piece was full of shit. I'm agnostic on this point.
Ah, I'd trust the doormen over the newspapermen--they're there and have less to gain from inventing problems.
I think you're probably right. I don't know if I know quite enough of the Eastern Canon to figure out exactly what to add. I would guess focusing on China (our main global archrival, and something like 20% of the global population) and Japan (which went from swords to steamships in 50 years, and produces all the anime the kids love) might be a place to start. The Art of War, for example, might be a place to start questioning the Western cult of authenticity. But I feel like we'd really need a specialist in this field.
The way the politics shake out, you might have a surprising number of recruits from the sciences and engineering for attempts to resurrect the canon. Usually the 'hard sciences' and allied fields are the least politicized, and the idea of 'objective beauty' is less offensive to people who assume there is a universe outside of our observations (even if you can't exactly nail down its position and momentum at the same time to within Planck's constant over 2 times pi).
Agreed, although the sciences have become far too political as well, unfortunately.
Oh, I agree. Just saying it might serve as a source of recruitment.
I’m loving your essay so far but I need to jump in and disagree with the first bit before I continue.
I don’t think learning to appreciate Debussy makes you any more able to appreciate LS Lowry. Better, I think to learn what appeals to you. If enjoy literature, study literature. If you are moved by Larkin, read him. If you like engineering or maths, be the best engineer or mathematician that you can be. You have a whole lifetime to study the other stuff and you don’t need a professor to guide you.
P.S. I am big fan of Breughel but I was not familiar with the Auden poem that weaves itself around his art so beautifully. I shall read it again once I finish your essay.
Because our primary target is how liberal arts education is taught, if someone is choosing to go to university for that kind of education, then the professors ought to take our advice.
Putting aside the university context, I agree that people are served best by chasing their interests. One rabbit hole naturally leads toward the next. In another comment on this post, this is exactly how I recommend someone self-educate about art: go to a museum, wander around until something captures you, snap a photo of the artwork and its wall text to read more about it later... rinse and repeat! (Or pick up an art book if you can't go to a museum; same process.)
I do think that scientists, engineers, etc would also be served well by learning about the humanities -- and vice versa. There is too much animosity between what C. P. Snow called "the two cultures," where artists and scientists sneer at each other before bothering to try to understand the other's cultures. While there are people on extreme ends of the bell curve between highly "artistic" vs "mathematical" minds, most people can learn to appreciate both. It would behove them to do so, because both perspectives are edifying. But someone like my little brother has always struggled in the extreme with reading and writing, while he's brilliant at math and fixing computers -- he's an extreme case, and I don't think he would benefit much from trying to force himself to learn about the humanities.
Erik Hoel recently had a nice piece about how it's the most intuitive and creative scientists that made the most brilliant breakthroughs. Einstein is the classic example. There is much to admire about Renaissance men and women who can incorporate both cultures into their point of view, even if we should not expect everyone to be like that.
I went to school back when you could specialise early and I dropped history and literature as fast as I could to focus on maths and science. I don't think it would have helped me at all were I required to study either. I love both now but that is despite my experience at school rather than because of it.
PS. I have been working on a quiz based on Snow's The Two Cultures that I hope to release later this year.
What if you'd had better teachers?
But see, most teachers are average by definition. (In the colloquial sense--half are definitely below the median, etc.) You can't get the best teachers everywhere, most kids are going to be taught by mediocre people.
Also, if you want the brightest people, you have to pay them more, and a lot of men are afraid of going anywhere near kids these days, so there's half your applicant pool.
True, and a good argument for above average people creating a bitchin' curriculum for the average and below average to follow... such as teaching the canon! So unfashionable nowadays...
Hmm. Dunno. I did have the Worst History Teacher Ever.
I actually had a similar experience, I had pretty good grades in both groups of subjects (SATs were about the same for what that's worth) but the science/math stuff paid better and I figured my parents weren't that rich.
Now I'm in my mid-40s and could theoretically FIRE (though I'm waiting to see what happens to the ACA) but I don't really have the diversity points to publish a novel even if I wrote one.
P.S. Quiz sounds fun. :)
I do sort of feel like you'd wind up being 'jack of all trades, master (or mistress) of none'. There's only so many hours in the day and so many years in a life. You won't do art well enough to be an artist or science well enough to be a scientist. I actually had a pretty balanced profile but threw in with the sciences because my parents weren't rich and it was a better living.
You don't have to become an expert in all fields, or go so far that you are a "master of none" -- the issue in our essay is that you won't become an expert in ANY part of the liberal arts unless you learn relevant info from all of them. To stick with our example: you can't become an expert on W. H. Auden without learning about Brueghel. For anyone getting a liberal arts education, they should get a genuine version of that!
This is separate from the question of how much artists and scientists should learn about each other's fields (and what people who are not pursuing a liberal arts education should do) -- with some exceptions, I think they would benefit from doing so, but I would not expect an artist to learn as much about science as they should about the arts and humanities, and vice versa.
And in terms of available time, of course we can't learn everything, but just as obviously plenty of people have pulled off becoming an expert while developing a well rounded liberal arts knowledge base, or becoming a ground breaking scientist who also has interest in the arts, etc... if we're going to maximize time, we can start with the low hanging fruit of less scrolling through twitter, etc
Even though I’m a painter and trained 20 years ago, It is only very recently (maybe in the last 5 years) that I have become really interested in art history and the broader historical picture and I often wonder whether for some people it really does take this long to ‘get it’. I have sympathy for kids and young adults who say they are just not interested, because that was me. I just wanted to paint and draw, I didn’t particularly want to think about the work of other artists. When people say we should be focussing on teaching history in schools I half agree as I know how important it is, but practically speaking, I also know that in order to learn and retain knowledge, one has to be interested. That said, I was given quite a good liberal arts education (rather against my will!) by my parents and in good schools and so I had Shakespeare (for example) drilled into me. I heard someone recently (I think it might have been the comedian Andrew Doyle) say that we should be teaching children Shakespeare even if they don’t really understand it and I think he might be onto something. Now that I have become more interested in wider questions about Great Art and how concepts transcend art forms I am so thankful for my basic knowledge of Shakespeare which I can relate to the elements of Great Art that I am realising are most important.
Haha I'm glad you were forced to learn Shakespeare. Did you have any teachers who tried to inspire excitement for a liberal arts eduction, or was it just "now you must study this"? I'm sure the vast majority of my university students would resist too. Perhaps a twofold issue:
(1) History is a riveting story! So much fiction people love is based on it for that reason, but students likely aren't taught it by good story tellers often enough. Any art student learning about Renaissance painters in Florence who aren't also taught about the power struggles, intrigue, and sexual affairs of the Medici, and that crazy monk Savonarola trying to burn it all down, are missing out on so much juicy drama. Educators have a responsibility to try to show students why history is worth learning.
(2) Students have a responsibility to treat their education as serious work, and even if they have the best teachers, of course it will still feel like work sometimes. Not every point in history can be AS riveting as Florence in the Medici Era (although I do think most are fascinating). If a physics student said, "I just want to contemplate the nature of reality. Math is boring," then we would say, "I guess you won't become a physicist, then, and you won't learn how to contemplate the nature of reality very well without math skills." But we don't hold art students to the same expectations as STEM students, and that's a disservice. Studio art students aren't learning painting techniques as well, if they aren't taught how the Masters painted.
Most young students are by their nature immature and unappreciative — this is just what it means to be young! It's a description more than a criticism; how could they know better? This is why I list this as the second part of the problem, because ultimately this responsibility of the student also becomes the educator's responsibility: it is their job to require students to measure up, but humanities educational standards have slipped.
Thank you for this!
I think that is right and I do agree with the bit about students taking responsibility. I have such a bad memory, I find it hard to recall what my teachers tried to say to me when I was young, although I do remember some really great teachers. I remember my time at art school much better. Since I’ve been thinking more about Great Art and what the characteristics of Great Art are it has occurred to me that we just didn’t frame discussions in that way at art school. We didn’t discuss the wider recurring themes that transcend art forms and I wonder what might have been different if we had, especially if this was alongside practical tuition. I mean by that point we weren’t really getting taught anything as the idea of self learning had already taken over art schools (this is in the UK). On a side note, do you have a favourite book about the Medicis that you’d recommend?
I really out to have a favorite Medici book in mind! I learned a lot about them, the Italian Renaissance artists they commissioned, and the fanatic Savonarola way back when I was a teenager living in Italy (I lived in Vicenza for 6yr between the ages of 12-18) — in my own art education, unfortunately, they were hardly mentioned. But I don't remember what materials my teachers used back then, although the Medici story impacted me a great deal at a young age.
I revisited this era recently to write another piece (linked below) for Quillette, and when I was verifying my memory of the details about Sandro Botticelli becoming a follower of Savonarola, I turned to Giorgio Vasari's (1511–74) "The Lives of the Artists" because that is the closest thing we have to a contemporaneous account about what happened to Botticelli, who allegedly burned his own artwork in the bonfires of the vanities.
https://quillette.com/2024/09/20/the-totalitarian-artist-politics-vs-beauty/
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It looks like these are two popular books to start with, though:
https://www.amazon.com/House-Medici-Its-Rise-Fall/dp/0688053394/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0
https://www.amazon.com/Medici-Godfathers-Renaissance-Paul-Strathern/dp/0099522977/ref=sr_1_2
What got me the most in college was learning that Michelangelo's David was made as a middle finger to the Goliath of the Medici. Political art is older than we thought--in my 19-year-old arrogant ignorance I had assumed it was invented in 1960s by dirty hippies.
Of course, the fact that it's Great Art means you can appreciate it a half-millennium later, when the politics are long-forgotten.
I wrote a piece for Quillette about how political/ideological art became a problem once the art world turned away from beauty. I'll be republishing it here in a couple weeks!
https://quillette.com/2024/09/20/the-totalitarian-artist-politics-vs-beauty/
Substack has a couple people who recommend a "Great Works" list for literary classical education, but I haven't seen any recommendations for people who want to self-educate on the arts as a whole. Are there any suggestions on how to integrate other artforms (such as paintings, etc) for self-directed learning? Thanks!
Maybe I should start doing art history explainers like how Liza breaks down poetry and literature. I am working on a piece about Impressionism, so stay tuned! It's not meant to be an explainer, but you'll learn about Impressionism if you read it; it won't be out for quite a few weeks, but it's definitely coming relatively soon.
The best approach to self-directed learning about visual art is visiting museums like the Met, the Louvre, and the Philly art museum with the Rocky steps; most cities have smaller versions if you can't easily or often visit the big name museums. Start by taking a snapshot of artwork that wows you + its wall text, then you will have the information handy to look up that artist later to read in more depth than wall text can provide. Read a lot about the artists who grip you, then about the era they belong to and their contemporaries. Rinse and repeat!
If visiting museums in person is not feasible, then visit your local bookstore and pick up fine art books that catch your attention (you can also get a vetted selection of art books at the museum giftshop if you can visit in person, and if those aren't in your budget, look up the books you're interested in online for a cheaper used copy). Follow the same process of going down rabbit holes about the artists that you gravitate towards.
If you want a survey book about all of art history, then Janson's History of Art is the classic choice (it's a two volume set, unless that's changed since I graduated undergrad in 2011). You can rifle through it to find artists that you like, and if you read it through, then you'll get a very solid introduction to all of art history. You can then find books about particular artists and eras you enjoy most.
I don't think it's necessary to go through art history in chronological order, by the way. You'll probably go farther if you follow your interests, so it doesn't start feeling like a chore... unless you're the kind of person who prefers to read from start to finish! Then I'd say read Janson's from beginning to end.
Thank you for the thorough response!
Oh, and of course, if you really don't want to drop money on art books... there's also the library!
Towards the Gesamtkunstwerk then? ;)
Sure, Wagner had some good ideas... and one really bad one.
I should probably say my wife is German and her mother studied German literature in Karlsruhe before teaching it in England.
Mostly I am hearing about Goethe, but Wagner arises too
He's one of these guys who's too big to ignore. Us scifi-horror fans have to spend a lot of time talking around Lovecraft's prejudices. (Though mercifully Lovecraft failed to inspire any movements capable of genocide. Until someone tells the AI to emulate Cthulhu, of course.)
Had the Nazis been inspired by Lovecraft rather than Wagner it would have definitely given the Nuremberg Rallies a different vibe….
But wasn’t there a major SF&F award that was still a bust of Lovecraft until quite recently? I think I recall China Mieville not accepting it for that reason.
Given Lovecraft was ambivalent enough to marry a Jewish girl I think they would have been on much weaker grounds with the antisemitism...of course if they had picked another group to hate they might have gotten the Bomb and won.
British Fantasy Society, I think, they turned it into a tree.
Didn't make that much sense IMHO as HPL was sci-fi/horror.
"The Romantic Revolution we are discussing brought with it a new interaction of poetry and music, in fact, of all the arts. It's as though the arts became more interested in one another, as did the artists themselves. They began to intermingle, their diverse artistic media drawing closer together in mutual influence. Artists were now painters of words, composers of pictures, poets of tones. Any aesthetic innovation, such as heightened chromaticism in music, would immediately find its counterpart in painting, or exert an observable influence on poetry. The chromatic outpourings of Berlioz are mirrored in the slashing expressionism of Delacroix, or in the multicolored visions of Shelley. We begin to see a movement taking place, the Romantic Movement. We begin to see artists as interrelated groups: Berlioz with Byron, Chopin with Georges Sand and Delacroix, Schumann with E.T.A. Hoffmann and Jean Paul. Stendhal was writing of Mozart and Rossini; Schubert and Schumann were setting their favorite poets, especially Heine. Composers like Liszt and Wagner were omnivorous readers. And they not only read, but they Wrote - Words! - criticism, memoirs, poetry, and, in some cases, the entire texts of their own operas. This was a Romantic breakthrough." - Leonard Bernstein, Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
**
William Carlos Williams, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus"
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
**
Beautiful!