SATURATION
“Art does not reproduce what is visible; it makes things visible.” – Paul Klee
The challenge of creating an art class for all majors is one of relevance. I designed this course with two types of students in mind. The first is the jaded student, who believes the art world, the universe of creatives, is too highbrow and out-of-touch. This student is pursuing more earthly studies, unknowingly interacts with popular art, and feels excluded by the world of modern art and its pretentiousness. The other student is also not an artistically-minded person, but they pursue other subjects because they believe art is below their intelligence, finding the exaggerated emotions in performances ridiculous and inapplicable to their lives. Both of these students have not been shown that art permeates every minute of their lives and that aesthetic choices truly matter; they have so much potential to be transformed into more sensitive and passionate people. New York’s artistic offerings will be made visible to my students over the course of the semester. The genres covered are opera, popular music, visual art, architecture, theatre, and literature. I extensively used the Macaulay Cultural Passport as a way to get free admission to many of these experiences. The course seeks to make art visible at every level, working up from the popular and accessible to the worlds of modern and high performance art.
POPULAR ART
ALL THAT! Hip-Hop, Poetry, and Jazz
Nuyorican Poets Cafe
9:30 PM Wednesday, 2/7/18
Cost per student: $10
The first unit the class will be approaching is the artistic value of the work we choose to encounter on a daily basis. For many students, this involves popular musical genres, such as pop, hip-hop, and R&B, television, and film. This event will allow students to encounter hip-hop, the dominant music genre in today’s media landscape, and its roots in spoken word and jazz music. The students will have a chance to see how rappers start from grassroots origins and ascend to higher and higher heights. I hope that the students will be able to articulate how this art relates or does not relate to them personally. An important conversation about the relevance of small venues and cafes in the face of digital media alternatives will ensue at the event and in class beforehand.
Click HERE to learn about the event
Governors Ball Presents: Quinn XCII featuring Chelsea Cutler
Irving Plaza
7:00 PM Sunday, 2/25/17
Cost per student: $18
Irving Plaza is a historic music venue that has a rich tradition of bringing popular acts to a small, intimate space. Students will have been focusing on how the New York music scene has evolved to its current state. Conversations about cultural differences throughout the different neighborhoods as well as access to types of events will be emphasized. I want this event to expand the students’ minds about what can be categorized as “art.” This is going to be the most familiar experience to most students, both in venue type and genre of art, so my goal is to encourage real artistic analysis of popular music so that the students appreciate the choices their favorite musicians make when creating their hits. Overall, however, I hope that the students have a really fun and exhilarating time, especially if it is their first live concert or first concert at a rock-style venue.
PUBLIC ART
Whiteout – Erwin Redl
Madison Square Park
Independent Visit: 2/1/18 – 3/5/18
Cost per student: $0
The first experience in the public art unit will be Erwin Redl’s installation of suspended LED lights, Whiteout. Student will be assigned to independently document their visit during a month’s interval. In class, we will study spaces such as Madison Square Park, the High Line, and Gramercy Park as a way to study urban planning, gentrification, and the importance of urban foliage and the role of micro-communities in New York. We will also speak about how we interacted with the installation, thinking about its importance to city life and who the art is for: tourists or locals, the wealthy or the average folk, etc. I believe that students should address their own relationship to the rest of the city when they visit this installation, since this is the first experience they will be engaging with autonomously.
Whiteout
Architecture Tour
Cathedral of St. John the Divine
Class trip, 3/13/18
Cost per student: $0 (Cultural Passport)
A cathedral is not technically free public art, but it is a publicly available religious space that contains art. The topic of study around this trip will follow the discussions from the previous assignments. We will explore historic locations that still exist across New York and analyze how their aesthetic qualities have affected city culture and its reputation across the country. We will also evaluate the merits of religious art across cultures, with an emphasis on New York representation. In my travels to New Delhi, Montreal, and London, I found that massive places of worship inspire awe and very interesting conversations so I hope to engage students in those same thought processes a little closer to home. I chose the architecture tour as opposed to the other tours offered to showcase how physical structures also have aesthetic qualities. Hopefully, students will start to see the art in architecture all around them.
Cathedral Artists-in-Residence
ETHNIC ART
Museum Tour and Conversation with Curator
The Studio Museum in Harlem
Class Trip: 3/20/18
Cost per student: $0 (Cultural Passport)
Making art visible means connecting art to students’ lives. With the Ethic Art unit, I want to connect to students’ unique cultural background so that they can see how they are represented in the artistic arena that is New York. I also want them to encounter cultures formerly foreign to them, in an effort to promote cross-pollination of values, ideas, and aesthetic sensibilities. The Studio Museum offers a massive historical and modern collection of works by artists of African descent. It celebrates Black pride, embraces current issues, and promotes Harlem’s unique place in the American cultural landscape. Surrounding this trip will be a reflection on each students’ understanding of their own cultural art backgrounds. We will talk about the role Harlem has played in shaping the New York art world and how its influence has extended across the globe. We will also talk about the future of ethnic neighborhoods and art in the face of increasing gentrification, growing from the seeds of dialogue planted during the Madison Square Park experience. A special addition to this class trip will be a meet-up with Thelma Golden, the director and curator of the museum. I want students to be able to glimpse what it takes to run a museum as well as the choices that go into creating a specific brand for a museum. We will discuss all of the aforementioned class topics with Thelma as well, to get her take on the issues.
La Gringa – Repertorio Español
Gramercy Arts Theatre
3:00 PM Saturday, 3/24/18
Cost per student: $0 (Cultural Passport)
There is so much history to explore, both with the famous Off-Broadway Gramercy Arts Theatre, and especially with the Repertorio. We move from back to live art from visual art with this play, a story of an young Nuyorican woman who journeys back to Puerto Rican to find her extended family and falls into an ensuing comedy of cultural confusion and complications. I chose this play in particular aside from all the other offerings because of its more universal quality. Though it is a play in Spanish, the themes of being too immigrant for America but too American for one’s country of origin are culture-independent. With Queens being such a diverse campus, there are bound to be many students who identify with the titular “gringa.” I also hope to dispel the notion that New York theatre is only Broadway by exposing students to this proudly ethnic and high-quality production. My goal is for students to enjoy their first experience with Off-Broadway plays and to have fun engaging with the ridiculousness and humor the show embodies. Our in-class discussion will consist of looking at the Latino community’s influence on New York culture and art, which is so indelible that almost every rapper from New York must reference their local bodega at least once in their career.
A stark reaction tableau in “La Gringa”
A History of Repertorio Español
Museum Tour
The Jewish Museum
Class trip: 4/11/18
Cost per student: $0 (Cultural Passport)
The Jewish community plays a significant role in Queens College life and campus culture. The Hillel, Tamid, and Tizmoret all boast significant membership and contribute to QC’s tapestry of diversity. I want to explore Jewish art’s history and impact with the class, as well as how the museum itself serves a representative of the Jewish people. We will discuss the space around the Museum, the famous strip dubbed “Museum Mile,” and how it helps promote the arts in New York City. I especially hope this visit will connect to the students of Jewish descent, who made up a sizeable, aesthetically sensitive contingent of my own Seminar 1. At the Museum, we will explore the different media art can approach us in, such as the visual forms we are used to, but also in terms other, less expected forms like fashion. We will examine how the Jewish artists featured in the museum have blended their styles with the cultures they interacted with. For students willing to spend a little extra time and money, there will be an added visit to the Russ and Daughters museum location to sample the Jewish takeout options for the way home. The blog assignment will conclude the Ethnic Art unit by tasking the students with choosing something they saw or learned during the unit that connects with their own culture or represents them. By finding themselves in another culture, the students will develop understanding and empathy.
HIGH ART
Museum Visit
MoMA PS1
Independent Visit: 4/1/18 – 4/30/18
Cost per student: $0 (Cultural Passport)
The final unit of the class will be about the most challenging type of art. High art is art that is placed on a pedestal of intellectual superiority, or else is a very old form not present in popular culture anymore. Modern art is a very controversial subject and I hope to provoke an interesting debate about the merits of art that is difficult to understand, not because it is culturally foreign, but because it has been abstracted to a higher degree than is comfortable. I have chosen MoMA PS1 for its nearness to Queens College and because it holds itself as an artistic lab of sorts. It encourages the most challenging, avant-garde types of visual art possible. I want students to wander through the permanent collection on their own and think about what the effort of the artists means to them. I hope that students will be able to confront art that unsettles them so that they can learn to open their minds to new possibilities, a skill applicable to every field imaginable.
A part of MoMA PS1’s permanent collection
PS1 Exhibitions (We will focus on the permanent collection)
Tosca
Metropolitan Opera
8:00 PM Thursday, 4/26/18
Cost per student: N/A (Covered by MHC)
The culmination of the course will be the Puccini masterpiece Tosca, a demonstration of the verismo style and a dramatic affair sure to astound. I believe that many negative perceptions of opera as unaffordable, inaccessible, and obsolete will be laid to waste in the face of this work of art. In the weeks leading up to our visit, we will study Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera and both institutions’ role in the high art of New York. We will tackle how issues of representation, body image, and gender roles, so prevalent in the zeitgeist, also factor into the present condition of opera. There were many different choices in which opera to attend, but I chose this performance because I wanted it to be completely new but also dramatic and tragic. We will also study the way an opera is produced and the role of music in the appeal of opera. I hope to relate it to the rest of the unit by talking about opera’s older role as part of popular culture, Lincoln Center’s value as public art, the Italian/American influence on Puccini’s work, and how high art’s emotive qualities are truly inspirational. I hope that students will be able to fall in love with the beauty of the opera house and the music within.
The set of Tosca
“When in Rome” – Puccini and Sir David McVicar
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The title of this course is Saturation because the arts have saturated every part of our lives, but we sometimes forget it is there. I hope that this course will be a revelatory experience for the students and that they will continue to seek out art and aesthetic experiences on their own after the course is over.
Excellent theme, Daniel. I appreciate the way that you focused on representing various cultures in the design of this along with asking questions about high art versus popular art. Nice use of the Cultural Passport as well!