Between Teaching and Learning: Personal Notes on the Scholarship of Artistic Practice

The artist’s studio is one of the more fascinating spaces in contemporary culture, particularly because it operates in a dark cloud of misconceptions, myths, and distortions. It is assumed to be an intensely private place where creativity happens, somehow and in some way, although no one really knows what that means. This potent combination of mystification and ignorance creates problems for studio art education in the academy because the studio space is at the heart of the education of the artist. An important part of my work as an historian of modern art and critic and curator of contemporary art is the study of studio practices. And I am convinced that greater clarity about studio practice will benefit the studio art curriculum. And I am likewise convinced that the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning can assist in this necessary project of curricular revision by providing a coherent and consistent pedagogical framework

The Dollar Reserve System as a Bastion of Empire and a Force of Economic Necrosis

The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement established the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the United States as the most economically powerful nation on earth. Its termination in 1971 gave the United States the “exorbitant privilege” of a fiat reserve currency. America’s export of fiat dollars supported decades of chronic current account deficits and debt-fueled overconsumption. Like the prototypical resource-rich nation, America suffers from a dollar-induced Dutch disease. An abundance of fiat dollars predisposed institutional failure: the economy increasingly advantaged few at the expense of many. Corporate activity reconfigured to transfer wealth from labor to capital, the proprietor of the dollar resource. Financialization undermined investment and production by capital reallocation from the real economy to the financial economy.Englis

Food for Thought

The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden is pleased to present Food for Thought, the thirteenth annual Sheldon Statewide exhibition. Sheldon Statewide is a unique collaboration between the Sheldon Gallery, the Nebraska Art Association (a nonprofit volunteer membership organization dedicated to the advancement of the visual arts in Nebraska) and the efforts and cooperation of the many Nebraska communities that serve as exhibition venues. The mission of the Sheldon Gallery is the acquisition, exhibition, and interpretation of 19th-20th-century American art. Sheldon Gallery has achieved a national reputation for this collection. Each year twenty works from this collection are circulated throughout the state of Nebraska. The 1999-2000 Sheldon Statewide exhibition focuses on a popular yet powerful subject for artist in the Western artistic tradition. Food for Thought assembles a diverse group of artists, working from diverse perspectives and with diverse intentions, who have chosen to represent food. Food is the very stuff of life, it nourishes us, sustains us, even gives us pleasure. However, in the hands of artists, food is transformed aesthetically and imbued with added meaning and significance. The representation of food in the Western artistic tradition has served a variety of symbolic purposes. First and foremost is the representation of the material beauty of the world around us, a beauty that has intrigued and seduced artists for centuries. Second, some artists have represented this material beauty in order to emphasize its transient nature, thus serving to redirect attention from the temporal pleasures of this world for the presumably more enduring concern of one\u27s soul

Torn Notebook: The Creative Process

Torn Notebook: The Creative Process features twenty artworks related to Torn Notebook, a large-scale public sculpture made by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in 1996 and installed in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. This exhibition focuses on one of their more recent public sculptures and celebrates the creative process that characterizes all serious artistic endeavors. The unique artistic collaboration between Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, which began in 1976 with the installation of Trowel, a colossal hand tool installed permanently on the grounds of the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo, The Netherlands, has resulted in more than twenty-eight large-scale public sculpture projects around the world. These large sculptures, which are derived explicitly and unapologetically from everyday objects, are examples of Oldenburg\u27s career-long desire to make art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself. 2 Such public sculpture as the Batcolumn in Chicago, Clothespin, located in Centre Square in Philadelphia, Shuttlecocks at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, and Crusoe Umbrella in Des Moines, Iowa reveal their common interest in the familiar objects of life as worthy of monumental commemoration

Relationship between psychological and biological factors and physical activity and exercise behaviour in Filipino students

The aim of the present study was threefold. Firstly, it investigated whether a general measure or specific measure of motivational orientation was better in describing the relationship between motivation and exercise behaviour. Secondly, it examined the relationship between the four most popular indirect methods of body composition assessment and physical activity and exercise patterns. Thirdly, the interaction between motivation and body composition on physical activity and exercise behaviour was explored in a sample of 275 Filipino male and female students. Males were found to have higher levels of exercise whereas females had higher levels of physical activity. Furthermore, general self-motivation together with body weight and percentage body fat were found to be the best predictor of exercise behaviour whereas the tension/pressure subscale of the ‘Intrinsic Motivation Inventory’ (IMI) was the best predictor of levels of physical activity. However, significant gender differences were observed. That is, for the males only self-motivation and for the females only body weight and BMI predicted exercise behaviour. Also, tension/pressure predicted physical activity levels for the females but not the males. No inverse relationship was found between the four body composition measures and exercise and physical activity behaviour. The results support the notion that the psychobiological approach might be particularly relevant for high intensity exercise situations but also highlights some important gender differences. Finally, the results of this study emphasise the need for more cross-cultural research

The Visual Culture of Robert Rauschenberg

The importance of Robert Rauschenberg to the history and development of 20th-century American art has been firmly established for well over three decades. It is, however, the nature of his importance that remains, in large part, unresolved. The recent retrospective exhibition of the artist\u27s work at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1997- 98 represents to date the most ambitious attempt to document comprehensively the multiple aesthetic activities of one of the most complex and diverse artists in the history of modern art. By focusing on his involvement in performances, sculpture, and unique and creative engagement with technology, in addition to an in-depth exploration of his early paintings, combines, and phototransfers, the Guggenheim retrospective painted a portrait of an artist that is quite different than the one portrayed by most formalist histories of art. These formalist narratives have defined Rauschenberg as a product of historical influences, from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Despite his work\u27s superficial affinity with the Action Painting process of Abstract Expressionism and a shared interest with the Pop artists in popular imagery, the fact remains that Rauschenberg\u27s artistic intentions and aesthetic modus operandi bore little resemblance to either movement. And, therefore, like his friend and fellow artist Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg sits firmly outside the reductionist Greenbergian narrative of the inevitable formalist progress of avant-garde art. And like Johns, Rauschenberg continues to produce artwork, long after the influences of Abstract Expressionism in the fifties and Pop Art in the sixties have faded. It is thus probable that Rauschenberg\u27s quite broad and eclectic artistic activities from the late forties until the present can be interpreted, analyzed, and more fully appreciated within a broader methodological context than is usually utilized by most art historical narratives, narratives which assume-either explicitly or implicitly-the necessity of a Manet-Monet-Cezanne-CubismFau\u27 ism-Surrealism-Abstract Expressionist lineage in interpreting the meaning and significance of postwar American art. The difficulty of understanding Rauschenberg\u27s artistic development and diverse creative activities within the limits of this modernist aesthetic has led many critics and historians to conclude that Rauschenberg\u27s art is postmodern. l Whether or not his eclecticism is sufficient grounds for his art being considered postmodern, Rauschenberg\u27s aesthetic is, without question, profoundly anti-formalist. Like those other neo-Dada artists he was often associated with, such as Jasper Johns, John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Merce Cunningham, Rauschenberg\u27s artistic activity requires a broader, more sophisticated conceptual model within which to interpret his work and one that is more faithful to the artist\u27s own intentions

The Art of Abstraction

The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden is pleased to present The Art of Abstraction. the eleventh annual Sheldon Statewide exhibition. Sheldon Statewide is a unique collaboration between the Sheldon Gallery. the Nebraska Art Association-a nonprofit volunteer membership organization dedicated to the advancement of the visual arts in Nebraska--and the efforts and cooperation of the many Nebraska communities that serve as exhibition venues. After a decade of activity. in which it has participated in the outreach mission of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. this highly successful touring program has collaborated with the Nebraska Department of Education and the Getty Education Institute for the Arts in Los Angeles through the Prairie Visions teacher education program. This exhibition marks the beginning of what will certainly be another decade of successful educational programming In the arts. The mission of the Sheldon Gallery is the collection. exhibition. and interpretation of 19th-20th-century American art and the Gallery has achieved a national reputation for these holdings that also includes one of the most important campus-wide sculpture collections in the country. Important to the Gallery\u27s mission. therefore. is a focus on abstraction as one of the most significant developments in 20th-century American art. And although the Sheldon Gallery has included selected abstract works in past Sheldon Statewide exhibitions. The Art of Abstraction represents the first comprehensive survey of abstract art in the Sheldon Statewide series. It seems appropriate. as we approach the 21st century. that perhaps the major aesthetic development of this century is presented to a wider viewing audience. And the 1997-98 Sheldon Statewide. initiating a new decade of activity. is an ideal occasion to survey the major artistic accomplishments of the 20th century. The Art of Abstraction reveals the staggering diversity and aesthetic richness of abstract art in the U.S. throughout this century. From Arthur B. Carles\u27s colorfully expressionistic landscape of 1908-10 to Mary Beth Fogarty·s naturalistic collage of 1983. these selections trace the development of abstraction for nearly one-hundred years. Not only are nine decades represented in this exhibition of twenty works. but the many visual languages that abstraction spawned are featured as well. providing a rare opportunity to experience. in one exhibition. a comprehensive survey of the development of abstract art in the United States

Judith Burton: Visual Nuances

The history and development of the pictorial tradition in the West is punctuated by many formal and conceptual tensions, among them the tension between representation and abstraction, between mimesis and personal expression, between objectivity and subjectivity, between the artist and the viewer. The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden is pleased to present Judith Burton: Visual Nuances, a solo exhibition featuring twenty-four paintings and two monotypes by an important Nebraska artist whose aesthetic expression succeeds in celebrating these many tensions and formal subtleties that are such an important part of our visual arts tradition. However, much attention-perhaps too much attention-has been paid by the contemporary artworld to works of art that have tried to resolve these tensions and subtleties. Some contemporary art screams or shouts its meaning, intimidating the viewer into a passive receptive role for fear that the artist\u27s message won\u27t be heard. Others sit mute, begging (or daring) the viewer to speak on behalf of them. In refreshing contrast, Burton\u27s work celebrates the tensions, subtleties, the visual nuances that lie at the core of the unique act of image making. Further, Burton\u27s visual imagery is a whisper, the still small voice of the aesthetic in a visual culture that is often drowned out in the sea of aesthetic screaming or amid the sophisticated white noise or cynical silence of art institutional brinkmanship