Architecture of Value Draft 7 (Alan Brown)
Reading submitted by Dean Juarez. Alan Brown starts with this question: Can you explain, in simple terms, how you or someone you know is changed by listening to music, watching a dance performance, looing at an artwork, or writing in a journal?
He continues: “I’d be hard pressed to manage a coherent response. It’s not easy to talk about how art transforms or how we are different because of it. Many who work in the arts, inlcuding those of us who do so because of our belief in the transformative power of art, lack a vernacular for communicating its impacts.”
Full article at the link above; or in the blog’s media section.
–K/W
2 Comments
Patricia posted on January 3, 2011 at 5:43 pm
This is an interesting article and relevant for the thinking we are doing on ways we can enhance the value of the BU/CFA education. There could be real value to our students in helping they talk in a meaningful way about their art and its impact. The faculty is likely already doing this but could we make it more of a stated goal/outcome at CFA? “”Engaging in a conversation about the benefits of their art could be extraordinarily useful to artists, especially young artists in training at colleges and conservatories. They might gain a better sense of the impact of their art, thereby fertilizing the creative process. Also, the discussion might reveal how shifting values may be changing artists’ roles in society and why artists who can communicate about their art and awaken creative potential in other people will be in higher demand.”
Jim Petosa posted on January 18, 2011 at 11:03 pm
This article has really become ‘canonical’ for contemporary arts advocates. It is invaluable for the questions it raises (tho I think its notion that the artistic experience defies articulation goes further than it needs to). I do think taking on the challenge of creating that vocabulary or simply arriving at the articulation of the transformative power of art and getting the people who seek artistic experience to help in that would be a worthy effort for the artistic members of a university community.