On Friday I was shocked to discover that a list of the artworks had been stuck onto the staff room board. Here were the artworks that every child should look at before leaving primary school. I stared and stared at these artworks and tried to work out what I thought was wrong. On reflection, all the artworks were pre-1960, mostly western and nearly all of them were paintings. There were quite a few representations of trees and skies. I'm not against trees and skies, but hasn't humanity produced more variety in its art than that? This frustrated me.So, in response, I have put together a selection myself. These are not what I necessary believe all children should see, but this selection is more of a counter-argument to the list in my staff room. We should debate these lists as teachers and not just accept some canon.
Firstly, I have paired up a cave painting from Lascaux in France, from over 10,000 years ago with Damien Hirst's Zebra from merely decades ago. Pollock's 'Composition with Pouring' sits nicely against aboriginal art. Did they use the same techniques? Are their human figures in Pollock's drips too? Talking of figures, Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' is juxtaposed with the famous photograph of 'Lunch Atop a Skyscraper'. Photography is art too, let's not forget. These workers in New York are compared to Lowry's 'VE Day' scene, with the factories and people celebrating the end of war. We can start to debate history, make narrative connections.
Moving on, Turner's burning of parliament sits with Rothko's 'Orange and Yellow'. How did Turner use colour and then what did Rothko do with it nearly a century later? Why was parliament on fire anyway, this wasn't the second world war?!
Like the selection in my staff room, I have included two still lifes. But instead of both of them depicting only flowers and fruit, these two have skulls (one by Cezanne and the other by Picasso.) Why is a skull more interesting? Do we always need to put humans in our art? Are we that obsessed? And can we compare these skulls to the African mask or even the dead zebra? Is Marilyn Monroe's printed, simulacra face also a mask? And look, there's a sculpture too by Moore; humans can be represented in three dimensions too.
Finally, I have included a local artist from near my school, Gabriel Parfit, who has combined drawing and paint to show a statue at Kensal Green cemetery, with the steelworks behind . After all, there are artists all around us and we shouldn't just look at the famous ones.
Anyway, do you agree with my selection? What would you omit or include instead? It's all up for debate and no one can really have the answer either.
That poster of little thumbnail artworks in the staffroom caught my eye but not enough to go and see what it was about, so I didn't know the school had compiled it's own art canon.
ReplyDeleteI think they have completely misunderstood the suggestion of the speaker that lead to this compilation. He wasn't asking the school to create a canon, he was asking its members to consider what they would put in a canon. It was a prompt to thought and discussion, not a call to create a prescriptive list.
I wouldn't be surprised if this art list (and any prospective book one) was created within the rather conservative and narrow confines of 'what is safely considered art' rather than what excited or inspired its creators. Art in all its forms should not be duty but exploration, introspection, expression. But what can be expected by people more inspired by teaching in itself then in what is being taught?
As for the skulls, I fucking hate still life, even my lazy, sedentary, slow life is not still. With the skulls we get a momento mori, a little shiver that one day our thoughts will be air and our bones dust.
Thanks! I should have put 'there are artists all around us and we shouldn't just follow the famous dead ones.' Kids are of the now. They are of the generation of Pixar, perhaps not Turner. Anyway, it's all for debate. That's the point.
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