Weitz 1 Mia Weitz Instructor Bachman Composition, Creative Inquiry, and the Arts (Porter 80B-02) 30 November 2016 (1,399) Core Convocation Good Afternoon. I am Mia Weitz, the new Provost of your college. I would like to take this opportunity to give you a very warm welcome to Porter and to the University of California at Santa Cruz. I hope that you will feel just as welcomed to the academic possibilities available to you here as you go through your Core course this quarter. “Composition, Creative Inquiry, and the Arts” is split into three distinct but connected units: Inspiration, Creativity, and Process; Art in Theory; and Artist, Work of Art, and World. Each unit is guided by a set of provocative questions. It is your responsibility in this course to explore these questions and to feed your curiosity by forming more of your own. One of the culminating questions asks: is art capable of transforming society? In the wake of this recent election, I hope it does. We need all the tools we can get. But how do we define transformation? The most apt definition I found actually took the form of a guide. James Lee Boggs, in his mission to organize the Black Community against oppression, outlined the path to transformation in six steps: “Put human beings first...Put the interests of the collective first...Develop creativity...Live by your convictions; don’t be a hypocrite or an opportunist...Develop control from below, from within the community…[everyone] must be encouraged and have the opportunity...to participate fully and daily” (59-60). Boggs shows us that the most important driving factor behind transformation is the existence of a coherent Weitz 2 community. When confronted with this idea of community, it makes the concept of society seem less daunting and unattainable. Society is made up of many, smaller communities where there is great capital for change. In the community of Harlem, Roderick Graham studied the way in which the images we are routinely confronted with as a result of living in a capitalist society become the context for revolution. Harlem is unique because it is both a center for tourism and one of poverty. The tourism has resulted in the little resources of this community being exploited for their cultural and historical significance--for example, the contributions to jazz. There are images all over Harlem that refer to marketable narratives but not really the narratives of the people. Graham notes that “the images produced by visual artists will only have an impact if they are reconnected with the everyday lives of people as they experience them” (142). This argument connects back with Boggs’ call for creating control from the bottom up. But Graham is only noting a possibility, not a reality. In his theory, art is capable of contributing to the transformation of society, but the change needs to start within the community before it culminates in art. Has there ever been an instance of transformative theories and narratives culminating in art that was capable of creating change? Well, Diego Rivera certainly tried. The story behind his piece, titled “Man at the Crossroads,” is a fairly dramatic illustration of the influence of politics on art and the reaction of the public and the patrons. It brings up the point of who pays for art and how that may or may not influence the artist’s final work. Rivera was commissioned by the Rockefeller Family in 1932 and “proposed a 63-foot-long portrait of workers facing symbolic crossroads of industry, science, socialism, and capitalism,” in which he inserted an unapproved image of Vladimir Lenin along the way (“Diego”). This addition was met with fierce disapproval from the commissioners who were not of the same Marxist ideology as Rivera. But he did not Weitz 3 compromise and as a result the unfinished work was torn down. Due to public support of the work, Rivera later painted an exact copy of the original in México, his homeland, and never worked in America again. One may say that the reason that he was unable to create change in America is because he was working with the establishment, outside of his community. The potential for transformation ended up being much greater in his homeland where the essential communal aspect of a shared identity was stronger. The context in which a work of art is presented is very important in contributing to its potential for being transformative. If it is put on a pedestal, far away from the community that it needs to reach, of course it will be ineffective as a tool for transformation. Professor Chantal de Smet addresses this issue, saying that “[o]nce [art] has been officialized and made sacred, it loses its stimulatory function, its function of being a form of social conscience, and also its questioning role” (9). And this issue is not only a symbolic one, as many people who need transformation are oppressed and don’t have the resources to access art where it is traditionally held. This is in museums, art schools, and even conservatories. Conservatories may be the least accessible art-making communities because they focus on classical studies and often have little public funding (Tregar). For art to be transformative, it must reach wider audiences. This brings Bogg’s last point: “[everyone] must be encouraged and have the opportunity...to participate fully and daily” (60). Participation can take many forms. It can be the creation of art itself, it can be interacting and identifying with art that moves you personally, it can be writing about and discussing art. Avant Garde artists have even started a movement of participatory art, inviting the audience on a physical and mental journey that they would never experience otherwise. And this art does not need an explicit political message, it just needs to bring people together in some tangible and Weitz 4 identifiable way. For example, the Temescal Amity Works project based in a small neighborhood in Oakland led by artists Susanne Cockrell and Ted Purves. The project was based around an invention of sorts, or a sculpture, whatever you’d like to call it, that aided in the transport of fruits and vegetables from overburdened backyard gardens across the neighborhood. It was an exercise in the idea of give and take that lasted a few years and was stopped only when it had morphed into a charity--because instead of engaging the public, it was serving them. The artists’ explicit goal was to “jump-start a network” or in other words begin to build a community (“Temescal”). Seems innocent enough. But there is no denying they had a political purpose, one of egalitarianism, of redistributing resources for the better of the collective. George Orwell wrote of the four main motivators for writers, deeming them: “Sheer egoism,” “Aesthetic enthusiasm,” “Historical impulse,” and “Political purpose” (3-4). He claimed his strongest works only came forth when he was forced to mingle his political intentions with his art. As students in this Core Course, you will come to know many artists and their intentions. We hope that as you begin to understand what made their work so effective (effective enough to be given to you now, years after their production), you will adapt those techniques to create your own and therefore your own change. Transformation starts with you. Core keeps you in a small enough community to make bonds that can grow through the rest of your four years. I encourage you to take every opportunity you get to foster that growth. Works cited Boggs, James L. “Blacks in the Cities: Agenda for the 70s.” The Black Scholar. Nov-Dec 1972: pp. 50-61. Weitz 5 De Smet, Chantal. "Changing Societies: The Arts and Social Change." European Journal of Arts Education (U.K.), vol. 2, no. 1, 1998., pp. 4-9. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1320169977?accountid=14523. “Diego Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads.” Pbs.org, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/flashpoints/visualarts/diegorivera_a.html. Graham, Roderick. "The Battle For The Eye: Images And Politics In Harlem." Socialism & Democracy 23.1 (2009): pp. 129-142. Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=37184412&site=ehost -live. Orwell, George. “Why I Write.” Gangrel. 1946, pp. 3-4. "Temescal Amity Works." Fieldfaring News. 2011. https://fieldfaring.wordpress.com/temescal-amity-works/ Tregear, Peter, et al. "Conservatoires in Society: Institutional Challenges and Possibilities for Change." Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, vol. 15, no. 3-4, 2016., pp. 276292. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1474022216647379.
