Decades old and once taught by famous Yale professors like Vincent Scully, “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to the Present” was once touted to be one of Yale College’s quintessential classes. But [its cancellation] is the latest response to student uneasiness over an idealized Western “canon” — a product of an overwhelmingly white, straight, European and male cadre of artists. — Yale Daily News
Margaret Hedeman and Matt Kristoffersen, writing in The Yale Daily News, shed light on a recent decision by the Yale University Art History Department to retool and refocus its foundational survey course with the aim of lessening the class's "singular focus in Western art."
The move comes as many disciplines, including writing, history, and art, move to "decolonize" and broaden the scope of their respective "canons" in the educational setting amid a renewed awareness of under-privileged histories, perspectives, and authors.
If this news has done nothing else it has certainly caused the racist crowd to step a bit further out from behind their veil. That's cool.
Western architecture/art history is cool. World architecture and art history is even more interesting. We got a bit of Egypt in our first year, but that was about the end of it. Such a pity since there is so much more to look at and to learn from. Why get upset if we get to understand a bit more where African futurism art/architecture comes from, or learn that china has a few more housing prototypes to look at than what the West has on offer. I am sure there is a lot more on offer than that.
The problems we face today are so enormous it is ridiculous to shut out whole threads of our global history of art (and/or architecture). Getting upset about knowing things is even more silly. This isn't news about a future of ignorant artists, it's a story about people with more knowledge, and more tools.
How could that conceivably be an issue?... unless it makes you feel small to live in such a big world? Buck up! The big world is not going to eat you. Don't be scared.
Keep in mind that this is a transition that has been happening for over thirty plus years in the history of art and architectural history.
One of the significant reasons for this was because the discipline was re-organized around early to mid twentieth century cataloging practices- from Germany (note the period of historical significance). Add the surge in photography and film studies decades ago that also challenged Western canon because it did not take take mechanical methods of production into account (whole lotta feminist theory embedded in these areas helped to dismantle the western white male gaze). Top it off with postmodern translations - which in a twisted way required the expansion of how the classifications of western canon were understood in order for people to be rigorous with their western ideologies (gotta really know what's classic- or not- to use the term classic, right?).
Finally, think about academics in general. A lot of people were relieved to hear that history requirements were being decreased because there were more important things to teach and historians didn't contribute much. Curriculums changed as people retired and hiring requirements were changed with the trends, and legacy courses were removed.
This is a legacy course that shaped many a mind, but has also been impacted by the evolution of the discipline and academic institutions. Western canon hasn't gone away, but larger Canons of Art and Architectural history have since expanded, requiring adjustments -just like all the other curriculum requirements.
That said there are still plenty of people out there who will claim that if it's not western it's not art or important- in the studio environment- to non-white and international students. So the message is still being communicated.
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Why don’t they just call it Western Art History, i.e. what it always was? They have classes for other art too.
These modern university bureaucrats are repulsive. The new Priesthood.
cancel culture is just a new religion with the same old structures of power, control, corruption, and justifications for bad behavior by playing victim. Soon they will be molesting people too, and calling it woke
Because it's an Intro course. By definition, it should be a survey of a wide range of topics, each of which can then be expanded upon in later courses (Such as 'Western Art History').
The idea of Western Civilization is rooted in Ancient Greek texts, and the roots of democracy. There is an assumption that, since we live in the Western World, we should start with this axis, then work outward to include other great civilizations — Middle East, China, Africa. Guess what, those societies teach their own civilization history as a central “intro” axis than work out from there. To try to “cancel” your own culture is nonsense. We can learn about all culture without trying to deny fundamental truths. Why don’t we ask China to cancel their own culture and see what happens
Meanwhile the Chinese and Middle East students going to Yale to learn about art history are like WTF is wrong with these people .... I could have just stayed home if I wanted BS
Most good Western Civ classes will include the central axis of Western thought (as we are in the Western world) and include pieces that have connected to it or not, as you start to see the boundaries start to dissolve. But that doesn’t mean we should pretend like boundaries or differences do values don’t exist in cultures .... that would be ahistorical.
Maybe these students should start their own consumer focused school to teach grievance studies and other narratives. See how it goes.
Always this argument ad absurdum. We are talking about American Western Education; China is a strawman.
Anybody have an intelligent counterpoint? Trying to erase western civilization (when you live in it) seems like exactly the same flawed logic as ignoring any non-western history. It’s not a serious intellectual pursuit. Just like super woke people becoming the thing they hate the most... simple-minded religious zealots
First, you have to have a point worth debating.
"I could have just stayed home if I wanted BS" - i.e. all of other cultural discourse is BS, according to you. Nevermind that we live in a highly globalized world and that western culture is not as dominant as it used to be.
Perhaps you don’t know why the Chinese elites send their kids to American colleges
By all means broaden and evolve the cannon as fit, but the idea that the Renaissance was or is a form of colonizing culture is ignorant of history. The Renaissance was the birth of the idea of a universal man (human), beyond race, religion, and sex. All culture is available to all people, and the mix of them usually has very positive results.
Renaissance and Colonialism
There's literally pages, books on this topic, going back at least 40 years.
If you where to characterize everything in human history with only the bad, you'd have to throw out every human achievement. Go back beyond 40 years and you might construct a different narrative. It's a matter of proportion, not black and white .
I know you want to deny evolution, both as fact and theory, but the truth of the matter is this; western history has been in decline since Nero, and the fact that people - whites - are only now being given the stick, it's our own fault. Thinking has evolved, the Earth is not the center, God does not exist, and white people are becoming a minority - so should the preferred narrative.
I said I'm all for evolving the cannon, but you don't seem to have the best reading comprehension skills. As for people, they are mixing all the time. Pretty soon their won't be a majority or minority because we'll all be mixed, but last time I checked, even those of one race (sure) there's the same kind of prejudice that some think is the exclusive province of whites. Try to imagine a person as a human next time you are happy white people are "being given the stick." It's called empathy.
"I'm all for evolution, but let's ignore the significant reasons why we should, evolve." That's what I read.
I love the constipated verbiage they use in trashing their own university's outstanding program. And 'pivot' is so last year. The new phrase is 'pump the brakes'.
World Art History would be too much material for one semester - you'd end up with a watered-down survey. Why not keep the course as it is - a a Western art history course - and add a non-Western complement for a year-long sequence?
there is no "west"... we live on a globe
We aren't actually trying to pretend this isn't just the result of a few SJWs being upset and to appease them they're removing that which they find bothersome, right? The fact it was decided to nix the class is rather telling of their lack of concern for academia when faced with a group who yells "racist," "patriarchy," "colonization" at everything that's not catered to their victimhood. We see this with alarming frequency, take at look at Seattle Public Schools' recent decision to do away with gifted classes/schools because blacks and Hispanics weren't enrolled in adequate rates, merit is apparently racist.
This is quite literally one of the most racist pieces of trash written on this site. You're garbage.
Gifted Programs and Racism
Again, literally pages of research on this subject only proves you are fucking racist troll.
. . . humanities professor and then-Director of Undergraduate Studies of the program Kathryn Slanski said while many of the authors discussed in the program are “dead white men,” everyone can learn from their texts as long as they perform nuanced and analytical readings.
I.e., you can't understand a work until we put it in its place. The academy once more exaggerates its importance and reveals its preciousness. One strength of art is its ability to stand outside this and other institutional reductionism.
Western art, among much else, has been acutely critical of itself and of its culture:
Dead white men painted by a dead white man.
Goya, I assume, is dead to Slanski. There's a sense in which we say artists from the past live with us now, through their art. She's turned them into corpses. I had several reasons for selecting this work.
This isn't sufficiently woke for study. Not enough inclusion and diversity.
Perhaps the fact that many of the greatest works of Western Art have religious themes played a part in secular Yale University's decision.
^Comments brought to you by the SGA; Snowflake Grievance Army.
In other news Yale has announced a ban on the performance of Handel's 'Messiah' on campus.
If this news has done nothing else it has certainly caused the racist crowd to step a bit further out from behind their veil. That's cool.
Western architecture/art history is cool. World architecture and art history is even more interesting. We got a bit of Egypt in our first year, but that was about the end of it. Such a pity since there is so much more to look at and to learn from. Why get upset if we get to understand a bit more where African futurism art/architecture comes from, or learn that china has a few more housing prototypes to look at than what the West has on offer. I am sure there is a lot more on offer than that.
The problems we face today are so enormous it is ridiculous to shut out whole threads of our global history of art (and/or architecture). Getting upset about knowing things is even more silly. This isn't news about a future of ignorant artists, it's a story about people with more knowledge, and more tools.
How could that conceivably be an issue?... unless it makes you feel small to live in such a big world? Buck up! The big world is not going to eat you. Don't be scared.
Could you shed some light on how race is perceived in Japan?
The racists love what the left is doing to itself. Turning art history into culture vs culture. Nobody more happy about canceling Western Art than Archinect, Breitbart and Fox News
Yup.
Chemex, keep your head in the sand, ostrich.
History, Mehstory!
Keep in mind that this is a transition that has been happening for over thirty plus years in the history of art and architectural history.
One of the significant reasons for this was because the discipline was re-organized around early to mid twentieth century cataloging practices- from Germany (note the period of historical significance). Add the surge in photography and film studies decades ago that also challenged Western canon because it did not take take mechanical methods of production into account (whole lotta feminist theory embedded in these areas helped to dismantle the western white male gaze). Top it off with postmodern translations - which in a twisted way required the expansion of how the classifications of western canon were understood in order for people to be rigorous with their western ideologies (gotta really know what's classic- or not- to use the term classic, right?).
Finally, think about academics in general. A lot of people were relieved to hear that history requirements were being decreased because there were more important things to teach and historians didn't contribute much. Curriculums changed as people retired and hiring requirements were changed with the trends, and legacy courses were removed.
This is a legacy course that shaped many a mind, but has also been impacted by the evolution of the discipline and academic institutions. Western canon hasn't gone away, but larger Canons of Art and Architectural history have since expanded, requiring adjustments -just like all the other curriculum requirements.
That said there are still plenty of people out there who will claim that if it's not western it's not art or important- in the studio environment- to non-white and international students. So the message is still being communicated.
the language in the article and comments is revealing. It is about “transition” and “challenging the white male gaze” ... this is a phrase you hear over and over, as if Western Civ doesn’t begin with non-white Mesopotamia, Greece (white-ish), Egypt, etc. So, the philosophy is racist and ahistorical, gaining legitimacy off of a trendy anti-white male thesis.
It has nothing to do with serious history, only the kind of racist lingo no acceptable to crazy university bureaucrats trying to be edgy.
Again, you're decades behind- there's nothing edgy about any of this. Also yes- a lot of theory from the 60's and 70's discussed philosophy and aesthetics wrt gender.
I guess we are just going to recycle 70s postmodernism with the same tepid result. Art History as wall text. Less about what the art is, and more about the identity of who did it.... extra points if you are not the bad race
Even the term postmodernism was a declaration against something instead of a discovery of something affirmative in itself.
the contrary. the canon got deeper and richer. post-modernism and marxist theory introduced the triple bottom line from the perspective of patrons and aesthetics.
According to Google, the wealthiest artist now is Jay z. Compare this to Van Gogh who died poor and alone. Not sure what the lesson is there, other than Marxist should be careful what they wish for, criticism might not go the way they think when you start looking at art as merely power structures and identity
1- Different mediums and distribution platforms, and different periods in speculative capital. Also, are you making a judgement call, suggesting that Van Gough deserved the more more because in retrospect he's "the better artist?"
2- Compare Van Gogh to a contemporary artist- like Tchaikovsky.
3- Marxist criticism isn't responsible for speculative markets, but provides a platform for critiquing them. The suggestion that the critique is the blame is like saying code updates are the cause for the subsequent violations.
4- Compare google to Van Gogh, and google to Jay Z...
Do you find this information primary or secondary to enjoying this art? For me I enjoy the art as primary and Marxist critique and secondary. I was expecting the top earning artist of today to be Koons or something but Jay Z is more interesting to get to the bottom of what this About — which is trying to change the past instead of improve the future
So you jump a century, ignore the growth of capital and the subsequent art markets that increased the value of your preferred artist after the fact, and cross over mediums- just to say "I don't like rap." fair...
But I do like rap though. These are two art forms that dominate their time periods. Comparing them displays the absurdity of Marxist logic. Might as well look at spreadsheets. Which is the politics du jour unfortunately
Nah, your application is glib and way too sweeping, all to say "see? critique or conceptualizing beyond image is bad."
That’s exactly what you are supporting — postmodernism is all about the image or narrative not the quality of art itself
Picasso was a communist until his death, but many communists rejected Guernica. They wanted social realism.
"His avant-garde painting was not something [the Soviets] could accept," said author and historian David Caute. "They regarded it as decadent and formalistic and influenced by Western capitalist aesthetics."
https://www.dw.com/en/picasso-...
The class will also consider art in relation to “questions of gender, class and ‘race’” and discuss its involvement with Western capitalism, Barringer wrote. Its relationship with climate change will be a “key theme,” he wrote.
These are all important matters, of course, but if they are the primary emphasis they reduce art to a set of conditions and biases, which are always there—and still need to be examined. Lost, however, the transformative, expressive power of art—any art from anywhere. All the arts are suffering from diminished conversation, either by the academy or by the market. The humanities have become an endangered species.
By all means enlarge the canon and criticize it sharply, but keep art separate and remember what makes art art, what makes it vital.
Well said. I’m thankful academia is opening up the canon to women, people of color, and all humans, but art is great because it speaks to us as human beings, regardless of race, creed
Introduction to Eastern Art History changed by life, seriously. Freshman year, needed a filler class, the reading introduced me to even Descartes (Western Philosophy) - I doubted my history and questioned everything.
I’d bet a million dollars the university bureaucrats gutting this popular class are the same failed types that didn’t have the grit to try to be an artist themselves, so they “pivoted” into a career of imposing half-baked politics on others. A bunch of mean spirited nuns and Pervy priests telling us what to think, that the Dinosaurs and man lived together, etc
You can chalk this up as the new powergrab template for socialists who don’t want to compete. Instead of learning your craft, you can instead “cancel” the entire subject matter and take over. Which is all fine and well until people come in, sit down and start listening to what you have to say. Then you can see how far yelling “ colonial oppression!” At everything goes before people start looking at you as the problem not the solution
If you cancelled an art appreciation course because the artists were predominately 'dead black guys' it would be the worst kind of racism but it is apparently OK to trash dead white guys? The quality of the art has nothing to do with their skin color or whether they are alive or not. I cannot imagine anything more useless than being in the presence of the Pieta and spending my time wondering if Michangelo was white, or gay, or one of the other 57 woke genders, or how the sculpture related to global warming. Someone should call out this Yale twit and ask her why the opinion of 'white menopausal professors' counts for anything and observe how she responds.
duuuuuuuuuumb.
reading the article - again- to bring up some points.
1-" But this change is the latest response to student uneasiness over an idealized Western “canon” — a product of an overwhelmingly white, straight, European and male cadre of artists."
This means enrollment was going down. In an age of competing general education courses like this one, liberal arts courses and departments are seen as secondary or financial burdens. They compete for operation dollars based on course enrollment, you can't do things they were always done. These adjustments are being made in response to a: changing student body. Proof you say? "While concerns about the class’s singular focus in Western art has led to its cancellation, student enrollment in Barringer’s course skyrocketed this semester after the department’s plan was announced." Updated the course content and enrollment comes back up to a sustainable level.
and b: increased pressures from administrations (read: provosts and deans, not chairs and directors).
2-Exclusive Western Canon is not going away, it's just getting expanded and right-sized. "Barringer wrote that the emphasis would be placed on the relationship between European art and other world traditions. The class will also consider art in relation to “questions of gender, class and ‘race’” and discuss its involvement with Western capitalism, Barringer wrote.
also
"Instead of this singular survey class, the Art History Department will soon offer a range of others, such as “Art and Politics,” “Global Craft,” “The Silk Road” and “Sacred Places.” Barringer added that in two or three years, his department will offer a substitute class to “Introduction to Art History."
You mean financial viability, and stability of the course, came at the expense of wypipo tears?
The truth. Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder.
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