bau4: headbanging futurisms

I walk into class and I get faces. Re­al­ly de­pressed stu­dent faces. I ask what’s up and: ‘We’ve dis­cussed it. Our work is BAD.’

Fol­lowed by ‘We’re in a teacher-in­duced, de­pressed class­room.’

My re­sponse: ‘No, no, no, no, no, you’re not putting this on me. We’re go­ing to talk this through.’

Some­how my sys­tem of (1) give them tools and things to read, re­search, learn, fol­lowed up with (2) a prob­lem to solve – wasn’t work­ing. So we spent a lot of time tak­ing every­thing apart. Fig­ur­ing out what went awry.

That is, once I get stu­dents to ac­tu­al­ly open their closed draw­ing pads. So I can ac­tu­al­ly see the work they are hid­ing from me.

not my best work
Again, the for­mer Wal­dorf stu­dent jumps in and (for the most part) nails it. But was throw­ing around com­ments like, ‘This is hor­ri­ble,’ with ‘Home­work was con­fus­ing’ and ‘I have ex­pec­ta­tions; I want to make it some­thing, I want it to be more!’ with strong feel­ings about how screwed up her wa­ter­colours were. And how they were the worst pick of me­dia for this project. And she wished she could know how to use ’em bet­ter.

For im­prove­ment, I men­tion seek­ing out wa­ter me­dia artist Dale Laiti­nen. He works BIG. I love his in­dus­tri­al work, even though land­scapes sell much bet­ter. He teach­es work­shops lo­cal­ly. Go find. (I usu­al­ly drop any ref­er­ences to any­thing that’ll help. First time I saw Dale’s HUGE work I got dizzy.)

Dale Laiti­nen, Over The Top
Chica­go oil on linen, 42×72 inch­es

As we get into the work, we dis­cov­er in­ter­est­ing re­la­tion­ships be­tween Itten’s col­or the­o­ry ap­plied to the sub­jects of POL­I­TICS and POW­ER. She ex­plains, ‘Rip­pled ef­fect with tri­an­gles is the in­tent, push, take, give, ap­plied to po­lit­i­cal pow­er.’ There’s one line of han­dlet­tered MAT­TER go­ing up against a jagged red bar (in­flu­enced by barbed wire) de­signed to keep things out.

We dis­cuss how it could go a bit far­ther – maybe the bar is more jagged or more of an an­gle to the MAT­TER line; ei­ther way it DOES work. Works well.

The stu­dent is hav­ing a hard time with ab­strac­tion, which is typ­i­cal for most hu­mans. We WANT re­al­ism! It’s nor­mal to feel un­com­fort­able with it, which is why it took so long to catch on. I men­tion we’re go­ing to be study­ing Kandin­sky, who is cred­it­ed with in­vent­ing ab­stract art (which isn’t quite true – the Fu­tur­ists did. Well, sort of. They had it, but sort of didn’t show it. It was even too weird for them.) (Info in this book).

I then ref­er­ence Against Kandin­sky, which breaks out what he was up against.

chan­nel­ing fu­tur­is­mo?
She talks about what her piece would look like if there were hu­mans added – and I re­mind the group that we’re work­ing with are the build­ing blocks for com­po­si­tions; you can add a dose of re­al­ism as it were, but work­ing di­rect­ly with the form is bet­ter than adding ma­te­ri­als at this point.

I’m start­ing to feel – in today’s class – that I’m re­peat­ing my­self. A lot. More on that in a bit.

Then I have them look up work from the Fu­tur­ists. It IS great stu­dents have phones with the in­ter­webs on it. They can ref­er­ence through an im­age search and have ma­te­ri­als on their screens fast, quick. They find Rus­so­lo.

Lui­gi Rus­so­lo, The Re­volt, 1911

Cries of ‘You pla­gia­rized this!’ are de­fend­ed with No, you cre­at­ed your own thing and just hap­pened to recre­ate some­thing that al­ready ex­ists. But dif­fer­ent. It IS your piece.

I go over a brief his­to­ry of Fu­tur­ism (with a bit on how I ref­er­enced it for FLomm) – minds are blown by the work of Um­ber­to Boc­cioni (1882–1916).

Um­ber­to Boc­cioni, Horse+Rider+Houses

Um­ber­to Boc­cioni, States of Mind II: Those Who Go, 1911

Um­ber­to Boc­cioni, Ma­te­ria, 1912

We talk about Boccioni’s mom­my is­sues (that’s his po­tente mam­ma in the last piece). And lead Fu­tur­ist Marinet­ti pissed off a lot of peo­ple – in­clud­ing sup­port­ing gen­der in-equal­i­ty even though he was pussy whipped by his wife. And Fas­cism. And Mus­soli­ni.

‘I have a will, It’s not go­ing to con­fine!’

And it doesn’t. For her next piece, I point out the messi­ness of the wa­ter­colours are what helps.

This study ref­er­ences her ear­li­er work a lot clos­er – start­ing with a hand hold­ing on to barbed wire and tak­en to ab­strac­tion. I bring up metaphors, how the en­er­gy lines can be in­ter­pret­ed as mo­tion, high­ways, pipes on an or­gan; only crit­i­cal change I’d con­sid­er is to put more of an an­gle on the el­e­ments, but they do work. I in­ter­pret a squig­gle (at top) as a rod and staff ‘guard­ing sheep,’ not her in­tent, but it does lend it­self to mean­ing. Like po­et­ry, like mu­sic, ab­stract art is open to in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

At this point I con­sid­er ref­er­enc­ing De Sti­jl – but I de­cide to keep it out of the course right now. We’re still at a point his­tor­i­cal­ly where De Sti­jl hasn’t yet tak­en over the Bauhaus.

Af­ter two good cri­tiques, she’s shocked her pieces work. And for the first time this quar­ter, tears come. Hap­py tears.

‘The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Per­fect con­fi­dence is grant­ed to the less tal­ent­ed as a con­so­la­tion prize.’
—Robert Hugh­es

‘My process: Bang my head against the wall for four days straight.’
—stu­dent

‘Yeah, I saw him dri­ving on the free­way – bang­ing his head on the win­dow!’
—oth­er stu­dent

I go on break, come back. See the fold­ed arms, slouch. Big dent in wall.

shiny stars
Else­where, I have two stu­dents who were ab­sent last week who’ve done noth­ing to catch up. They missed the part (in my syl­labus legale­sus, which they’ve signed) that they’re re­spon­si­ble for every­thing we cov­er in any class they miss. I don’t col­lect late work (an­oth­er one of my things) – but they do have to get caught up. With the read­ing, MAX (and his lit­tle bud­dy Hitler) et cetera.

We talk about stars – cause pol­i­tics – and how hard they are to work with. Be­cause they’re tri­an­gles all point­ing away, with sort of a space in the mid­dle that could ac­tu­al­ly be a mid­dle. They dri­ve me nuts! I feel sor­ry for Macy’s run­ning with their stars every­where and some­where in there I throw in, ‘I’d like to just go back in time and slap Bet­sy Ross.’

The rest of the class turns into an­oth­er ther­a­py ses­sion. Pret­ty much the same as be­fore – tied into stu­dents try­ing to show what they al­ready know, in­stead of work­ing on new things. In fact, new things seems to have gone out the win­dow, I see work that looks like their work went back­ward be­fore I brought in It­ten. They may have … re­set but­tons?

I try not to re­tread old ter­ri­to­ry, and at­tempt to cov­er oth­er is­sues we haven’t dis­cussed, such as home­work feel­ing so much like home­work, it’s nat­ur­al for stu­dents to not want to do it.

I men­tioned I have had the I think this is a cool as­sign­ment, but I didn’t do it ’cause it feels like home­work thing be­fore. Enough that I once cor­nered our So­ci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor (who has at least 5 de­grees in hu­man stud­ies) and asked, ‘How do I make home­work not feel like home­work?’

He laughed and kept walk­ing.

Four class­es in, I’m find­ing some of the stu­dents are not read­ing (with ex­cus­es), not do­ing re­search, leav­ing their home­work at home (I have this stu­dent recre­ate her work in class) and do­ing what­ev­er feels com­fort­able as their work, avoid­ing what they don’t want to do. As a re­sult: much of the work isn’t very good. And doesn’t con­tain what they should be learn­ing.

I ask an­oth­er stu­dent to show his home­work and he said, ‘I didn’t do it.’

I blunt­ly re­spond with ‘That’s an F then … next stu­dent,’ and made a note of his grade.

He then de­clares, ‘How dare you! Shame me like that. I’m an adult. I’m pay­ing 30 grand for this school! I’ll de­cide what work I’ll do and not do.’

Every­one falls silent. We move on.

Af­ter two hours of dis­cus­sion, I no­tice an­oth­er student’s note­book – there’s a blank page with the word Notes at top. I ask why it’s blank and the re­ply is: ‘No one has said any­thing im­por­tant yet.’

I re­main pos­i­tive, use slides to in­tro­duce them to the third con­cept – PLANE – talk at lot about the im­ages and how they work, how the planes are con­struct­ed to lead the viewer’s eye around the poster ex­am­ples. The talk a lot about how the colour is work­ing (Itten’s in­flu­ence). We then veer into home­work:

RE­SEARCH the work of Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky (1866–1944)

Bring in your re­search for next class. Be pre­pared to present your find­ings in any way you see fit. Read a re­port, slides, video, per­for­mance art, what­ev­er.

And ‘if class is bor­ing, it’s on you.’

Also: Find a piece of scrap: met­al, pa­per, garbage, some­thing that re­minds you of Kandinsky’s work. Bring it to class (we’re go­ing to work with it).

Plus, READ De­sign Ba­sics Chap­ter 4, pages 70–71; 82–85

Bonus: Start­ing next week we’re go­ing to be us­ing con­cepts from the web­site FOTO­FORM. Drop by, take a look at the site. There’s usu­al­ly a lot of ques­tions con­cern­ing the con­cepts, so have some. So I can clar­i­fy be­fore you jump in.

high note
As a group, they de­cide they want to do bet­ter work. I tell them they’re go­ing to love the mu­sic part of Kandin­sky.

They set out to tack­le the work, while I stay be­hind to talk to the blank Notes stu­dent, who also had no home­work (which makes it hard for me to as­sess what the stu­dent is ac­tu­al­ly learn­ing). I ask how the class is go­ing and I get I’m not used to this kind of work, and I don’t talk to any­one. I give a pos­i­tive pep talk, and hope it hits its mark. Though the mes­sage I’m get­ting is: I’m not go­ing to do any­thing out­side my area of com­fort. Even though there was a smile upon leav­ing.

‘Nev­er tell me the odds.’
—Han Solo

This stu­dent is into Star Wars. I’m go­ing to come at it from this an­gle.

—steve mehal­lo

Im­age up top: OCD-or­ga­nized desk space

Paul New­man im­age by Ralph Schraivo­gel: Used in my slides as a PLANE ex­am­ple with Kandin­sky spec­ta­cles I added to make home­work more ex­cit­ing!

Last year, FLOMM founder Steve Mehal­lo re­built a de­sign fun­da­men­tals course into a five week study of the­o­ries and work done at The Bauhaus (1919–33). This BAU blog se­ries will doc­u­ment the lat­est teach­ing of the course – with les­son plan – Sum­mer 2015 to a group of 8 col­lege stu­dents. What’ll hap­pen, who’ll shine, who’ll drop. Names (and some sit­u­a­tions) have been changed to pro­tect the in­no­cent as well as the guilty.

 
co
nti
nue
read
ing —

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