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Monday, November 28, 2005
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UD SALUTES… Margaret Root, art history professor at the University of Michigan and apparently the only person on campus who understands what art is. There’s this bas relief on a campus building, sculpted decades ago, which among other things depicts a young girl dreaming of marriage and a young man dreaming of sailing. This juxtaposition has so offended students and faculty that administrators recently took advantage of some maintenance work being done on the building to remove and relocate to a more obscure campus location these upsetting elements of the sculpture. They put the rest of the bas relief back on the building. They just suppressed the girl/boy thing.  Here's the work crew scrambling all over her to get her out of there.And why not? After all, any sculpture is merely a political bullhorn, and when it blows sexist, off it goes. Here are a bunch of comments about the bas relief from faculty and administration observers, every one of the comments sandblasted of any sense that a category of object called “art” exists. The bas relief is not art but a (1.) VISUAL REPRESENTATION: “The visual representation doesn’t seem to hold the same respect for women as it does men.” The world is full of visual representations - which I suppose we define as anything we can see - and some are insufficiently respectful of women. These must be put away. (2.) TEACHABLE MOMENT: “My own general view about anachronistic statements of value is that you ought to use them as opportunities to teach.” (Before we go to the substance of this statement, pause a moment with UD to savor the snobbery in this comment from an ex-provost involved in the removal decision. “My own general view…” Can’t you see one of those men on the street that Monty Python used to feature commenting on issues of the day talking like this?) Again there’s nothing one would call “art” -- at best, there are teachable or non-teachable moments in the form of visual representations. If we can firmly establish that this or that visual representation will teach us something -- and not just anything, but something with the right values, which in this case would mean teaching us how anachronistic it is to imagine that a lot of women wish to marry -- then maybe we could allow that representation to continue to exist. Otherwise, away with you. (3.) NON-HAPPENING THING “The vision that the bas reliefs convey is better suited to a historical context than as a representation of the dreams we hold for Michigan’s men and women students in the 21st century.” That fucker’s so yesterday. Dump it. All of this left Professor Root all alone out there, to twist slowly, slowly in the wind, as she attempted to convey her despair. “I was adamant that they should not be removed,” she says. Indeed so upset was Professor Root by this insipid controversy that she even devoted one of her classes last semester to the way throughout history philistines have failed to grasp the concept of “art.“ But in vain. Forget the possibility that the sculptor (who died a few years ago) might have wanted to maintain the formal integrity of his piece. If thy bas relief offends thee, fails to teach thee, or was producedeth before 1960, pluck it out. |