The TAS art and music program is in strong restructuring phase. Unlike, say, the Math Curriculum, the art curriculum has become a bit ad hoc. Productive and enjoyable, but hardly the kind of philosophically coherent experience we would all prefer. On this blog, open for all to see, will be (hopefully) the working out of the various problems we face in creating it.
Too many people see art as either something that other, talented people do, or something that is consumed like any other product. Both of those statements are true to an extent: other, talented people do make art and we do consume it in the form of exhibitions, books, reproductions, recordings, and so forth. But instead of seeing genius as something remote, perhaps we should look at exceptional, almost beyond-human artists such as Picasso as gates to our own world. They are teaching us to see, to hear, to taste.
If we merely buy posters or mp3's and they serve only as background or to heighten or memorialize certain experiences, then what are they? They are products, no more. But if an interesting meal inspires you to become more involved in how and what you eat for weeks at a time, than that is something far more.
Our art and music program should point in one direction: that our students become deeply engaged in the materials that make up our lives: light, sound, time, speech, food, relationships, space...
I believe we all experience this quality of engagement on occasion. It is a form of enlightenment- it passes quickly and cannot be held onto, but it happens. Let's have it happen over and over.
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