Page 41 - Studio International - September 1966

What kind of art education?

Right Note on Black Mountain College
• Robert Rauchenberg's Founded in 1933 at Black Mountain, N. Carolina, by a breakaway
self-portrait 'blue-print', group from Rollin's College in Florida (itself experimental), the
reproduced in Life Magazine
group of four professors and fifteen students was headed by Professor
• in April 1951. As an attempt
John A. Rice.
to present the thing itself,
An early prospectus says: 'The aims are to keep the college so small
chosen, pointed out, but not
• re-drawn by the artist's that no one person will ever have to devote full time to administrative
dramatic style, it relates to work and, by integrating academic work with community life, to
non-matrixed 'events'. develop rescourcefulness and general intellectual and emotional
• While a student at Black fitness.
Mountain, Rauschenberg was `Students and instructors associate on an equal basis, residing in
mainly interested in photo-
the same buildings and working together in classroom, dining hall,
- graphy. He made some blue- field, and forest. There are no required courses, no fraternities or
print photographs by placing
sororities, and no football team. Students are responsible for their
objects on light sensitive
• paper which was then own work and conduct. Emphasis is laid upon the plastic arts, music
exposed. These early 'blue- and drama. Final examinations are given by professors from other
prints' were acquired by the institutions.'
• Museum of Modern Art, N.Y. The College was directed by the teaching body who owned and
operated it. Up to the late 'thirties the influence of John Dewey and
Below the social ethics of education were strong. Then in the late 'thirties an
▪ A plate from Jargon 30, 1958, influx of ex-Bauhaus teachers arrived. Joseph Albers became director
the Black Mountain magazine
which Fielding Dawson, the and emphasized art as thinking, organization, and function. In 1949
poet, illustrated with drawings Albers left to become head of Yale School of Design. In August 1949
and collages. The text mixed Buckminster Fuller and Charles Olson contested leadership. Buck-
references to Catullus and minster Fuller and his group left. Olson subsequently became rector.
heavyweight boxers; a (This was the period of Jargon Press, Origin and Black Mountain
tweedy kind of 'hip' was Review, and of collaboration with the poets Olson, Creeley, Duncan,
typical of Black Mountain
and Dawson. Painters teaching at Black Mountain during this time
at this time. The photo- included: Kline, Motherwell, de Kooning, Vicente, Guston—mostly
collage was a useful way of
for the summer schools.)
• producing a figurative image
Common aesthetic ground between the painters and poets—'con-
which was chosen and re-
assembled. It avoided the ception cannot be abstracted from doing, beauty is related to the
• expressionist nature of a beauty of an archer hitting the mark' (R. Duncan; Notes on Poetics
figuration shaped by the Regarding Olson's 'Maximus', Black Mountain Review). Compare
artist. Harold Rosenberg's remark about American Action Painters—'the
canvas was not a picture but an event', 'an arena in which to act'.
In the summer of 1952 John Cage arranged a 'simultaneous pre-
sentation of unrelated events'. M. C. Richards recited from a step-
ladder, C. Olson intervened from the audience, David Tudor played
the piano, Robert Rauschenberg operated a hand-wound gramo-
phone. Merce Cunningham improvised a dance. Films were projected
on the walls.
In 1956 the College closed.

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