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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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I grew up hanging around the university where my dad taught, I've visited universities for work, and I have meaningful ongoing relationships with lots of people who have degrees from universities. So I guess I sort of thought I had and idea of what going to university might be like. As it turns out, it's an even more immersive world than I predicted, and I feel kind of like I'm travelling to another planet (shades of high school, where my main survival mechanism was to constantly mutter to myself "I'm an alien observer here" and watch The Man Who Fell to Earth repeatedly). But, as my dear friend and colleague Rev. Earl Chunx reminded me: "You can do it. It's a real thing in the world and it's good to know about it." And I do like the fact that educated adults have contracted to help me cram a bunch of potentially useful information into my (aging) noggin.
"Methodology" is the keyword for my first week. It's really important to have one. I am going to have to figure out how to get one without losing my bearings completely. Wikipedia says this:
Methodology refers to more than a simple set of methods; rather it refers to the rationale and the philosophical assumptions that underlie a particular study.So the beginning of the practice of studying art history seems to be mostly about studying the history of art history. I'm good with that! I like meta-levels. But, while dissecting the constructed narratives of western thought, it's a little tricky to figure out how I am going to participate in it.
The biggest change I can detect so far in my art-attitude is that, while I have always respected James Elkins with a certain interest and reserve, now he is my saviour and I am suddenly full of gratitude. His analyses of the history of art history are giving me a context for this whole school business that is helping me understand why I am so far feeling like an utter freak up there on the York U campus.
For instance, in this old Bad at Sports podcast, he talks about the fact that art critics are a separate breed from art historians, that criticism is not really part of academic methodology, and futhermore journalists who write about art for the popular press don't even register on the academic radar, despite the fact that in their worlds they feel very much like part of the bigger art picture. According to Elkins, most academics would never bother to cite a writer like Jerry Saltz. It's weird (is it true? I'll have to snoop around...). Elkins believes that ideas trickle down from academics to critics and curators, into the museums and popular press (really? I always thought it all got spread around sorta laterally and spiderwebby. If not - yike!). He also makes the strange suggestion that maybe journalists should do something that would make them impossible to ignore within academia (like...like what? Intriguing.)