Saturday, December 17, 2011

More wishful thinking, what if there was a reference guide for MFAs?

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Teachers-Book-Lists-J-B/dp/0787974242

I think I love making lists, something to represent the opposite of how my mind actually works, tangible, orderly, something I can reference.

So just like the list of lectures that I wish existed, here are chapters for a book I wish existed and some of the people, places and things that might be listed in them. Seriously look through the Artists Book of Lists if you ever get a chance, it's fascinating to see all of that information in one place.

Main chapters:
  • Getting rid of baggage and pushing new boundaries for yourself
    • Top twenty-five of the most radical and experimental art programs (including graduate schools, low-residencies and others)
    • All of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies
    • Constraints that artists use to distill or direct work
      • Oubapo
    • Top art libraries and resource centers by country
    • List of Experimental Films from 1920 - 1980 by country
    • Archives/museums that allow artists to interpret their collection
    • 50 myths of the lives of artists as portrayed in popular culture
    • Artists and their alter-egos/pen names
    • A list of all the people who were involved with Black Mountain College
    • Important writing reflecting on having the confidence to make art
      • Letter to a Young Artist
  • Sustainable practices
    • The different types of artists and their different audiences/venues
    • The wheel of diversifying the ways of supporting the production of work
      • grants
      • residencies
      • low-overhead
      • fiscal sponsorship
    • Top 50 most prestigious artist collections private and corporate
    • List of artists who died young due to their materials
    •  
    • List of artists who quit going to college and started a band or another interesting field of work 
    • History of artist lawsuits
      • Shepard Fairey
      • Whistler
  • Concepts
    • Books and quotes that reference how fictional memories are as important as notated history in getting the feel just right (and reference it directly by breaking the narrative while telling the story)
      • The Things They Carried
      • Girl Interrupted
    • Artworks and quotes that references the infinite or feedback loops
    • Different ways that artists understand and use the term "The Body"
    • Names of philosophers and philosophical ideas important to the changes and development in art
    • Artworks referenced in philosophy or by scholars
      • Walter Benjamin referencing Paul Klee's Angelus Novus to describe history's relationship to progress.
  • Materials and Techniques
    • List of painters who became installation artists
    • As of 2011 a list of most useful and newest manufacturing techniques and mediums 
    • Companies that hire artists to promote their new art products
    • 50 different ways to frame a single work of art
    • Art materials that are banned in California but not yet in other places
    • List of resources to fair use free archived sounds
    • List of historical and non-graffiti forms of defacement
    • Artists who use humans as a medium
    • Works where the medium was the message
  • Attaching art to other causes, issues and topics
    • List of TED talks that combine art with another social science or hard science
    • Artists who started off at a high level in another profession before turning to the arts
      • Anthropologists who wrote fictional novels
    • Names of artists who engage in a social practice
    • Organizations/Residencies that seek artists for creating social works
    • Artists who have been censored and the list of the institutions that censored them 
    • Scientists and mathematicians who collaborated with artists or did art themselves
      • Buckminster Fuller

That would be a start...

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