A Case study for GLAADH

Art History, Open University, November 2002

Catherine King

Views of Difference: Different views of art: a five week block of study representing 10 credit points out of the 60 credit point second level course ‘Art and its Histories’ A216 (1999 - present). This course functions as an introduction to art history.

Setting

The departmental context

The experiment was conducted in a department at the Open University which has a strong tradition of researching and teaching specialist courses in the field of European, Russian and U.S Modern Art and Italian Early Modern Art (the latter is my speciality area of interest) with some expertise in Eighteenth-Century European Studies. We also have a commitment at the Open University to teaching interdisciplinary courses which means that we are used to researching areas new to us in order to contribute to a new course – without assuming that this area becomes one we end up writing learned articles about. Right at the beginning of my OU career I contributed the material on art history to a course on the culture of the Roman Empire and had discovered while doing this that given sufficient research time a successful teaching contribution can be made of such an enterprise. These interdisciplinary courses include interfaculty courses such as the Issues in Women’s Studies U207 (1992) which I chaired in production, working with colleagues from science, technology and social sciences, and gaining some knowledge of debates about difference. I have also taught on successive interdisciplinary Arts Foundation Course summer schools (presently An Introduction to the Humanities A103 entailing taking responsibility for an interdisciplinary project, and tutoring in Art History and Philosophy).

Motivation

A major spur for trying to broaden the curriculum was embarrassment at being called the ‘open’ university and still having a relatively closed curriculum in Art History in the sense of being confined to discussing largely Eurocentric issues.

Chronology

The initiative was first delivered to students in February 1999 when we launched Art and its Histories A216 our first second level introduction to the discipline. We had begun planning five years earlier and were writing intensively 1996-8. The course was designed to run at least eight years and possibly longer (up to twelve years) if it were deemed a sound enterprise after four years at its Mid-Life Review and assessed later via external vetting.

Initiative

The opportunity was made possible when the course team accepted the scheme proposed by the chairwoman of A216 Gill Perry in 1994. She suggested that this new introductory course should demonstrate the making of the western European academic canons of art and discuss some of the major critiques of these canons in the form of the critiques: of those interested in avant-garde art; in gender; and in the post-colonial. It was agreed that I would edit the co-published book relating to the block of work (block 5, of six blocks) discussing the critique associated with the post-colonial. I would also contribute material to the books on the formation of the academic canons and the topic of gender and art.

See: www.open.ac.uk/Arts/arthistory/a216.htm

The downside with regard to my editing role, was that I patently was not authoritative as an ‘expert’. But the spin off was that students and staff could see that it was ‘normal’ to be interested in issues of gender and early modern Italian and Netherlandish art i.e.‘canon formation’ and post-colonial issues.

Staffing

The assisting academic staff were amateurs like myself. Three colleagues were kind enough to assist me: Professor Tim Benton who provided a case study on the late eighteenth-century Brazilian architect Aleijadinho; Dr Colin Cunningham who gave me an historiographical study of the history of Indian architecture by James Fergusson and a memorable Television programme comparing the architecture of the Victorian and the Mughal Empires in India called ‘Gothic in India; and Gill Perry who provided the section on post-modernism in the Introduction to the book.

The course was assigned an expert in distance teaching Dr Nicola Durbridge, Institute of Educational Studies, Open University, who gave intensive help in clarifying the arguments in some sections especially the Study Guide. The Associate Lecturers, who teach the students face to face and mark their assignments in the thirteen Open University Regions, were drawn from other Art History courses we had taught or were new staff. They were generous in walking forward to learn about a new area.

Two other colleagues were important in establishing the idea that looking at art and architecture made outside Europe was important and ‘routine’ at points throughout the rest of the course. They were the BBC Television producers Nick Levinson and Dr Gaya Lakshmi. Gaya made the TV programme with Colin Cunningham on Victorian and Mughal architecture specifically linked with block five as well as one comparing Palladio with Sinan presented by Dr Jaynie Anderson Church and Mosque. Nick Levinson made Television programmes on ‘West Africa: Art and Identity’ and a video on West African Textiles linked with block five. He also made a programme on ‘Women and Allegory’ comparing the representation of the feminine in French nineteenth-century political sculpture and tenth century North Indian sculpture at Khajuraho, and one on ‘Art in Australia’.

See website for Broadcasts A216 with regard to times and dates: www.bbc.co.uk/education/lzone/ou.shtml – then choose Art and Design in the menu at the bottom of the page.

Mentoring

Having some mentoring was an important factor both when deciding on the overall scheme and when checking whether the approaches to issues and their coverage were adequate and appropriate. I had met Professor Stuart Hall (then head of Sociology Open University) while chairing the Women’s Studies course so was able to ask him to take a look at my initial plans. I also had the advantage of Magnus John’s advice (then Media Librarian Open University – now Director, Library Studies, University of Sierra Leone). Gill Perry decided that as I felt so inexpert in the area I should have a second eternal assessor for the book /block appointed by the Course Team (Professor Craig Clunas, Sussex) over and above our overall course assessor (Professor Will Vaughan Birkbeck, London). This was very comforting since I felt I was ‘right out on a limb’. Through planning the video and television programme I got to know Professor John Picton, SOAS; Professor Partha Mitter Sussex; Gavin Jantjes (then Chelsea College now Director Sonja Onstad Art Centre Oslo); and Rasheed Araeen editor Third Text. Having some access to experts like them meant being able to test out ideas, being advised on correct pronunciation of unfamiliar names, and getting bibliographical tips on the way.

Description

What did you do and how?

The course components consist of: a co-published book – Views of difference: different views of art, ed. Catherine King, New Haven and London, 1999; two television programmes (Gothic in India and West Africa) and one video (Textiles in Ghana); a supporting section in the reader for the course Art and its Histories, ed. Steve Edwards, New Haven and London, 1999; and a Study Guide which advises students on how to use these course materials.

I decided that an intellectually defendable strategy for someone without expertise was to introduce students to the group of debates and questions associated with a post colonial critique of western dominated canons. Then to choose a series of case studies, each of which would overtly represent just one way of answering the questions / resolving the issues.

The core question was ‘Where did the idea that art history can be divided into the ‘west and rest’ come from, what consequences does it entail and who has criticised it?’

Students were advised that they did not need to absorb what might be a bewildering range of dates, facts, names in these case studies, but rather the general conclusions to the debate on the relevant issues derived from the examination of the data. To clarify the argument I wrote not only an Introduction and Conclusion but also a series of short prefaces to each of the case studies summing up what I considered could be deduced. The Prefaces are the ‘spine’ of the argument. I chose this methodology because I was myself faced with a vast field of possible areas for study and had to find some way of reducing the scope of the new research which I needed to do myself.

The methodology I chose in order to present post colonial critiques was to demonstrate ways in which knowledge and judgements were situated culturally.

I divided the book into two halves. The first half looked at changing ways in which art historians had interpreted and evaluated the art of areas made before they were overrun by European colonisers: ‘ancient’ art. I wanted to begin with an examination of the viewpoint of an historian who was a coloniser and see how far his views represented imperialist approaches. Colin Cunningham kindly obliged with his study of James Ferguson in the 1860s. Then I needed another viewpoint from later when colonial attitudes were beginning to come under more intense scrutiny. I found this viewpoint in a study of texts written by Ananda Coomaraswamy (half Sri Lankan and half English by birth) at the beginning of the nineteenth century. I researched this and wrote it. Then I wanted students to consider the viewpoint of someone writing after the period of European colonialism. I asked Partha Mitter to summarise some of his research on ways in which European art historians had interpreted art made in India before the sixteenth century. This part of the book was completed with a case study by Craig Clunas looking at the ways in which Chinese and European scholars had evaluated the art of an area (China) whether ancient or modern which had never come under European colonial control.

The second half of the book looked at how ‘modern’ art made in areas which were colonised by Europeans after the advent of the colonisers had been assessed and described. Again, I wanted to trace changes over quite a long period of time depending on whether observers were living under colonial control or were freed from external government. I began with Tim Benton’s case study on the way the late eighteenth-century buildings designed by Aleijadinho in Brazil had been interpreted in the 1790s and later. Then I researched and wrote two case studies myself. One showed attitudes to modern art being made in pre-independence India in the early nineteenth century with special reference to Tagore c 1930. The next case study examined attitudes to modern art being made in Nigeria after independence c 1960-1990. Again, I ‘filled in the gaps’.

The final set of questions had to do with examining the way critics and historians who see themselves as coming from the societies which once held colonial power have evaluated the work of artists whom they identify as coming from former colonies. I asked Gavin Jantjes and Rasheed Araeen as critics, curators, historians and artists to write two case studies exploring rather different viewpoints on this issue.

Having decided what the methodological structure needed to be, I was very pragmatic about the case studies, as long as they functioned in allowing the particular question I wanted, to be asked. For example, I moved towards India as a key location because Colin Cunningham was already interested in this area and Gaya Lakshmi enthused about the broadcasting possibilities and had been educated in Bangalore. They were already in contact with Partha Mitter. Nick Levinson had travelled widely in the subcontinent and was keen to film at Khajuraho. I went with the flow and researched the Coomaraswamy and Rabindranath Tagore case studies to fit in with what people would give me. The second area of focus on West Africa stemmed from my concern to show how definitions of what counts as art are called into question by the post colonial critique and my passion for John Picton’s work on African textiles. Once Nick and I had met John and we had planned a video on Textiles and a programme on West African Art I went off and wrote the case study on concepts of modern art in West Africa to fit with this bonus of expertise we were being given in the BBC projects.

Although the Open University production methods are unique, I think the lesson of ‘being pragmatic’, seeing what other colleagues will give you, and then planning what you will research from scratch to fit round them, and still making a viable set of enquiries for students, is transposable as a way of working in another institution.

Time expended

I spent about a month in 1995 looking briefly at a large number of books in the London Library so as to write the outline. At this stage I wanted to have case studies which would have included examination of issues of gender in the interpretation of the work of Edmonia Lewis and Emily Carr. I also became a member of the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies. I spent three months in 1997 writing the first drafts of three case studies. I spent four months writing the second drafts of the case studies, the Introduction, Conclusion and Prefaces in 1998. I spent a month putting together the reader section of texts and a further month writing the Study Guide in 1998. Large amounts of time were also spent discussing their drafts with contributors, chasing picture search, improving captions, editing texts, writing scripts and conducting interviews in 1997-8.

Evaluation

Statistical analysis of the large numbers of students taking this course (i.e. 2,600 in the first year, now down to a bit under 1,000) show that on the compulsory assignment set on this block students do as well as, or better than, they do on other assignments.

However, when it comes to the optional question in the exam only roughly one tenth of the students choose this option. (There are six blocks of questions, each on one of the books of the course, and students need to choose three questions from three different blocks). This option is the least popular. However those students who do choose this question tend to do a little better than other students on the exam. They derive from a group of students who can be shown statistically to have done slightly better on the continuous assessment scores too.

Therefore all students are getting the chance to study a wider curriculum and their continuous assessment scores prove that they have understood the issues raised. The small minority choosing to take the exam option demonstrate that some students feel confident enough to shine in what is still a new field of studies for the discipline, and which they are relatively unlikely to have access to in the range of books, periodicals or classes held in their local area.

Because of the way the course was planned as a whole and our view that it would be of value for students to study this block after they have looked at the ideas of the European avant garde, this book is studied in the summer when the institution holds fewer or no seminars. We are now planning a tutor pack giving tutors ideas on how to encourage students to tackle this option in the exam using seminar slots in early summer and the autumn before their October scheduled exams. I would recommend arranging the sequence of teaching so that innovations in the curriculum are extra well supported with tutorial assistance.

The positioning of issues to do with ‘the west and the rest’ in one block/book was a pragmatic, not ideal, solution. Although television programmes covering a wide range of issues were placed across the year’s schedule, students were not able to make the very fullest use of their scope because the material on issues of cultural diversity was not embedded in all the blocks. I regret not being capable of including discussion of a diversity of issues of difference as well as cultural difference in block 5. It would have taken another period of research and thinking which I just did not have. However, it is better to make an intervention in the curriculum, which is less than perfect, rather than ‘do nothing’.

What effects has it had?

In conjunction with the innovations in other departments the Arts Faculty is getting used to the idea that issues of cultural difference will become more of an expected element in many courses. In the department itself we are ensuring that such issues are considered in all our future courses. This entails our new course Art of the Twentieth Century (2004) and our planned course on contested definitions of, and changing concepts of the boundaries of, Early Modern European Art (2007). We are presently writing our new Taught MA (2004) in which we are introducing different methodological approaches to art history. I have just completed the first draft of the block entitled Iconographical approaches examined and I am using the work of Erwin Panofsky (Early Modern Northern Italian Art) and Devangana Desai (Medieval North Indian Art) to discuss the issues. In 1999 we made a new appointment of a permanent member of staff with specific expertise in issues of the post colonial - Dr Niru Ratnam who is participating in all these new projects.