The Black Mountain Matrix (EL 0176 S13)
Robert Creeley
Email: Robert_Creeley@brown.edu
Office: CW (863-3499); usually available Wednesdays 10-12 or else by appointment
The pattern of this course will defined by the fact that it is a seminar, accommodating twenty students of various student rank; that its focus and materials are extensive rather than intensive; and that both “subject” and information are a matrix, rather than a fixed or staticized information. In other words, all roads lead out of Rome, rather than into, in this instance.
So the overall pattern of the seminar will be a number of focal points, which can serve both as points of location and departure, as follows:
1) the college and its faculty in their various histories and extensions, i.e., relation to the Bauhaus and to other institutions in this country as the Art Institute of Chicago; and
2) particular persons who can be used as ‘evidence’ of the college’s programs and effects; specifically
a) Josef Albers,
b) M.C. Richards,
c) John Cage and
d) Charles Olson.
These foci permit a range extending from four specific arts and/or disciplines (visual art (Albers), ceramics/education (Richards), music/philosophy (Cage), and literature/ poetics/archaeology (Olson).
Insofar as Black Mountain College was that place where people were more engaged by what they didn’t know than what they did – as one of its students, the sculptor John Chamberlain, put it – it is appropriate that a significant amount of the seminar’s commitment be given to research by its participants and that the information thus gathered be shared communally. It will be my responsibility, among others, to manage a listserv for the simple posting and sharing of such information as well as to bring it forward in timely discussion in the seminar itself.
It is also planned to bring in visitors with particular relation to our gaining an information of the college. One guest presently committed is Vincent Katz, the curator and editor of Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art (MIT Press, 2003). The writer Michael Rumaker will also be able to join us for an afternoon. His Black Mountain Days, A Memoir has just been published by Black Mountain Press and will be used as a text.
Insofar as the seminar meets once a week, one can propose a a characteristic meeting to consist of a review of information gathered, an exchange of propositions and facts concerning the college and its persons, a conversation particular to the focus of that day, whether of the college’s general disposition, a particular faculty member or artist, or the apparent consequences of the college and its students and faculty more generally. There will also be those occasions when a guest and/or visitor is given authority to inform the seminar as his or her information makes possible – a range that might well extend from slides, to lecture, to performance, depending on the specific person.
1) Ed. Vincent Katz,
BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE: EXPERIMENT IN ART, hardcover.
ISBN: 0262112795.
MIT Press.
2) Michael Rumaker,
BLACK MOUNTAIN DAYS, paper.
ISBN: 0-9649020-8-7.
Black
Mountain Press
3) Josef Albers,
INTERACTION OF COLOR, paper.
ISBN: 0300018460.
Yale University
Press.
4) M.C. Richards,
CENTERING, paper.
ISBN: 0819562009.
Wesleyan University
Press.
5) John Cage,
SILENCE, paper.
ISBN: 0819560286.
Wesleyan University Press.
6) Charles Olson, ed. Creeley,
SELECTED WRITINGS, paper.
ASIN: 0811201287.
New Directions.
Other suggested texts:
Fielding Dawson, THE BLACK MOUNTAIN BOOK (OP).
Martin Duberman, BLACK MOUNTAIN, AN EXPLORATION IN COMMUNITY (OP)
Mary Emma Harris, THE ARTS AT BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE (MIT Press)
Given the nature of our meetings, no strict determination of materials and reading is finally possible. I’ll expect that those enrolled will use the assigned texts (those I have asked you to get) as a basic and necessary inform-ation and reference for the seminar’s activity. The order to be used is as follows:
September: General information of the college itself and its shifting administration and foci.
(Black Mountain: Experiment in Art; Black Mountain Days)
October: Continuing discussion of the college’s persons and determinants (Albers and M.C. Richards).
(Interaction of Color; Centering)
November: Continuing discussion of the college’s persons and determinants (Cage and Olson).
(Silence; (Olson) Selected Writings)
December: Summary and digression.Requirements and conditions:
Participants are expected to develop and substantiate their own lines of inquiry, culminating in a 40 page final paper (which can be done in one to four parts at the choice of the student). Limited to 20 students.