- Thank you. I know a lot of people here don't know me, so I'll introduce myself. My name is Jerry Bepko.
- I'm privileged and honored to be serving as interim president. It's still not loud enough, I think.
- Is it getting better? No, I've got people in the left rear there who can't hear anything. I haven't
- said much yet, but. How is this?
- We're getting there, thank you. Maybe I should try to get as close as possible to the microphone, like
- the rock singers do. As I tried to say a moment ago, many of you may not know me and I want to introduce
- myself. I'm Jerry Bepko, I'm privileged to serve you in these months, in this spring term as interim
- president.
- of IU and I'm very happy to be here this afternoon to be a part of the group that is opening Arts Week
- 2003. I'm very excited about this because I think it goes to the heart of who we are and what we do
- as members of a university community. We often talk about the three missions of the university. These
- are first to provide the best education possible to the broadest range of learners.
- Secondly, to discover new knowledge and break new ground in all fields, including the arts. And finally,
- as a public university, to be actively engaged with the publics we serve. We have a clear obligation
- to improve and enrich the lives of the citizens whose tax dollars and philanthropy support our enterprise.
- Arts Week showcases our progress
- in each of these three mission areas. And it does so in really dramatic and dynamic ways. But
- most importantly, Arts Week points to what is the essential work of a great university like Indiana
- University, and that is to inspire our students and our friends and our supporters. IU has long adhered
- to the proposition that learning about and appreciating the arts is an essential part of becoming
- a well-educated person. As David Starr Jordan, the IU president who instituted our liberal arts curriculum,
- once noted, the whole of one's life must be spent in one's own company, and only the truly educated
- person is good company for himself. Acquaintance with the arts not only makes us better company for
- ourselves, but also for others. It makes us better citizens because it raises fresh questions
- about our relationship to others and to the social and natural world. As teachers and researchers, our
- job is to ask good questions and to come up with good answers whenever possible. Knowledge production
- in a research university like IU is most often associated with scientific discoveries, but one need
- only tour the exhibition of faculty and student art that is opening today
- or attend the premier performance of an original music composition by an IU faculty member, or to grasp
- an important truth about, in order to grasp an important truth about the arts. In the same way the discovery
- of a new subatomic particle can alter our understanding of the world and our place in it, so can the
- creation of a new novel or sculpture or piece of music.
- John Kennedy in his October 1963 tribute to Robert Frost put it this way, when poetry leads, with apologies
- for the gender references, when power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations.
- When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his
- existence.
- When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truths, which must serve as
- the touchstones of our judgment. Arts Week is also a wonderful example of civic engagement and partnerships
- in a knowledge-based economy that places a high premium on innovation. The arts provide an essential
- model for the creative process.
- I'm sure many people here attended Richard Florida's lecture about the rise of the creative class, which
- he identifies as the major growth sector of the economy. Like Arts Week as a whole, that lecture was
- a partnership enterprise jointly sponsored by the university, local businesses, and the Bloomington
- Economic Development Corporation. Thanks to work like that, which Richard Florida is doing,
- we've become aware of the fact that building a 21st century economy in Indiana requires us to make use
- of our cultural capital and to use it to attract this growing creative class. As a result, cultural
- tourism efforts with events such as Bloomington's Loftus World Music Festival or the Indy Jazz Fest
- in Indianapolis as magnets have become essential features of economic development across the state.
- I've become especially focused on these thoughts since being appointed to the Indianapolis Mayor's Commission
- on Cultural Tourism. The creative class has always found a home at IU. That is true in part because
- IU embodies the diversity of gender, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation that Florida points to
- as one of the prerequisites for creativity. We value that diversity and we're committed to nurturing it.
- Another aspect of this diversity is IU's outstanding achievement in a wide variety of the arts and sciences,
- from theater to creative writing to information technology. This enables the kind of fruitful
- cross-pollination that is apparent, for instance, in computer-generated visual art or music. Excellence
- in the arts and humanities is a bright and strong motif in the rich tapestry of IU's history.
- Our grand traditions in the liberal arts promote the ideal of knowledge as an end in itself, as an experience
- that ennobles our lives. As John Kennedy also said, the nation or the community which disdains the mission
- of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having nothing to look backward to
- with pride and nothing to look forward to with hope.
- As humanists and artists, we have a sacred trust to transmit the past to the future and to add our own
- creative voices to the continuing dialogue about our shared humanity. Arts Week illustrates some of
- the many ways we are doing that, and it shows how we are remaining true to that trust. It is indeed
- an example of our pride in the past and our hope for the future.
- But most of all, it is evidence of our ability to continue to inspire and delight one another. Before
- moving on in the program, I'd like to offer my compliments and the university's gratitude to Professor
- Kim Walker, who is Director of Artistic and Cultural Outreach. Thank her for her fine work on Arts Week
- and thanks also to the City of Bloomington and Mayor John Fernandez for collaborating
- to make this a genuine town gown enterprise. And now it's my great pleasure to introduce Sharon Brim,
- our excellent chancellor of the IU Bloomington campus, whose devotion to the arts is an encouragement
- to all of us. Sharon.
- President Betko. It's a great pleasure to be here with all of you. And I just want President Betko to
- know how very, very much we on the Bloomington campus appreciate his leadership during this crucial
- transition for Indiana University. We are extremely fortunate to have such a knowledgeable, highly skilled,
- dedicated, and now here's the most important characteristic for tonight, arts-loving,
- interim president. So we're so glad to have you here with us tonight. There is of course plenty of art
- to love throughout Indiana and in Indianapolis, but tonight it's just such a special pleasure to be
- here gathered together to celebrate the arts in Bloomington both on the campus and in the community.
- As we all know, the treasure trove of Bloomington art is a very large one, filled with all sorts of
- precious objects and performances, constantly replenished by our active, creative, and prolific artists.
- Speaking personally, the arts in Bloomington have been an enormous source of pleasure and inspiration
- for me ever since I came to town in the summer of 2001.
- It is a great joy to be able to support and encourage the arts here. And I am particularly impressed
- by the increasing ability of the town and gown to work together on arts projects. And so I, too, I want
- to join with Interim President Bebko in thanking both John Fernandez and Kim Walker for their excellent
- work in promoting this collaboration.
- I know that John cannot be here tonight, but I'm sure Tom Gravera will let him know that we are very
- grateful for his excellent work as well on this endeavor. You do know, I hope, that if you give the
- podium to a chancellor, she's likely to use it. And so tonight, in addition to welcoming all of you
- to Arts Week and indicating my strong support for the arts in Bloomington, I want to announce the opening
- of a major fundraising campaign for the Bloomington campus.
- one that fully embodies IU's commitment to diversity as just stated by President Bebko. As many of you
- know, last spring the campus went through yet another controversy about the Benton mural in Woodburn
- 100. I say yet another because this one was not by any means the first such controversy. In talking
- with students, faculty, and staff about the mural, it became quite clear to me
- then in order to make it the last such controversy, we must have more art, not less art, on the campus.
- Specifically, we must have more art that recognizes, celebrates, and memorializes the multicultural
- past and future and present. And we must have more multicultural artists, including students, faculty,
- and visitors on our campus.
- For more than half a century, Bloomington has been on the National Arts Map for many of its programs,
- artists, and facilities. Now, in this new century, Bloomington also needs to establish its place on
- the National Arts Map for its multicultural art and its multicultural artists. To help us achieve this
- goal, the Bloomington campus, with the excellent assistance of the Indiana University Foundation,
- has established the One for Diversity Fund. As I said last spring in my statement on the mural, by calling
- the fund One for Diversity, we emphasize that each of us on this campus must take responsibility for
- enhancing respect for and commitment to diversity. We build diversity one by one, step by step, person
- by person. And starting this evening,
- we will build the One for Diversity Fund contribution by contribution as individuals and organizations
- join in this effort and demonstrate their support for diversity in the arts. We will begin our campaign
- by focusing on the campus and the local community. The extent of our generosity will reflect our commitment
- and the extent of our commitment
- will influence our friends and alumni who live at a distance from Bloomington. We will want them to
- join us in the One for Diversity project. But first, we must make our own dedication to this project
- unmistakably clear. So far, the signs are auspicious. Even before this announcement, the fund has received
- contributions from the president's office,
- the Indiana University Foundation, President Bebko, Vice President Nelms, Dean Dan Dalton, and myself.
- This, of course, is just to get us started. Over the next three years, we will focus on two major goals.
- First, we seek a very large participation rate. It is my hope that the fund will receive contributions
- from the vast majority of IUB students, IUB employees,
- and those individuals in the city and surrounding counties who enjoy the artistic resources of the campus.
- Each contribution, whatever the amount, is of great value because each contribution sends the message
- that we, in the town, in the gown, and in the counties, are committed to diversity in the arts. Second,
- we have set a campaign goal of half a million dollars.
- This is an ambitious goal. It will be hard to reach. But I believe that it is within our power not only
- to meet it, but to exceed it. There's a brochure about the fund that will be available in the lobby
- and also we'll have some in the art museum. And I hope that you will pick up copies for yourself and
- for others. The One for Diversity Fund is an incredibly important initiative for Indiana University
- Bloomington.
- and for our local community as well. I hope you will give it your strong support, both moral and financial,
- and urge your friends and colleagues to join you. This fund gives us the opportunity to take the Benton
- mural controversy and turn it into a constructive, productive, and wonderful project that will help
- to create an artistically rich, inclusive community
- at Indiana University Bloomington. Just think how proud we will all be when three years from today it
- is announced that tens of thousands of people have contributed to the One for Diversity Fund and that
- we have surpassed our stated goal. Imagine the celebration that we will have, and I look forward to
- seeing you there. And now it's my great pleasure to introduce to you Tom Gravera,
- Comptroller of the City of Bloomington, and as you all know, a very strong supporter of the arts in
- Bloomington. Tom. Thank you Chancellor Brim for that most gracious introduction. Mayor Fernandez would
- like to be here. I know he very much would like to be here.
- But he did have a scheduled conflict. He is attending the U.S. Conference of Mayors. And as you know,
- there are very important and pressing issues that face our communities for which the mayors across our
- nation must collectively address. And so he does send his regrets for not being able to be here. And
- hopefully I will be able to stand in his place adequately. As a preamble to my remarks, I would like
- to relate to you a little story
- This story really is something that concerns a memory that I have in a previous job. Prior to coming
- to the city, I worked as a consultant for a management and technology consulting firm. Part of my job
- responsibilities was to interview students who might become prospective employees of our companies,
- and I traveled
- across the Midwest and East Coast to several universities interviewing both graduate and undergraduate
- students. One memory stands out in particular, and this was an undergraduate student whom I was interviewing
- at the University of Rochester. This student was a computer science major and he was seeking a position
- as a computer programmer in our company. As I looked at his resume, I also noticed that he was enrolled
- in the prestigious Eastman School of Music studying piano. And I commented to him that I thought it
- was a bit of an unusual combination, a computer programmer and a pianist. Well, to summarize his response
- to me, which I thought was just absolutely remarkable, he said, really, the study of piano helps me
- become a better programmer.
- He said, to learn music and to be good in the art of music, one must have the discipline to be able
- to study the basics of music. Yet at the same time, to be a good musician, one must also be creative.
- Computer programming really is much like that. Our greatest advances in technology have come not just
- through the rigid application of rules,
- that are most often associated with computer programming, but really have come through creativity. And
- I thought his answer was remarkable because he really emphasized the essence of advancement in technology.
- And so I know as I left that this student, regardless of his chosen path, would be successful at whatever
- he undertook, or I think he really got it.
- Since Mayor Fernandez was first elected and had taken office, one of his major priorities was to improve
- and enhance the quality of life for the citizens and visitors to Bloomington. I believe that our quality
- of life here is largely based on a culture that is colored, textured, and flavored with an abundance
- of arts and humanities that are available to us.
- Over the next two weeks, Arts Week events will take place in about 25 different venues. 40% of those
- venues are not on the campus, but are on locations throughout the city of Bloomington. This extraordinary
- outreach and collaboration between the university and community could not be done without the support
- and work of several people. I would like to thank
- former President Miles Brand, current Interim President Jerry Bebko, Chancellor Bram, and especially
- Professor Kim Walker for extending the hand of partnership and working with several of our community
- organizations to make Arts Week the great midwinter celebration that it is. The city of Bloomington
- is indeed devoted and committed
- to a working collaboration with the university for cultural outreach and enhancement. And in fact, in
- the next several weeks, we will be discussing before city council an appropriation that the mayor is
- seeking that is close to $150,000 that will be combined with a $50,000 commitment from Indiana University
- to establish a not-for-profit organization
- that is dedicated and devoted to enhancing cultural tourism in our area. On behalf of Mayor Fernandez
- and the City of Bloomington, I extend my greetings and welcome to all of you and encourage you to invite
- a friend, invite a neighbor, to come out and visit and experience all of the wonderful things that this
- university and this community has to offer.
- With that, I'd like to turn it over to Kim Walker. Continue on. Well, I want to thank everyone for their
- lovely compliments and their support. Really, my great pleasure is coordinating all of these marvelous
- talents. When I first began this position,
- I asked, what is Arts Week about? And they said, it's about the faculty. So I spoke with the faculty,
- and they said, it's about the students. I spoke with the students. They said, it's about the community.
- And this year, we have all of those players involved, heartily, as well as alumni. So tonight is my
- great pleasure to invite a panel discussion on beauty and contemporary art. And moderating this panel
- is Anya Royce. And right next to her, well, she's in anthropology and
- a former ballet star, I should say, in all of the world. And next to her, Georgia Strange, who I tend
- to meet in blockbusters checking out videos every now and then. But you wouldn't know that by the incredible
- sculpture she creates. And Howard Jensen, wonderful producer. I hope you've seen some of the plays in
- the theater department. And Karen Hansen, our wonderful new dean of, oh my gosh, I'm doing a blank.
- Honors, thank you. I've known her in many roles, that's why. But we're delighted to have her background
- in philosophy joining us. And there's one surprise guest who will appear rather late, untimely, and
- of course it's the musician. And Imre Pala will join us shortly. He's involved in the Miraculous Mandarin,
- which will be performed next week. So thank you very much and welcome.
- Thank you, Kim. I want to add my welcome to all of you and encourage all of you to take advantage of
- the many, many performances, exhibits, lectures, and events that are packed into these two weeks brought
- together for Arts Week 2003. This is a panel of extraordinary individuals. Actually, we had a rehearsal
- this morning and I found out how extraordinary they are. They include practitioners of art,
- former practitioners of art,
- philosophers and scholars. So we have different experiences and different viewpoints from which to tackle
- some of the thorny questions embedded in the title or should I say titles and theme of the panel. Some
- of those questions might include, what is the relationship between art and beauty? Are they linked and
- do they need to be? Do all societies need either or both?
- And how does art satisfy that need? Are there some fundamental qualities that define beauty no matter
- what the artistic genre? And finally, can beauty be out of fashion and why? We're each gonna take about
- four minutes to make one or two points that we think are the most important to begin with. And some
- of us will have examples to illustrate the points, but I want to
- want to say that these are not formal presentations. We would like to think of this as a conversation
- once we get some things out on the table. And we will invite you toward the end to join us with questions,
- challenges, not too many of those. Observations, congratulations are always welcome. And there are two
- mics out there. So without any more introduction, Georgia.
- Anya and I have to share this. Thank you. Referring to our meeting this morning as a rehearsal was rather
- generous on your part, but we are emphasizing spontaneous interaction with all the constituents on this
- panel as well as our audience. So we do want to encourage discussion. I want to begin my brief remarks with
- two images. I've chosen examples of masks from the Dan culture in Liberia, West Africa, also in the
- region of Ivory Coast. These masks represent somewhat of a polarity of a visual sensibility. I think
- both of them are
- incredibly beautiful images. They achieve beauty in different ways, using the elements and principles
- of design. They achieve beauty in radically different ways. One appears rather rhythmic, and there's
- a certain elegant quality to that mask. The other one is a little more intimidating. It has shotgun shells,
- There's a kind of exaggeration that's very different in the abstraction and how abstract language plays
- out. So there's kind of an intimidating, aggressive quality to one of these masks. Yet both of them
- are beautiful. And the reason I'm showing this is because I think it's not so important how we define
- beauty because that is endless argument.
- but that we value it. And I think in the 20th century, there's been a real disenchantment with beauty.
- And I could probably point to Duchamp early in the century, where he emphasized idea as critical to
- art. And of course, ideas are critical to art and always have been. But the emphasis on idea and the
- conceptual content to the exclusion
- of the visual concerns is problematic. And that's why I use the word disenchantment. And we see this
- culminating in the move in the 70s of conceptual art. And for myself as a visual artist and as a teacher
- of visual art, this language, this visual language seems to be crucial to visual thinking. And so I
- want to emphasize that
- that I think it's important to value beauty and to be involved in that discussion and bringing it back
- into the discussion about art. And I'm happy to say that it is actually returning in the discourse.
- And one of the reasons we chose this title was the fact that calling something beautiful was almost
- a critique of something or a criticism as if
- being concerned with beauty was somehow vapid, that it was almost decorative. And somehow it didn't
- have the deep meaning that something that's maybe more political or provocative or somehow aggressive
- in terms of how we view things. And so I want to just emphasize the importance of the re-enchantment
- with beauty.
- This past week, a grand old man of the theater died in that he was almost a hundred years old when he
- died. He has probably seen more plays than any other American. And I'm speaking of Al Hirschfeld and
- I'd like to quote from his obituary in the New York Times. He wrote a letter in 1986 and expressed his
- opinion about an article
- in the science section on defining beauty. And I quote, beauty is incapable of being defined scientifically
- or aesthetically. Anarchy takes over. Having devoted a long time to the art of caricature, I have rarely
- convinced anyone that caricature and beauty are synonymous. Beauty may be the limited proportions of
- a classic Greek sculptured figure, but it does not have to be. It could be an ash can.
- And I think that's where you get into maybe the area of anarchy, what is beautiful. Talking with many
- colleagues and students, I discovered that beauty is not greatly discussed anymore in the theater. I
- think it should be, but it isn't. It was to a great degree in the 19th century.
- I suspect that because of the advent of naturalism and realism, that beauty maybe became seen as superficial.
- With naturalism, the truth was stressed much more than beauty. And also with naturalism and realism,
- ugly aspects of human existence were treated realistically. Now I think those plays that fall into that
- category, such as Ibsen, Strindberg, Miller, Williams, Albee, because those writers are indeed poets
- in their own way, the works survive. But I rarely hear people talk about
- beauty in the theater. I believe that if a theater practitioner were told that their work was beautiful,
- it would be taken as a compliment. But once again, we just don't talk much about it. My turn.
- I wasn't sure, and you can see two titles down there. I wasn't sure whether to speak as an anthropologist
- tonight or as a dancer, and I couldn't resist Baryshnikov, so it's going to be dance. Human beings need
- more than the living out of their days. They need to be able to reflect. They need to be shown the world
- in a different way to be transported and transformed, and that's what art does. When it doesn't do that,
- It's technique without the ability to generate reflection or dreaming. Beauty and art, and I say art
- because it exists in nature, has certain qualities. Simplicity, economy, selection, balance, rhythm,
- symmetry, harmony. And I think that these cut across genres, cultures, and times. And people recognize
- that. They recognize the beautiful even if it's not in their own traditions. I think what Georgia was saying
- is absolutely true. People value beauty even if they can't define it or put a label on it. They recognize
- those kinds of qualities. Dance in the 20th century has gone back and forth and back again between portraying
- the beautiful coming out of the 19th century classical ballet into modern dance with Isadora Duncan
- and Martha Graham. Abandoning conventional notions of beauty but I think what in fact they have done is
- in every instance is to come around creating new genres, which still have those kinds of qualities of
- beauty about them. It's a different kind of beauty, but it still has those things of symmetry and balance
- and economy. Modern dance in this country, ballet in this country, Japanese buto, which was an extraordinary
- fluorescence of Japanese modern dance. I'm going to show you a very short video. It comes from Twyla
- Tharp, who if you don't know,
- is a native of Richmond, Indiana. And we gave her an honorary degree. And she created this piece, Push
- Comes to Shove, to music of Haydn. And she created it for American Ballet Theater in 1976. And that's
- one of the things you can see in the next two weeks in Art Week, is not Push Comes to Shove, but American
- Ballet Theater. This is a piece, and I show it because it plays on the conventions of the classical
- ballet of the 19th century.
- formal presentation, neat ends to steps, centeredness and always pulled up body and a particular kind
- of body, staying in the frame and costuming that's as formal as the steps and the expectation of the
- audience is that the audience will also sit out there and be formal. And what she does is create this
- wonderful spoof on all of those, those kinds of things. It's very subtle. When they came here,
- I don't know, 10 years ago and did this,
- I was part of the audience and I began seeing these very funny things and I started laughing and the
- people on either side of me looked at me like, this is ballet, this is serious, what's the matter with
- you? Finally at the end they found it was funny too. So I want to show you that. This is Mikhail Baryshnikov
- and if I can ask my panelists in the middle to move. We can see more.
- Okay.
- makes most of the points that I wanted to make. Tharp has certainly challenged our notions of classical
- ballet, but still staying within all of those qualities that I think define beauty. And Baryshnikov,
- nobody but Baryshnikov could do that. I want to tell you that. So. Emry. Yes. Emry Palo is our mystery
- guest. Was I a mystery guest? You were a mystery guest.
- You were going to be our inner beauty. Well, thank you. I apologize for being late, but I had to do
- with beauty. I was rehearsing music for an upcoming concert, so it took me a few moments to get over
- here after finishing the rehearsal. Today, somehow, everything is a little bit against me. I think the only
- non-native speakers, so I will be searching for words occasionally, and I have a cold, so forgive me
- for that, please. Beauty in music. Just thinking about the program I'm going to do next Wednesday, which
- I just came from the rehearsal, there is Brahms' Hungarian Dances,
- there is Glier, Harp Concerto, and Bartok, Miraculous Mandarin. Rather contrasting pieces. If you think
- about Hungarian or pseudo-Hungarian music of Brahms and the very deeply Hungarian music of Bartok, the
- difference of beauty is very obvious.
- between the two pieces, and you may come to a concert and you say, well, I went to that symposium and
- Paulo said that the Bartók is beautiful. I don't think so. But one of us may be wrong. Because beauty
- is in the eye of the beholder, ladies and gentlemen.
- Also the development of the appreciation of Bartok's music, I think also shows the change of perception
- of beauty. When that music first appeared, I don't think anybody at that time in their right mind would
- have considered even to call that music beautiful.
- Today you question the sanity of the person who doesn't call it beautiful or most of it beautiful. So
- it changes. What are the beauties in music? Which aspects of beauty in music do you take as important
- or not important? There is the beauty of the form. There is the beauty of the melody. There is the beauty
- of the harmony.
- There's the beauty of the disharmony. So if you are thinking, let's say a Beethoven symphony. A Beethoven
- symphony, the main beauty in my mind, and please let's understand that opinions are of course subjective.
- As they say in Hungary, everybody has the right to his
- stupid opinion. So in my opinion, we look at the Beethoven symphony and first of all, and mainly of
- all, you admire the beauty of the form. You experience listening to it, the battle
- with the material, he really reworked and reworked and reworked the pieces, his symphonies,
- but the shape, the form, is what makes those pieces very, very special. You wouldn't say this is the
- melody. Now, think melody. Who may come first? Melody, you think, probably a little bit more opera than
- you would think.
- symphonic music, then within the operatic music, you think Verdi, of course, you think melody, but probably
- the true melody person was Bellini, whose music may not be as well known, but if you think beauty of
- melody, you think Bellini. Now, let's come to the, let's say, second half of the 20th century.
- Boulez, wonderful composer. What comes first into your mind? Beauty of the melody, beauty of the harmony,
- beauty of the form. Why would you find a specific, or I don't want to get really into details,
- A work of Boulay is beautiful. Why would it speak to you in the understanding of today's, not even musician,
- because a musician gets much deeper into the materia and as a listener of a music piece, of a concert,
- of an opera, you want, you get
- the first impression and after that first impression, you taste the soup, you either like it or you
- don't have a second spoonful. Either that music will speak to you in one way or the other, or you say,
- I don't like it, I don't want to go again. So the 20th century and now 21st century as we proudly pronounce
- it, but basically, at least at my age,
- believe most of my life. I have lived even in my necrology, it will be said that he lived most of his
- life in the 20th century. So somehow I relate maybe a little more to that than the last three years
- of the new century. And probably in the hundred years of the past century, you find a little more beauty
- in music, in art, and in everything else than what this last three years
- gave us, returning to beauty music, beauty in a composer of today. And you arrived, Boulez, in particular.
- You arrive to the unfortunate solution, and please don't hit me for that, you can't explain it. And
- there is no verbalization, there is no way
- And that's what I really wanted to point out at the very end. You can't explain why you will find something
- truly beautiful. For me, the final realization, if I find something beautiful 20th, 21st, 16th, 17th,
- 18th century, if I fall in love with it, it's beautiful. Art, if it's a statue, if it's a picture, if
- it's music,
- do I have to explain why I find it beautiful? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. And you may find
- it ugly and I may find it beautiful and we are both right. I think that's where I want to leave my little
- contribution. Thank you.
- You get to follow that. Thanks. You're welcome. Philosophers, of course, have spent a lot of time, since
- they can't create the art, in trying to come up with the definitions. And I want to just say a little
- bit about the history of Western philosophy on this point. Philosophers have paid a lot of attention
- to the concept of beauty. And their business is not the creation of it, but the conceptual clarification of it.
- It's probably fair to say that throughout the history of Western philosophy, there's been more attention
- to the concept of beauty than there has been to art, in part because philosophers took beauty to be
- a manifest not only in art, but in other contexts, in people, for example. The falling in love with
- analogy is very important for someone like Plato.
- It's not an analogy for him. He thinks this is where you begin to see beauty in people, in what we might
- call other natural phenomena, in forests, flowers, seashells. Philosophers were just as interested in
- beauty manifest in natural objects. There's a kind of divide, though, that's worth noticing between
- the ancients on the issue of beauty, say Plato and Aristotle, and more modern philosophers, not yet
- to say contemporary philosophers, but modern philosophers.
- Plato and Aristotle didn't share very many views, and they certainly argued about the nature of beauty.
- But they both assumed it was an objective property. For Plato, and maybe significantly for Florentine
- neo-Platonists, who brought Plato back, and in part because of the importance of beauty for the Platonists
- as a real quality, a real metaphysical quality, there was a kind of rise in the status of the visual arts.
- For Plato, beauty was a kind of objective property underlying everyday reality. For Aristotle, who didn't
- believe that there was a kind of another world where there are ideal forms of such things as beauty,
- beauty was nonetheless an objective property of everyday objects. Modern philosophers, however, now
- I'm thinking about the time around the 17th century,
- are struck by the subjective character of experience, and in particular, well, that's not fair to say.
- It's not in particular. It includes the experience of beauty. They're struck by its subjectivity, and
- they didn't come up with any lines like everyone has entitled to his own stupid opinion, but it kind
- of amounts to that. There is nonetheless
- for them than a struggle to account for the idea of there being a kind of standard of taste. Now, some
- of these philosophers, such as David Hume, who's essentially an 18th century philosopher, died just
- about the time of the American Revolution, took judgments of taste to be, took everything else, matters
- of fact. We all have an experience. There's no denying that there's an experience, and all we have to
- go on are these kinds of experiences.
- But he did want to say that there were experts. So there's room for saying your judgment's stupid. The
- experts, he has to figure out how to delineate that class. He says that they're people who are free
- of bias. They have a lot of experience with the objects in question. They go back to it. They encounter
- them in certain cool, calm, collected circumstances. They don't have vested interests. All kinds of
- things related to what can make some people an expert.
- and why it might sometimes be wise to defer to the judgment of an expert. All in all, though, the experts
- are people who are most likely to bet right about what experiences most people will have. The real standard
- of taste is in the end durable admiration, admiration that lasts over time. But the idea is that nobody's
- experience is right or wrong. I mean, it's akin to sort of the experience of something sweet.
- That's in part because of, you might say it's in part because of chemical properties of, say, sugar
- or something like that, but it takes tasting it for the sweetness to be there. Similarly for beauty,
- there might be features in the world that contribute to having a certain experience, but it's dependent
- upon the experiencing for the beauty to be there. And that's a kind of, you know, slightly off, but
- close enough account of Hume's view. And if we all basically have a normal physiology,
- we'll all find sugar sweet. But some of us don't. Now, they're not lying when they say something isn't
- sweet. They just have a different set of taste buds, perhaps. And that can happen with people, too.
- But there is something like a norm, what most people, over time, throughout a variety of cultures, will
- find beautiful. So that accords with the sort of thing that Anya was saying, that there are certain
- features designed to produce an experience of beauty in people over time. And the experts are those who
- examine things enough and long enough to have the right judgment. Now, another important figure along
- this line is Immanuel Kant, who did not like this very subjective, personalized view. Beauty for him
- was not an expression of personal inclination. He didn't want to say it's just sort of that it set something
- off in me and I like it. He wanted to find some other way around this problem that Imre has highlighted.
- And he came up with the idea that a certain kind of disinterested grasping of something was crucial
- to experiencing it as beautiful. He had to parse away all kinds of inclination and emotion and thoughts
- of other things like the morality of something.
- judgments of beauty were very special sorts of judgments. Again, they're related to, they require the
- experiencing self. But what Kant wanted to say is we all have the same kind of basic capacity to experience
- certain kinds of things in the right way if we free ourselves from our emotions, which may differ, and
- our interests, which may differ.
- And we get in the right frame of mind. In the end, he does give a definition of beauty that I'm just
- sure no one on this panel will buy. But he came up with something, purposiveness of an object so far
- as it's perceived in it without any representation of a purpose. I mean, the idea there is something
- looks like it was made for some purpose, but really, you're not going to use it for that purpose. It
- looks like it's all meant. Even the seashell that has a certain design, it looks like it's designed.
- This is, of course, before the
- theory of evolution. So the natural object account works better there. But you know what he means about
- a work of art as well. It looks like the parts are meant to go together, but you don't have to say what
- they're meant to go together for. Now, at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th then, certain
- philosophers, and very importantly, I think here in Nietzsche, criticized what they regarded as these
- overly intellectualized accounts of
- of beauty, understandings of beauty. And they returned in part to people like Plato and an interest
- in the eroticism of beauty. Again, the sort of thing that Imre brought up and connected it with desiring,
- falling in love with. And that sort of freed up another space for values besides beauty being important
- in the experience of art, being aesthetically important. Expressions of emotion, for example, whether
- they're beautiful or not.
- perhaps moral values, perhaps political values, and certainly ideas, as Georgia mentioned. I mean, artists
- became interested in expressing ideas, not just presenting beauty. I didn't mean not just. Instead of,
- or at that moment, or truth, as Howard mentioned.
- In fact, there were then lots of theories of art that just kind of left out beauty altogether, that
- art was aiming at other kinds of things, like metaphysical truth. So how could attribution of beauty
- be a criticism? Well, if you're in this frame of mind or at that historical moment, there could be other
- aims that you take art to have that you take at that moment to be more important, or you think you've
- got a theory for all time that makes other aims more important.
- I think one of the things that the panel suggests is that these things do shift over time. There are
- various emphases that artists might want to have for various reasons, not unrelated to the history of
- their art up to that moment. And that's why at certain times, I do think, beauty falls out as one of
- the aims of art. But I think it's coming back. This is going to be a devil's advocate kind of comment.
- And I'm going to raise the issue of critics
- Nobody's favorite who's in the art or any kind of art. But what Emory was talking about, about new genres
- basically, challenge old paradigms and old expectations and old assumptions. And so people object to
- that because they're not familiar with it. Is it the critic's role then to try to educate audiences?
- And what Karen was talking about when she was talking about Hume and the disinterested expert, perhaps
- the critics, played that role as well. I'll just throw that out. May I? As a performing artist,
- you are also. But I was thinking about that because I was just thinking the disinterested who
- criticizes it from outside. I mean, just think about Hans Lick who was a great fan of Brahms and the
- total contrary of Wagner and they really didn't like it. So I believe that the person who thinks that
- he, she is outside of it and just criticizes it per se without emotion,
- so to say, can be just as long and can miss the goal just as well as somebody who just purely emotionally
- comes. So which is the better? I don't think we can decide that approach, beauty, art in altogether
- from the more emotional point of view or we want to approach it more from
- Clearly, I am just believing that these are the rules to find something beautiful, to find something
- good. Music, art, and so on can be good without being beautiful or vice versa. Love beautiful which
- is not good. Anyway, which is the correct? Let's hear it from the knowledgeable lady. The involved or
- the uninvolved?
- I just want to say that critics play a really important role, particularly for forms of art or art expression
- that's not language-based. Whether it's a historian or a critic, they're trying to use language,
- which is, for all of us, our primary means of communication. I think it's really important to have critics, whether
- They're constantly evaluating or judging, but it really adds to the discourse. I referred to Duchamp
- early on, and hopefully it didn't sound that I don't revere him, because I do. He just had a major impact
- in terms of this emphasis on idea over the visual. Duchamp talked about the creative act, which involved
- the artist
- the audience and the object. And that's really about how that interaction is so critical to the aesthetic
- experience. It's the tree falling in the forest. So it's that interaction that's really key. But something
- else that critics do, I talk about this language, they put things in a language, a verbal linear language.
- A lot of art making,
- is more phenomena. If I could say the word phenomena, whatever that word is, I'm sure Karen can say
- it, I can't say it, but it's phenomena and it's more holistic than language, which tends to be linear
- thinking. Just listening to people talk about it, it's this idea that there are parts just like there
- are sounds that make words and that those parts
- have to be put together to make words, and then they have to be put together in larger relationships
- to make sentences, then to make paragraphs. Well, the same kinds of things are going on in visual formats,
- whether it's a line or plain color, or whether it's movement in Baryshnikov. It's a language that has,
- to some degree, moved toward, maybe it doesn't have rules,
- some of the things that these principles that we've talked about or we've alluded to, whether
- it's compositional balance in whatever form, whether it's visual or sound, that these are how we judge
- as artists, as performers, whether what we've done is complete, that has that idea of it's meant to
- be, that things that are in there aren't superfluous. It's meant to be there. There's a sense of fit.
- a sense of wholeness in the composition. Exactly, and the wholeness of a composition, the shape of it.
- If you are in the business, let's say, in music business, there is a form, there is a sonata form,
- let's say, you know it. The person who listens to it feels the form, though doesn't know it. And I think
- that's why form,
- is a very important and crucial element of art because even if you don't realize that it's there, if
- it is there, you understand the feeling of it. It's just you feel that there is a shape to it or you
- feel that there is no shape to it. I think it's very important.
- Well, I'm struck by the it's very important line. I think that's why, among other things, but it's one
- of the reasons why all of these folks, once they got into this idea that the experience of beauty was
- a subjective thing, were so
- keen on finding some ways of restoring the idea of a standard. Because they did want to say that some
- things were more important than others. Some things were better than others. They didn't want to leave
- art in the position of, say, hors d'oeuvres, where one might say, well, I like green olives. You like
- black ones. I mean, there's no disputing the taste. Who really cares? But with respect to certain works
- of art, people do become passionate. And you're quite right, I think, that people
- Critics and philosophers often come up with theories about what is crucial to art based on the art they're
- responding to, the ones that they already love. I think that one of the distinctions between art, which
- is for nothing except itself, and I'm going to get into trouble here, figure skating or gymnastics or
- things like that, which are judged, and they're judged on the basis of points for particular kinds of things.
- Someone in one of my classes said, well, why can't you have a point system for ballet? And it just chilled
- my blood to think about that, because then you're breaking things, you're ruining the sense of the whole
- of the work, actually, and you're coming to look at it bit by bit by bit, which is not the way in which
- most of us appreciate or fall in love with art, I think.
- Okay, I'm going to... We've reduced the time where they can talk. Yeah, we have. It's safe enough. We
- can invite your questions and comments, and there are two microphones, one on either side. Or you can
- probably just, if you have a voice like Emory, you can probably just sit there and say it. Yes? We just
- saw two slides. We saw a recording and a videotape, and a lot of children watch television all the time.
- And children listen to recordings of music all the time. What effect do you think this is going to have
- on people experiencing beauty when they're really seeing facsimiles? We didn't see art up here. We saw
- something that was really unattractively lighted and way too big for us to experience. What are your
- thoughts along these lines? I might also add that we have just
- We have just set up a new informatics school which promises to do more of this for us. I don't think
- it's all that helpful, frankly. I originally brought a DVD of a Bergman film, a section that I find
- especially beautiful. I finally, since I wanted to confine my remarks mainly to theater, did not
- did not show it because that's not theater, it's film, even though Bergman is known in his own country
- more for his theater work than his film work. The only way you can experience theater is the live event.
- As soon as it is filmed, it is not theater, it is something else. I think a lot of people come to the
- theater expecting
- an experience like film or TV, and it's not. If they keep coming, I think we can get them hooked. I
- wish we could get more young people into the theater, and we're constantly trying to see how we can
- do that. One of my colleagues had recommended that I actually bring masks. There are several people
- in the School of Fine Arts
- And I decided that it was too big, this room, and I just didn't think people can see it. But I also
- think that this is a format that is very language-oriented. I was thinking earlier about how interacting
- with art is a very sensory way of knowing, and it's a body way of knowing.
- We, yes, we're looking at facsimiles, but I think for this format, this is the kind of things that we're
- going to be using. Fortunately, this is gonna be followed by an exhibition, a gallery, where people
- can physically sense the work. So they'll be reflecting and sensing with their body, with their eyes,
- And we're using the format of the eyes to talk to all the senses as a visual artist. And you think about
- how different forms of art maybe uses one or two senses to essentially talk to the entire person, which
- is very physical. We're physical beings. I very much agree, and I very much agree with Howard.
- I think the media should be just an appetizer, so to say, for the real thing. The real theater experience,
- the real concert experience, the real opera experience, the real experience, if you go and see the real
- Sistine Chapel in Rome, you will never be able to, you can see it on TV, you can see it on whatever,
- but when you walk into that room, I never forget my first
- and I just almost fell on my knees. The real experience is never comparable with the way it's being
- shown in the media. I never forget a wonderful experience I had years ago in Washington. We were there
- with the City Opera and I went to an opera performance of Turandot. In the intermission at that time
- I was still a sinful smoker. Somebody came up to me and said, do you like opera?
- I said, well, it's a living. He says, I just fell in love with it. I saw on TV La Boheme, and I decided
- the next time wherever I can see live opera, I'm going to go there. Now, if media does that, that's
- the most wonderful thing they can do for us. Let me just give you one tiny story. I taught anthropology
- of dance last semester,
- many of the students had never been to a concert. And in the class, I used a lot of videos. But their
- one requirement of the class was to go to a performance and to review it. And there were four or five
- students in the class who had never been to a ballet, never been to a dance performance at all, and
- went and fell in love with it. So I think using media in that way to give people a sense of what is
- possible to look at
- probably very important. Also I think in terms of dance, even more than music, it's such an ephemeral
- art that the performance then is gone and it's never the same again. And so for purposes of history
- and kind of having a record of what a particular thing looked like, media is probably very useful. One
- last question. Yes?
- I saw the videotape that Anya showed earlier and she physically reacted to a certain thing that Baryshnikov
- did and she just turned to me and said, you have no idea how difficult that was.
- So then we started talking about how practice informs appreciation. I began as an actor, and I was often
- asked what I liked about it. And I couldn't verbalize it much any more than it's a feeling I get when
- I act that I can't get anywhere else. And on a good night, it's glorious. On a bad night, less so.
- But yes, it's absolutely true, I think.
- Like a colleague of ours said, in a lifetime, maybe four or five times in a lifetime, God is sitting
- in the audience. And if you have those evenings, then it's the most incredible experience.
- That's a very good point, Dale, and I think that it's hard when you take a little snippet out of a whole
- piece. I think if you saw the whole piece, then you would have a sense of the whole and where everything
- fit, and you would be able to make judgments that you can't make when you see just a very small piece
- of it. So on top of it being not the real thing, it's also just a piece of not the real thing.
- I'm going to turn this, thank you very much for being a wonderful audience and turn it over to Heidi.
- Heidi Gilt. Heidi Gilt. Thanks Anya and thank you to the panelists. We've been talking about beauty
- and the aspects of beauty and the importance of it in our lives.
- And I'm here to talk about someone who brought that into our lives and continues to do so even though
- she's no longer here. And I'm talking about Sally Hope Davis, who passed away this summer. Sally is
- one of those remarkable people whose legacy is going to last for generations. She married Henry Radford
- Hope in 1944, three years after he became the director of the school that now bears his name.
- He and Henry were definitely united in a personal passion, but they also had a passion for the arts
- and for collecting and for friendships with artists, and it shaped their entire lives. In the summer
- of 1944, that's the summer in which they were married, they purchased Picasso's L'Atelier or the Studio
- of 1936. It's the final and most ambitious painting inspired by Picasso's liaison with Marie Therese
- Walters. And Sally bought that painting
- She preferred it to the mink coat that Henry suggested she might want to buy. That same summer, she
- and Henry purchased a brock entitled Napkin Ring, a major oil of 1929. And in 1947, as the war was going
- on, they had fallen in love with the work of Henry Moore and purchased his reclining nude directly from
- the artist.
- Over the years of their collecting, they purchased many other important works, a Marino Marini, Marcent
- Hartley, Deran, Dubuffet, a wonderful 18th century work by the Italian Solamena. All of these are now
- and many more cornerstones of the art museum's collections. The Hopes also befriended artists, including
- Max Beckmann. And in 1947, Henry tried to lure him to Bloomington with a job. And I think he was here
- briefly, decided ultimately to go to St. Louis.
- But they loved Beckman, purchased his work, and ultimately commissioned what would become Beckman's
- last portrait. It was done of the Hope family. It was completed in the summer of 1950, delivered to
- the Hope family in the fall, and Beckman died just a few months later in December of that year, 1950.
- Many of you in this room still remember Henry Hope's dramatic demise in the atrium of our new museum
- on the occasion of the dedication of the Tony Rosenthal sculpture in his honor in the fall of 1989.
- After 45 years of marriage, focused around a thriving family, her husband, and a love of art, Sally
- became a widow. Less than a year later, in fact the following spring, Sally returned to Bloomington
- as a new bride, bringing her childhood sweetheart with her, Charles Davis, as she dedicated
- the gift of a my old sculpture, Ile de France, in Henry's memory. The time that Sally came to visit,
- she took me aside and she said, you know, a lot of people are probably going to say I should have waited
- a year, but at my age, you can't afford to wait. Every spring after that, Sally and Charlie made an
- annual pilgrimage from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which was their winter home, to Michigan, which was
- their summer home. And they always stopped in Bloomington.
- Sally would always come to see us and sit with her art collection. She would simply ask for the chance
- to sit. And she mainly sat on the bench where the Stuart Davis and the Marino Marini and the Picasso
- and the Marston Hartley and the Dubuffet just surrounded her. In one of those visits, Sally and I were
- walking together through the museum and I just sort of gently asked her if she liked Michigan, where
- Charlie had his summer home, as much as she liked the Cape, where she and Henry had a compound.
- me aside and she said, my next husband is not going to have his own summer home. For the next few years,
- for the past few years, this elegant and beautiful woman began to slow down. She didn't make her annual
- visit last summer, and towards its close, Honey McLennan Dale, one of her daughters, telephoned me with
- the sad news. Sally's ashes were scattered
- at her beloved cape in a family ceremony. Many of us here said flowers and condolences and remembered
- a lady of elegance, style, grace, and a love of art, as well as a sharp sense of humor. The family also
- wanted to remember her, and they chose a wonderful gift. It takes the form of Max Beckmann's last portrait,
- the portrait of the Hope family, and at its heart stands Sally, blonde and radiant,
- at the height of her strength and beauty. This painting will be the focus of an exhibition in our hexagon
- gallery being organized by Jenny McComas, a graduate student in the Hope School. It will be on view
- from April 2nd to May 11th. Jenny is gathering recollections about the portrait from Sally's sons and
- daughters, all of whom are in the painting, and these personal reminiscences together with drawings and other
- Diary entries and other information we can glean will be part of this focus exhibition. It will be a
- gem and it will be a fitting tribute to Sally. But mostly I stand here now because we are dedicating
- the whole semester's worth of exhibitions to Sally's memory because she loved art and she supported
- the works of her contemporaries and she loved the Hope School. They always wanted to know what was going
- on with the studio faculty. They believed wholeheartedly
- in the importance of visual creativity, and they set the high standards which the Hope School has maintained
- for decades with its top ranking among art schools. One of the school's great strengths is its commitment
- to tradition while always being open to innovation. It's a very, very tough balance, easily tipped too
- far in either direction, but that balance is perfectly maintained here. Henry and Sally both believed
- in the fundamental issues of seeing, learning, and training the eye.
- and both of them pursued this with a passion for the art that was contemporary in their own day. The
- strength of their vision and taste is borne out by the masterpieces which they've acquired and which
- remain the stars of our museum. Sally gave us her treasures so that faculty could teach and students
- could learn from the best. Sally would have absolutely admired the outstanding exhibition
- put together by the creative faculty of the Hope School of Fine Arts this year. All the shows,
- as I said, both faculty in MFA and the Beckman Show are dedicated to her memory and to remind us all
- of Sally's fundamental importance to Indiana University. I thank the Hope family for their generosity
- and I thank Janet Kennedy and Georgia Strange for partnering with us on this important collaboration
- to honor Sally in this way.
- And I especially thank the Hope School of Fine Arts faculty for their unstinting hard work and hard-won
- achievements in their creative endeavors. On the occasion of Arts Week, which is the opening part of
- the celebration of the biennial Hope faculty exhibition, our dedication of this exhibition to Sally
- Hope is a truly fitting tribute. Thank you all so very much.
- Imre, Karen, Howard, Georgia, and Anya, I want to thank you again. And I'm sure the audience would like
- to. Thank you very much. I feel like one of those little old ladies that can just see over the dashboard.
- But yeah, I'll grow for next year, perhaps. Anyway, please, I encourage you to enjoy one of the next
- 56 events that are going on in the town and gown celebration here, the welcome table
- tomorrow night is one of the most unusual creations Malcolm Dalglish and Lotus have produced for Arts
- Week. There is a beautiful limestone table. There will be a fire cooking pies and a one hour theater
- production with music and artists from the community and Indiana University never been seen before and
- never to be seen again. So it's your one opportunity. And if you've had not enough of these videos and
- enticements tonight,
- tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock, Anya Royce is giving a talk about the superstars of the performing arts.
- And tonight, we didn't make that distinction between creative and recreative arts, but one of my colleagues
- has a nice saying in the School of Music. He says, in the morning, as we're teaching, we pretend we're
- God. And in the evening when we perform, we prove we're not. So anyway, please join us next door. There
- are wonderful treasures awaiting you.
- So thank you, Heidi, and everyone else, Tom, Jerry, and Sharon. Thank you.