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Abstraction

My wife took me to the North Carolina Botanical Gardens near where we live to show me some sculpture that she had seen on display and enjoyed; now I can say that we both enjoyed it. The weather was good and the plants along the way were gorgeous. It was I think my first artistic consumption outside of the house since COVID. (We were fortunate enough to watch safe at home some concerts that were streamed by the NC Symphony but that is for another post someday.)

My appreciation of the sculpture overall was very good but of course I had my favorites. I was trying to understand what my criteria were because I am more familiar with enjoying painting than sculpture, and more familiar with music than painting.

The themes all supported the setting, so I can't generalize to all forms of sculpture. I seemed to focus on some sense of abstraction.  Too abstract (apart from whatever the title may have indicated) and my mind grew tired of trying to pick among the many possible interpretations. Too immediate and my mind was a little bored at the directness of the representation. There was a sweet spot between those two poles where I was engaged without being tired by the work that the art asked of me.

In retrospect that appreciation must be a moving target, depending on my stamina, freshness of mind, freedom from distraction, etc. Not only was my aesthetic subjective in terms of being mine and not universal, it was also subjective based on the version of me that was present this afternoon.

I need to be mindful of this in my teaching. Many of my courses focus on the tangible with a single main interpretation, but my upper level courses embrace abstraction. Too much can be wearying, too little can be too commonplace for my students to engage them, and the version of each student present in the classroom right at that moment is not the sum total of who they are.

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