ARTS 1001: The Experimental Arts at Black Mountain College
January-March, 2018
The students and faculty of Black Mountain College (1933-1957) sought to transform themselves and one another through interactive learning that placed the arts and humanities at the heart of an ever-evolving interdisciplinary curriculum. According to sculptor and former student John Chamberlain, Black Mountain College was a place where people were more engaged by what they didn’t know than what they did.
For this iSeminar, students will become immersed in the process of researching a creative project inspired by the history and legacy of Black Mountain that responds to their individual interests and experiences. Brief exploratory projects in the first half of the seminar will provide an open matrix by which students can select a topic for more intensive study. Class meetings are forums for a communal sharing of ideas prompted by readings and the process of working on a final project.
Schedule:
Week 1: A New Deal in Art & Education
Week 2: Josef & Anni Albers, Matière Studies
Week 3: John Cage, The Legacy of Indeterminacy
Week 4: Buckminster Fuller, Design Science for Spaceship Earth
Week 5: M.C. Richards, Pottery and Poetics
Week 6: Charles Olson, Projective Verse
Week 7: Closing/Continuations