There’s Something Queer
About This Class
Olivia Gude
for From Our Voices: Art Educators and Artists Speak about LGBT Issues
edited by L. Lampela and E. Check
by
Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 2002
Though I’d been teaching high school
since the seventies, it wasn’t until the
eighties that I began to really notice that
there were queer kids in my classes! As an
artist and teacher living in Chicago, I was
comfortable with the gender bender
culture of a big city artworld, but even
though it had become important to me to
do so, it wasn’t clear to me how to
reproduce that complex and accepting
cultural climate within my artroom. I
winced at the image of a progressive Sister
Mary Elephant saying, “Today, klaaaassss,
we’re going to study queeeeer art.”
I believe that many teachers of
good will sincerely do not know how to
appropriately introduce LGBT issues into
the classroom conversation. A sensible and
sensitive teacher is plagued by a host of
doubts: How can I present LGBT material
without seeming to just be adding yet
another superficial “flavor” to a multicultural sundae curriculum? Is it ludicrous
or insulting for me, a non-gay, to attempt
to represent opinions and ideas of the
queer community? What artworks
foreground issues of sexual identity
without being too sexually explicit for the
age and maturity of my students? How will
I deal with criticisms from administrators
or community members about the
suitability of the material? Who will be my
support group if I am targeted for
introducing “inappropriate” themes into
the art curriculum? Can I handle the
emotional responses that may be generated when
I focus on this theme? How will I handle
homophobic comments from class members
about the art and artists? Do I risk spotlighting
gay students and putting them in the position of
being noticed and ridiculed?
Two conceptual dilemmas of art and
education that underlie this kind of uncertainty
raise central questions concerning the nature of
representation and of pedagogy. Does the process
of representation necessarily empower the
imagemaker and disempower the subject of the
representation? Is the attempt to share particular
ideas with students inevitably an act of
oppression, of trying to force ideas onto a captive
audience?
Representing Others
1) Can an “other” adequately and respectfully
represent the discourse of “others?” These
questions could apply to teaching about the art of
women and artists of various races, ethnicities,
and classes as well as the art of LGBT-identified
artists. What are some of the conditions and
constraints that would govern such practices?
In 1974-75 Martha Rosler created a piece
called The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive
Systems. In the work, she juxtaposed photographs
of Bowery storefronts with panels that contain
words describing the intoxicated inhabitants of
the neighborhood. The significance of this work
was described by Craig Owens in “The
Discourse of Others,” “Despite his or her
benevolence in representing those who have been
denied access to the means of representation, the
1
[artist] inevitably functions as an agent of
the system of power that silenced these
people in the first place. Thus, they are
twice victimized: first by society, and then
by the [artist] who presumes the right to
speak on their behalf.” Later in the same
essay, Owens quotes a famous passage in a
conversation between Gilles Deleuze and
Michel Foucault in which Deleuze praises
Foucault for teaching people to consider
the “indignity of speaking for others.”1
An alternative practical
proposition is that another form of
indignity and injustice is for a culture to
remain unseen, unrepresented, and
unconsidered unless a member of that
culture is present to urgently insist that
this should be done. There is no single,
correct answer that resolves these
concerns. There are several ways that
teachers can effectively engage these
issues.
The first guideline is to
acknowledge the dilemma. As teachers of
art, issues of representation are central to
our discipline so it makes sense to mention
to students the postmodern notion that all
forms of representation diminish the
subject because they are never as complex
as the total reality of the subject. Caution
students about making totalizing
conclusions based on the study of a few
members of a group. A second good
strategy when showing artwork is to avoid
the sense of speaking about silent absent
others by making use of artist statements,
interviews, and video clips.
A third guideline concerns the
conditions under which LGBT artists are
acknowledged in the curriculum. For
convenience, I’ve used the terms “queer,”
“straight,” and “others” in this article.
1
Craig Owens, “The Discourse of Others: Feminists and
Postmodernism,” in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic:
Essays on Postmodern Culture (Port Townsend,
Washington: Bay Press, 1983) pp. 68-9.
Unfortunately, this terminology sets up a strong
dichotomy and suggests that I identify with and
fit myself into these categories—that I define
myself as “straight” in contrast to various “nonstraight” others. I believe that the most important
thing that teachers can do for students is to free
them from the limiting terminology of dominant,
oppressive cultural practices. Help students to see
that people have the option of inventing and
identifying with other category/communities such
as “people who appreciate living in a society in
which people openly express diverse sexualities.”
Propaganda or
Propagating Critical
Thinking
2) One of the hardest questions for progressive
educators--Are progressive, contemporary art
educators simply attempting to substitute our art
and our messages for those of “the opposition?”
Can we practice a style of education that is not
simply an alternate propaganda?
In 1971, Doris Lessing sent a message to
students in the introduction to her classic novel,
The Golden Notebook, “You are in the process of
being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a
system of education that is not a system of
indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we
can do. What you are being taught here is an
amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of
this particular culture.”2
Is Lessing’s statement necessarily true
of education? Are there alternative ways to think
about how we structure our discourses? Paulo
Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed differentiated
the banking method of education (in which preformed knowledge is deposited into the heads of
students) from dialogical education in which
knowledge is shared and generated by the
interaction of the knowledge of the teacher and
the knowledge of the students. Interestingly, the
first activities of the Freirean method of teaching
literacy are the teacher and students together
2
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (New York: Bantam
Books, 1973) p.xbii.
2
analyzing pictures that encapsulate the
social realities of the students’ economic,
social, and political life world--a whole
new meaning to the concept of “picture
study.”
A foundational (or a least
an organizational) principle for progressive
art education is investigation. Good teachers
and good curriculum will encourage
students to investigate vital questions
relating visual and social phenomena. Good
art projects like much good contemporary
art will encourage the reconsideration of
our notions of “natural” or
“normal”—learning to see these received
notions as socially constructed through
complex layerings of meanings and
metaphors.
Strategies for a
Queer Classroom:
Clean up classroom
language.
It is still very common to hear students
use the word “fag” as an insult in
contemporary classrooms. Some students
also use the expression “That’s so gay.” as a
putdown of an expression, artwork, or
style. Another common gender-based
insult is referring to a boy as “she” or saying
that a boy “acts like a girl.” I am always
astounded when a young man stares at me
blankly when I observe that I find it
insulting that the worst insult he can hurl
at another young man is to say that he is
like me!
Virtually no public school in
America today would routinely permit the
use of words such as “nigger” or “cunt.” I
could have chosen to not actually use the
“N” word or the “C” word in the
proceeding sentence, but I did so because I
want you to reflect on whether the “F”
word in the previous paragraph had the
same dramatic impact on your consciousness. I
believe that if you didn’t feel a strong sense of
anxiety and discomfort, you are affected by social
conditioning that creates a relative level of
comfort with homophobic language.
Setting a climate of safety and respect is a
crucial foundation for introducing LGBT content
into the curriculum. If the school has set policy
regarding insulting language, it will be easier to
establish these habits of respect in your art
classroom. If your school routinely permits
students to use prejudiced, homophobic language,
one of your first jobs will be linking up with other
concerned teachers and students, raising the
consciousness of the school community, and
securing support from the administration and
school disciplinarian to suppress such hurtful
language.
Many years ago, a white student and I
were alone in a resource room, standing side by
side, putting books on a shelf. The student made
a remark to me about the problems caused by
“those [Black] students.” I was irritated and
horrified. Why would this white student assume
that when we were alone together, we were white
people together who would talk freely with each
other about “those people?” Since that time, I
have learned to quickly and firmly let an
individual or group know that I reject the
“privilege” of “becoming white” when it is
convenient. I cringe to think that it took me
more years to reject the privilege of
heterosexuality by actively confronting students
who used words like “fag,” perhaps not to me
directly, but within my hearing.
Silently send a message about
who is welcome in this class.
Include queer-friendly posters in the mix of art
that decorates the room. Place the poster by the
door or pencil sharpener—somewhere where
students collect and will be able to casually read
the text over time.
A good poster to begin with is “History
has set the record a little too straight.” by Laurie
Casagrande. The poster pictures famous gay
3
people such as Michelangelo, Eleanor
Roosevelt, and Virginia Woolf. Other
good choices are posters advertising the
Names Quilt Project and Keith Haring’s
paintings on the theme of AIDS.3 Also,
consider adding books on gay artists and
issues for gay teens to the artroom shelves.
Gay students are routinely
subjected to prejudiced remarks by other
students and, sadly, also by teachers. By
displaying posters and books in your
classroom, you send a message of support
and acceptance to gay and straight
students. You create a zone of comfort and
safety.
Refuse to suppress
difference that is routinely
noted in serious critical
art discourse.
The April/May 1998 edition of Scholastic
Art magazine was devoted to the work of
Keith Haring. It’s a fine issue with lots of
beautiful pictures and several text pieces
that clearly discuss Haring’s development
of a populist symbolic language and his
commitment to making art that supported
important social causes such as antinuclear leaflets and posters against
apartheid in South Africa as well as
artwork for anti-smoking and literacy
campaigns. Though the issue does mention
that Haring died of AIDS and depicts one
of his most famous posters, Silence=Death,
the issue is silent on the subject of Haring’s
sexuality. Silence equals denial.
In a recent School Arts article, a
teacher wrote about a project in which
students are to create expressive line
drawings of still life objects based on
Panama Hat by David Hockney.4 The teacher
writes, “Is it possible to develop a still life that
can show a response to a famous artist’s work and
go beyond this to motivate students to a better
understanding of various qualities of expressive
line?” In the lesson, teachers are instructed to
“Share why this artist’s work is important in the
history of art,” but evidently understanding the
artist’s work should not include any knowledge of
the identity of the subject of the implied portrait
or that this subject is a queer friend of the queer
artist.
Critical commentary on Hockney’s art
often draws attention to domestic scenes of the
everyday intimacy of gay relationships and to
Hockney’s stylish details characteristic of some
dapper, gay guys, yet in this art education exercise
this is considered irrelevant to understanding his
work. Is it ethically and educationally appropriate
to use an artist’s work solely to teach formalism
(addressing such National Standards as: “Students
create artworks that use organizational principles
and functions to solve specific visual problems”)
while omitting teaching important facets of an
artist’s biography because his life and sexuality
could be considered controversial by some
people?
I want to confess that last night I felt
uneasy after writing the above section. I even
woke up thinking about it. I questioned myself,
“Am I being over the top? Am I being harsh and
unduly critical of the art teacher who wrote the
article? Am I pigeonholing Hockney by
demanding that a discussion of his artwork
foreground that he is a gay artist?”
When I am in this state of queasy
discomfort, I want to bring forward proofs. I feel
compelled to shower my internal (and potentially
external) interlocutors with facts that irrevocably
establish that it really is important to understand
that Hockney’s sexuality is inherently important
to the development of his artistic identity.
3
Sources for posters include:
Northland Poster Collective…
http://www.northlandposter.com
Syracuse Cultural Workers…
http://www.syrculturalworkers.org/
4
Ken Vieth, “Expression in Line,” in School Arts, December
2000, pp.19-21.
4
The facts tumble out of my brain.
These are titles of some of Hockney’s most
well known early works: Queer, Queen, The
Most Beautiful Boy in the World, and We Two
Boys Together. The subject of the “portrait”
Panama Hat is Henry Geldzahler who is
also one of the subjects in a Hockney
couples portrait, Henry Geldzahler and
Christopher Scott. Hockney is known for
reviving and reinventing portraits of
couples within their social, domestic
milieus. Isn’t it radically significant that in
the 1960s these works included portraits of
queer couples?
I could continue citing facts and
anecdotes, but through a haze of ill-defined
internal hysteria, I realize that I am caught
in the dilemma of feeling that the burden
of proof is on me. Rather than teaching art
history or contemporary culture, I am
desperately trying to compile a winning
case. It’s a no win situation unless one
refuses to play the justification game—a
hard thing to do at a time when art
educators are pressured to structure their
curricula on formal principles, making
emotional and social content an addendum
to the main (formalist and technical)
agendas. Would it be better to step back
from the specifics at hand and ask
something such as, “Why is it important to
understanding the work of Picasso to know
that he was a bon vivant who was involved
with many women? How does that help me
to understand the generativity of his
process, the power of his art?”
Reclaim information about
queer culture in art that
was not foregrounded in
your art education.
Several years ago I was astounded when I
picked up Significant Others, a book about
artist couples, and glanced at the table of
contents.5 I learned for the first time that Robert
Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns had been a couple
in the 1950s during the time that they each
developed singular styles that radically challenged
the underlying assumptions of the dominant (and
macho male-dominated) Abstract Expressionist
style. Knowing and talking about the fact that
Johns and Rauschenberg were lovers is not just
spreading art gossip about people’s personal lives.
Some of the most significant ideas in the
development of late 20th century painting—ideas
that lead to postmodern notions of how we
construct pictures—were developed within the
crucible of this relationship. Most standard art
history books still do not explore this connection.
By comparison, imagine that the story of the
development of abstraction in American art
deliberately omitted the crucial role that the
relationship of Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia
O’Keeffe played in their artistic breakthroughs
because some people might not be comfortable
with acknowledging that they lived together when
they were not married.
Include relevant gay artists
when constructing thematic
units.
Then take the time to do background research
and explain how the artist’s sexuality is
intrinsically related to his or her exploration of
content.
A teacher creating a sculpture unit that
examines the “dematerializaton” of the traditional
art object in the latter half of the 20th century
might surprise students by showing them works
by Robert Morris in which the finished form of
the sculpture is the result of randomly dumping
such materials as thread, asphalt, and mirrors
onto the museum floor. Continuing the
exploration of minimalist, anti-illusionist art, the
teacher might tell the students about Richard
Serra’s creation of a list of activities one could do
5
Katz, Jonathan, “The Art of Code: Jasper Johns & Robert
Rauschenberg,” in Chadwick and de Courtivron, eds., Significant
Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1993), pp. 188-207.
5
in relation to sculpture; one result of this
list was the now-famous 1968 piece
Splashing in which Serra created a
sculptural work by splashing molten lead at
the edge between a wall and floor.
Finally, the teacher could relate
these art historically important pieces to
the 1990s work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
In a number of works, Gonzalez-Torres
eschews fixed sculptural forms in favor of
neat or random piles of such things as
sheets of paper or wrapped chocolates. For
example, in the 1990 Untitled (A Corner of
Baci) the artist made a spill of Italian
chocolates into a corner of the Museum of
Contemporary Art in LA. In this and many
of his other works, Gonzales-Torres made
the unprecedented art move of inviting
each spectator to take one piece of the
artwork (one piece of candy). The artist
has described his intent as “ this letting go
of the work, this refusal to make a static
form, a monolithic sculpture, in favor of
disappearing, changing, unstable, and
fragile form was an attempt on my part to
rehearse my fears of having Ross [his
AIDS-afflicted lover] disappear day by day
right in front of my eyes.”6
The importance of constructing
such curriculum sequences is that students
are introduced to queer artists as serious
culture makers whose work builds on and
responds to the history of modern and
postmodern art. In Felix Gonzalez-Torres
case, his diminishing sculptures respond to
and go further than earlier minimalist,
unstructured sculptures, while commenting
on the social crisis of the AIDS epidemic
and poignantly foregrounding his personal
connections to love and loss.
6
Linda Weintraub, “A Hispanic Homosexual Man: Felix
Gonzalez-Torres” in Art on the Edge and Over:
Searching for Art’s Meaning in Contemporary Society
1970s –1990s (Litchfield, CT: Art Insights, Inc., 1996),
p. 114.
Consider constructing curriculum
sequences that teach students about activist art
practices and include gay groups such as Gran
Fury and Act Up along with collectives such as
Guerrilla Girls or Group Material. Students at any
grade level could be introduced to the notion of
collaborative artmaking, linking such practices as
traditional quilting, community murals, and the
Names Project.
Introduce ways in which your
personal cultural history
intersects with gay culture
(even if you are not queer).
During the eighties, goddess-centered spiritual
practices emerged from the political and artistic
women’s movement. This brought me into
contact with “woman-identified” artists such as
the Lesbian theologian Mary Daly. Her book
Beyond God the Father includes a section called
“Heterosexuality-Homosexuality: The
Destructive Dichotomy” that criticized sexual
identities that reduce complex persons to
standardized roles. Engaging in this discourse
caused me to rethink my ideas about the norms
for behavior in my own life.
Most students have some understanding
that the women’s movement and African
American cultural practices have had deep
influences on the music, dress, language, and
behavior styles of contemporary America. Few
contemporary students would advocate for music
uninfluenced by hip hop or for the days when a
woman could not get her own credit card. Help
students to see that the LGBT critique of the
normalcy of 1950s type heterosexual distinctions
concerning appropriate male and female roles has
created many opportunities for more fluid gender
roles for all people.
Let students know that it’s
cool to have a diverse group
of friends.
Give students examples of groups of artists who
actively influenced and inspired each other. Let
6
them know that often these groups
included gay and straight artists.
Students love the bright, colorful
works of artists Keith Haring and Kenny
Scharf. As young artists, they were
roommates, creating their vibrant works
within the New York East Village art and
club scene of the 1980s. In those exciting
days, artists mixed gallery art, street pieces,
music, performance, and politics. At the
time, more gay artists foregrounded their
sexual identities and many women artists
made work that challenged the male
hegemony of the artworld. It was a time of
androgyny, of the breaking down of
conventional gendered stereotypes.
Haring and Scharf remained good
friends and colleagues until Haring’s death.
Scharf married a Brazilian woman and
Haring would visit the couple annually.
Haring was a godfather to their child,
Zena. Some of Haring’s later works are
influenced by these trips to Brazil. Telling
students stories about various creative
communities helps students to imagine a
way of life in which diverse people enjoy
and value each other’s company and
stimulate each other’s creativity.
Let students know that
it’s not cool to be
homophobic.
Look for opportunities to discuss popular
culture that affirms diversity. For example,
both Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and the
genetically enhanced Dark Angel have
smart and attractive Lesbian roommates.
This is never an issue for the
superheroines. It’s just an accepted,
unproblematic part of their everyday lives.
Though there’s been some
controversy in the queer community about
the movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I
think that it presents a sly and amusing
critique of reactionary ideas about sexual
identity. Early in the movie, a guru-like
hitchhiker played by George Carlin responds to a
homophobic remark by the chronically immature
main characters with the comment, “Don’t be so
suburban. It’s the new millennium. Gay, straight,
it’s all the same now. There are no more lines….”
Toward the end of the movie, a character
remarks, “What’s with the weird gay huddle?” He
is promptly lambasted by his cleverer companion,
“What’s gay about it? Two guys talking in a
corner…Why are you such a homophobe? You’re
always like…that’s gay, man. Look at that gay
huddle. Look at that gay dog…”
I think it’s great that the movie
incorporates a joke that mocks people who use
“gay” as a derogatory term. It’s the kind of
critique many teens are likely to absorb. I can
imagine telling students about this scene as a first
strategy when a student inappropriately uses the
word “gay.” If the behavior is repeated, a teacher
will need to set strict limits reinforced by
consequences if the injunction is ignored, but to
tell a student not to act like the fools in Jay and
Silent Bob Strike Back may be all that is needed to
change the behavior.
The expression cool entered the English
language from African American slang. The
expression originated through a new world
survival of the Yoruba word itutu. Itutu means to
have spiritual, mental, and physical balance.7
Remind students that it shows a lack of balance
to be unable to appreciate diversity; it’s not cool to
be homophobic.
Include discussions of sexual
imagery in the art curriculum
so that students develop a
comfort level with discussing
such material.
One easy way to introduce the depiction of
sexuality is to study traditional Yoruba sculpture.
In these carvings, beauty and vitality are
associated with a sense of dynamic tension in the
positioning of limbs and in the exaggeration of
7
Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African & AfroAmerican Art & Philosophy (New York: Vintage Books, 1983)
pp. 12-16.
7
sexual characteristics—penises that are
very large in relationship to the legs or long
pointed breasts.
Initially, students will giggle and
snicker when seeing such images. Patiently
explaining that these sexually charged
images are considered normal and natural
in another culture helps students to settle
down and get used to depictions of nudity
and sexual characteristics. This lays the
groundwork for looking at contemporary
sexual imagery without getting silly.
I like to give a show on forms of
African sculpture early in the year. It sets
the context for a number of themes I plan
to develop later such as representational
paradigms for the human figure not based
in European-style naturalism and the
reclamation of African culture in
contemporary African American art as well
as examining the depiction of the human
body in traditional and contemporary art.
As the school year progresses, I
might build on the discussion of sexual
imagery in art by showing them Claes
Oldenberg’s monumental scale deflating
phallic lipstick in a unit on Pop Art or by
explaining the controversy surrounding
Judy Chicago’s “discovery” of vaginal
symbolism in Georgia O’Keefe’s highly
abstracted flower paintings.
I believe that the content
described above would be appropriate for a
freshman level beginning art class. I have
taught art in public schools since the 1970s.
After experiencing two decades of growing
openness about sexuality in the school
curriculum, I am struck by current pressure
on teachers to omit frank examinations of
sexual issues from the school’s discourse.
The suppression of sexual imagery in
general makes it more difficult for teachers
to incorporate investigations of particular
manifestations of sexuality. While you may
never show the incredibly sexually charged
works of an artist such as Robert
Mapplethorpe in your artroom, you can give your
students a global and contemporary context for
understanding and valuing work that examines
sexuality as a vital aspect of human culture.
Deconstruct gender
stereotypes in traditional art
during art history lessons.
Over the years, I have had many experiences in
which I begin an art investigation with students
and suddenly find myself exploring new
intellectual territory for myself. A number of
years ago I was giving a standard PostImpressionist slide lecture and showed one of the
many paintings by Gaughin of beautiful Tahitian
women. Gazing out at my classroom, filled with
beautiful young women of many different races,
the proprietary gaze of Gaughin suddenly took on
new and more sinister meanings for me.
Allow you and your students to fully
experience the art you show through your
contemporary cultural perspectives. The great
masters have a huge establishment of museums
and collectors to bolster their reputations; you
don’t need to protect them from critical scrutiny.
Create comparisons that cause students
to ask questions about the construction and
representation of sexuality, gender, race, and
class. Show students Mary Cassatt’s Portrait of a
Little Girl in which a girl slouches in an easy chair,
displaying her underwear in an “un-ladylike”
manner, her plaid skirt clashing horribly in color
and pattern with the floral, chinoiserie upholstery
surrounding her. Compare this painting with
Renoir’s Girl with a Watering Can in which a
blonde girl in a dark dress daintily decorated with
white lace stands obligingly still, presenting
herself to the painter (and the viewer) with a
watering can held in her hand as a prop, not as
tool. Ask, “Which painting most accurately
represents real girls?”
Another interesting source of discussion
are the many examples of traditional
male/female/child families depicted in art.
Consider Mary Cassatt’s The Boating Party in
which a bonneted woman relaxes holding her
8
bonneted pink-clad baby while the man of
the family in dramatic black, dynamically
rows the family across the lake. Or
consider Luis Jimenez dramatic, poignant
(and macho) drawings and sculpture Border
Crossing in which a struggling heroic male
figure shoulders the burden of his wife and
child. These artworks afford the
opportunity to analyze the use of the
formal elements of design to re-inscribe
outmoded ideas about appropriate gender
roles and family structures on
contemporary kids.
The depiction of sexuality can also
be a wonderful source for formal analysis.
Examine the elegantly erotic The Kiss by
Gustav Klimt. How does it reinforce
stereotypes about male and female
sexuality?
Introducing these questions into
the curriculum is not an introjection of
ideology into the neutral activity of art
history, rather it foregrounds the formal
underpinnings of the ideological uses of
imagery. People who feel violent prejudice
against diverse sexual identities are people
who firmly believe that their beliefs about
sexuality are natural and inevitable.
Helping students to see that these beliefs
are not hardwired into their brains, but are
the result of a lifetime of conditioning
gives them the freedom to reconsider many
received ideas about the way things ought
to be.
Create studio projects in
which students investigate
the construction of gender
identities.
In the 1999 University of Illinois at
Chicago’s Spiral Workshop, a program for
teens to study and make contemporary art,
we created a study group called Thought
Patterns.8 These student teachers and middle
school and high school students began by
studying the huge variety of regular patterns and
then later investigated how conventional patterns
of thought construct ideas about appropriate
gender behavior. Studying the mathematical
underpinnings of patternmaking was itself a
genderbending activity—bridging the gap
between notions of decorative (feminine) pattern
and “masculine mathematics.”
As the semester progressed, teachers
began to direct students toward investigating
pattern as a metaphor for established habits of
thought that become formats through which
people view and shape the world. In particular,
they began to examine the ways in which color
and pattern are signifiers of masculinity and
femininity.
In one interesting experiment on gender
associations, the teachers placed a number of
common (seemingly gender neutral) objects on a
table (such things as a houseplant, a fork, a bottle
of white out) and asked students to place the
objects on either the "male" or "female" table.
This activity generated interesting discussions
about how maleness and femaleness are construed
in our culture.
As a follow up exercise, teachers asked
students to list words that they associated with a
particular gender. The students’ lists were
predictable: "Women: nurturing, smooth, clean...
Men: strong, loud, first…" The teachers then
created worksheets that asked students to
complete sentences stating the converse of each
proposition. Here are a couple of the students’
contradictory evidence statements. “A WOMAN
IS STRONG BECAUSE women can sometimes hold
in the pain.” “A MAN IS NURTURING
BECAUSE he will always take care of what is his.”
An interesting poster to display in your
classroom at this time is Things You Can Do to
8
For images of artwork generated by the Thought Patterns group
see the University of Illinois at Chicago Spiral Art Education
Website, http://spiral.aa.uic.edu The site includes many examples
of art curriculum based on investigating culture using the
practices of contemporary art.
9
Eradicate Gender Or Multiply It Exponentially
by Mollie Bienwald. The poster, a stylish
juxtaposition of altered photographs and
strips of texts suggests such activities as
“hang out with children and teach them to
cross dress Barbie and G.I. Joe,” “refuse to
check off your sex when filling out forms,”
and “have a conversation about the gender
revolution with a friend while riding public
transportation and make sure you are
heard.”
To begin the final project,
students created lists of objects associated
with each gender. They compared these
with images typically found in gendertyped patterns and discussed why some
associations are played up and others are
played down in conventional gender
depictions. (For example, women’s
patterns focus on flowers or pretty ladies
and not on scrub brushes or bruised
women in shelters.)
In the final phase of the project,
students studied contemporary artworks
that use pattern and layering by such artists
as Sigmar Polke, Juan Sanchez, and Faith
Ringgold. Students gathered collage
materials from magazine ads and articles
that seemed to be aimed at a particular
gender. Each student created a layered,
patterned collage artwork that either
confirmed or denied conventional gender
associations.
Some studies by feminist scholars
have suggested that curriculum geared
toward teaching students to be less gender
stereotyped in their thinking and more just
in their social attitudes actually can have
the opposite effect, especially on young
men in the classroom. The Thought
Patterns’ playful and interactive approach
to studying the construction of gender
identity in popular culture seemed to draw
both young men and women into the
process of re-considering the naturalness
or inevitability of stereotypical gender
associations without raising resistance by seeming
didactic or prescriptive.
Create studio projects in which
students investigate factors
that have shaped their
personal and group identities.
For several years, we have structured some Spiral
Workshop groups on the theme of constructing
identity. One popular and artistically successful
project has been the creation of what we call ID
Books in which the teen artists use collaged layers
of text and images to explore the family and
cultural influences that effect how they feel, who
they currently are, and who they hope to become.
As a prelude to making their own
identity investigations, the teens study the work
of artists whose writing and visual art grapples
with forming a personal and cultural identity,
often under far less than ideal situations. Present
students with vivid examples of artists who are
trying to find a place in contemporary America,
not by “fitting in,” but by using their artistic
voices to create new places, new forms of identity.
The book Contemporary Art and Multicultural
Education is a good source of ideas for artists to
study if you are just beginning to incorporate
artists of many different backgrounds into your
curriculum.
Students find Sadie Benning’s short video
pieces compelling and disturbing. Benning made
her first video diary piece, A New Year, with a
cheap Pixelvision (toy video camera) when she
was just 15 years old. The work, an amalgam of
shots lifted from commercial TV, handscrawled
texts, and close-ups of her own body, present a
vivid portrait of an intelligent young woman who
is nearly overwhelmed with panic by the harsh
realities of being an urban teen. She’s described
what she was then facing, “I was in a really fragile
stage, and I knew that if anybody knew I was gay,
I would totally get tormented. School was really
10
difficult. To be that age anyway is tough,
but to be gay is just hell.”9
Students presented with Benning’s
work identify with her frank manner and
tough/vulnerable persona. Through the
lens of her work, they see their own
precarious adjustments to what is often an
uncomfortable, barely bearable status quo.
Rather than seeing this gay teen as an
outsider, they experience her as inside
their own heads--giving voice to feelings of
panic, confusion, and doubt even as they
struggle to find a voice that expresses a
grounded sense that things should/could be
better.
David Wojnarowicz is another
artist whose life history and artworks
mesmerize students. Wojnarowicz worked
in a wide range of media—non-permission
murals on abandoned buildings, spray
stencils, staged photographs, and
autobiographical writing, as well as many
mixed media works that combine painted
and found images. These intricate pieces
make meaning through layered
combinations of Wojnarowicz’ personal
repertoire of symbols—maps, money,
grocery store advertisements, insects,
animals, lush plant life, photographs of
human bodies, skeletons, and religious
imagery. It’s a rich mix that affords many
opportunities for students to speculate
about the relationship of the images to
Wojnarowicz’ personal history and
political convictions.
Both Benning and Wojnarowicz
raise important questions about the way in
which difference (and its often consequent
suffering) give artists the capacity to
critically reflect on contemporary society.
Wojnarowicz once noted that, “my
queerness was a wedge that was slowly
9
Nicholas Paley, Finding Art’s Place:
Experiments in Contemporary Education and
Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995) p. 68.
separating me from a sick society.”10 The import
of introducing students to artists such as Benning
and Wojnarowicz within the context of their own
explorations of identity and agency is that all the
students learn to see these queer artists, not
merely as marginalized victims for whom we
should feel compassion, but as heroic exemplars,
role models for all kids coming to terms with the
potentials and problems of life in 21st century
America.
These steps toward creating an increasingly queer
classroom begin with a teacher accepting the clear
moral imperative to create a safe, insult-free space
for all students and progresses into consciously
looking for opportunities to include the
construction and representation of sexual identity
in the art curriculum. By creating spaces for
investigation through discussion and artmaking,
art teachers can assist students in exploring and
shaping identities that will allow them to be
multi-cultural citizens who don’t rigidly define
their own sexuality and gender identity.
Why spend time doing this? Because
the world in which we live is interesting and
complex. Our students can become
interesting and complex citizens of that
world–accepting themselves and each
other, joyfully engaging diversity and
possibility–or they can become fearful and
judgmental, isolated and angry people.
Do you think all students need queer
curriculum?
10
Barry Blinderman, David Wojnarowicz: Tongues of Flame
(New York: Art Publishers & University Galleries of Illinois
State University, 1990)
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