University of Alberta Edmonton, Canada 4 April 1997

Learning to see and to say

Philosophy and art professors combine perspectives to get a better view

By Lee Elliott

Art is dead. Philosophy is dead. There is a futility in everything.

These statements reflect a certain critical postmodern standpoint, a theoretical pessimism about the future of traditional disciplines like art and philosophy.

Dr. Margaret Van de Pitte, philosophy, and Dr. Jetske Sybesma, art and design, grappled separately with statements like these, in different disciplines, in different ways. Both find the statements suspect and worth intense scrutiny. And this year, to the benefit of 22 students in the 400-level seminar class they're leading, they're grappling with these issues in contemporary art together.

"I think we accidentally discovered we were reading some of the same books and talking about some of the same things in our classes," says Van de Pitte. "We're learning where each other is and we're recognizing that we have occupied the same spaces and that our students have very good reasons for having the same interests."

"We have philosophers in the class," says Sybesma, " we have art historians, who will be future art critics, and we have artists in the class. All these constituents will be dealing with the same questions sooner or later in their careers."

They aren't opening new philosophical terrain, says Van de Pitte. "We are simply having our students read some of the very important theorists in the two disciplines, getting them to see that they really are talking about the same very great basic problems, and that the problems don't have neat answers either from the traditional standpoint and certainly not from this kind of destructive critical postmodern standpoint."

"Rather than encourage them to just blindly hop on any bandwagon," adds Sybesma, "we want them to know what a wagon stands for."

The discussion in class is lively and intense and so enjoyable for students that they continue to meet outside of class for regular breakfasts and visits to galleries.

The unique format has meant exciting changes for her teaching too, says Van de Pitte. "Philosophers, by virtue of the nature of the field feel free to talk about anything, and we very often do so without having hands on engagement with the science and the art that we talk about. So it's very interesting and important for people who theorize in a very general way to take a closer look at the specific things they're talking about."

"Yes," says Sybesma. "We say, 'Here, philosophy, you have a nice theory. How does it work? How does it work for this painting?'"

"I think one other interesting thing for me," says Van de Pitte, "is that in teaching philosophy it's pretty cerebral, you're pretty much a talking head as it were. You address their minds. And in this class we move back and forth between talking and looking and that's really interesting.quite literally in that it's not so boring..You learn things like looking is a kind of knowing."

Sybesma says, "They [philosophers] really can abstract ideas beautifully, it comes very nicely packaged. But what about visual interest. how do you communicate something without saying any words, with signs and signifiers?.Some people don't know how to see. But usually in visual art that's all they do. You ask a question and they say, 'look it's right there.' But to articulate it is another step."

"I think the students are teaching each other," says Van de Pitte. "The artists teaching the philosophers to see and the philosophers teaching the artists to say."

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