Issue 2: Fine Arts
How do the fine arts shape and reflect the paradox of affluence?
Fine Arts
Art produced or intended primarily for beauty and appreciation rather than utility. Categories include the Visual Arts (painting, sculpture, photography, design, architecture), Performing Arts (music, theater, choreography and dance), and Literary Arts (poetry and literature).
Study Questions
- How do the fine arts reflect the paradox of affluence?
- How have civilizations defined “fine” arts?
- Why is there a difference in support for sports teams and fine arts organizations?
- To what extent are the fine arts a luxury good?
- How has patronage, or the lack of it, affected the creation and preservation of the fine arts? How has patronage changed over time?
- What did affluence have to do with the development and recognition of the Seven Wonders of the World?
- Investigate the relationship between affluence and the production of fine art. Is there a positive correlation or an inverse relationship? What are the reasons for the relationship?
- In periods of relative affluence, why is so much art not fine?
- To what extent is it a paradox that we cut funding for the fine arts in public schools?
- To what extent has affluence politicized fine arts funding?
- Should fine art be privately or publicly owned?
- To what extent can there be fine arts without affluence?
- Who owns the fine arts — the nations and people who originally owned them or the people who discover or acquire them?
Honors in Action
Project description: Invite a representative from your local symphony, opera, theatre, or ballet to discuss the concept of patronage and the role it has played and still plays in the arts. To what extent do artistic directors and leaders in the arts also have to be fundraisers? How do these leaders influence, persuade, and inspire others in order to fundraise? What specific leadership skills and talents are required? How did the leaders in the arts develop these skills? What conclusions do you draw about the relative affluence of your community’s arts organizations? Develop a plan to adopt one of your local arts groups as a chapter service project. Find out what would best serve the group: some leadership development workshops, fund raising and friend raising assistance, marketing, event management? Reflect on the experience and the leadership lessons individuals and the group learned as you examined the paradox of affluence by serving the arts. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, Fellowship
Project description: Organize a viewing of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel on campus, and host a discussion with faculty and students about the many examples of the global paradox of affluence in the film. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Project description: Research the types of materials recycled by your community. Sponsor an art contest that uses only recycled material. Invite youth from a local elementary or middle school to exhibit their work and compete for prizes. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, Fellowship
Project description: Conduct an Internet search for contemporary award-winning poets and short story authors who use the paradox of affluence as a theme in their writings. Select material from their works and develop them into a Reader’s Theatre production. Perform your work for your college and community. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Project description: Research the ancient Seven Wonders of the World, the natural wonders of the world, and the New 7 Wonders Foundation’s selection for contemporary wonders of the world. Create a display or website to share your research comparing and contrasting the ancient, contemporary, and natural wonders with an emphasis of the role affluence played in the creation of each wonder. To what extent do these wonders reflect the affluence of their civilizations? In what ways do they reflect the affluence and aspirations of their civilizations’ leaders? Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Project description: Read and discuss a novel such as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath* or another featured book in the National Endowment for the Arts “Big Read” program that addresses issues relevant to the paradox of affluence (www.neabigread.org). Explore the role of the fine arts in promoting consciousness of the paradox of affluence and advocating for social change. Organize a campus or community “Big Read” on a book involving an issue relevant to the community and the paradox of affluence. Facilitate the development of a community action team for a project suggested at the conclusion of the “Big Read.” Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, Fellowship
Project description: Make a historical examination of the role of fine arts in advocating for social change. Such an examination could begin with Sophocles’ Antigone*. Identify additional works in different historical ages that advocate for civil disobedience or issues of social justice. Make a timeline that highlights authors and literary works and the social changes of their eras, and arrange to present it for World Literature and World History students. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Project description: Develop a project to raise awareness among children of the value of fine arts. Gather children for “story time” to hear and see Leo Lionni’s Frederick and then help the children make their own art that will help others through a hard or dreary time or raise awareness about an issue important to them. They might want to draw, write a poem or story, sing a favorite or new song. Organize a recital for the community. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, Fellowship
Project description: Research and develop biographies of the great patrons of the arts over the past 5,000 years. To what extent did affluence determine the depth and breadth of their work? What qualities beyond affluence made them particularly effective leaders of the arts in their societies? Share your findings during “Honors Hours” with your chapter. Invite other chapters to participate doing research on the great arts patrons in their towns or their civilizations. Compare and contrast your findings during your “Honors Hours” and by developing a blog in which members from all chapters can participate and learn more about the world’s great patrons of and leaders in the arts. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Project description: Using Keep America Beautiful’s Graffiti Hurts resources at www.graffitihurts.org, teach local high school students about the negative consequences of graffiti. Research the difference between graffiti and art and discuss those differences with the students. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, Fellowship
Project description: Organize a tour of a local art museum for chapter members and local National Honor Society members. Work with museum docents to develop a tour that explores the paradox of affluence in the works of art showcased at the museum. Discuss your findings over a group lunch or dinner. Work with museum docents to research and develop a tour based on the affluence theme for younger students, and arrange to host a tour for the students at the museum. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, Fellowship
Project description: Research the budgets for athletics and the fine arts at your college and local high schools. Interview members of your Board of Directors and local School Board members, as well as college administrators, to determine their priorities and funding constraints. Compare your findings to the programs delivered by the schools. What leadership lessons can you learn about your community and schools from your research? Invite the people you interviewed to a Leadership Dialogue with your chapter, about making difficult funding choices and how those choices relate to the paradox of affluence. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Fellowship
Project description: Research and develop biographies of artists, composers, and performers who did commissioned work. Did their talent or their affluence determine their commissions? How was their non-commissioned art different or similar to their commissioned art? How much fine art is commissioned? Create poster presentations of these artists and their works to share your findings with local elementary school students who have no arts program on their campus. Hallmarks addressed: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, Fellowship
Bibliography
- Boon, Richard and Jane Plastow, eds. Theatre and Empowerment: Community Drama on the World Stage. 2004.
- Boon and Plastow explore the connection of theatre to social change and the cultural affluence of communities.
- Chamberlain, Richard, Geoffrey Rayner, and Annamarie Stapleton, eds. Austerity to Affluence: British Art & Design 1945-1962. 1998.
- This work is a series of essays about the evolution of British art and design in an increasingly affluent society. Chapters cover furniture, textiles, graphic design, haute couture, painting, sculpture, and other areas of design.
- Chevalier, Tracy. Girl With A Pearl Earring. 1999.
- This novel juxtaposes a young girl living up to the expectations of Jan Vermeer, Dutch Master Painter, only to be overcome and exiled from his affluent artistic life and denied the promise of her own potential.
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1999.
- This is a classic, elegantly written novel on the promise of affluence in America and its effect on a young man whose complete belief in it paradoxically defies its loss to him.
- Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. 1995.
- Hemingway creates a young man, who, as one of a group of affluent Americans in Spain who live glamorous but unfulfilled lives, struggles to find a truthful significant life for himself.
- Munro, Alice. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories. 2001.
- Munro is generally hailed as one of the best contemporary short story writers. Works from this collection have been produced as a film entitled Away From Her.
- Proulx, Annie. Close Range: Wyoming Stories. 1999.
- If the wide open ranges of Wyoming reflect the freedom of nature, these stories reflect the sober realities of many of its inhabitants. This collection includes “Brokeback Mountain.”
* material is included in Phi Theta Kappa Leadership Development Studies: A Humanities Approach. This book is available online at www.ptk.org/recognitions/catalog/
