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Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art

Edited by Vincent Katz.
MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2003.
328 pp., 470 illus. Cloth, $35.00.
ISBN 0-262-11279-5.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens,
Department of Art,
University of Northern Iowa,
Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0362, U.S.A.


ballast@netins.net

Despite its small size (never more than 100 students) and short duration (1933-1957), the experimental arts school called Black Mountain College (near Asheville, North Carolina) always gets lots of attention, perhaps even more than it merits at times. Misleadingly called an American Bauhaus, much of its claim to celebrity comes from the seemingly limitless list of teachers and students who were there at one time or another, often very briefly (artists, poets, dancers and musicians), among them Suzie Gablik, Arthur Penn, Stan Vanderbeek, Russell Edson, Bernard Rudofsky, Jonathan Williams (these names are less often listed than certain others) and many others. Surely, it was an important event in the history of the arts and education, as described in detail by two earlier books: Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community, by Martin B. Duberman (1972), and Arts at Black Mountain College by Mary Emma Harris (1987). Otherwise, one can find first-hand accounts in memoirs of what it was like to have taught or studied there, such as Leo Lionni's remembered chagrin at having "grossly overestimated the intellectual level and experience of the students." Despite the plentiful writings about the subject, this new large-format, lavish book is a welcome and useful addition to the school's documentation. It necessarily repeats some of the anecdotes, photographic snapshots, and work examples that were published earlier, but it also introduces new and sometimes more provocative examples. For instance, there are artworks by Black Mountain participants, but pieces made years later, not while they were at the school, including a marvelous pair of saddle shoes by Ray Johnson, in which JOHN has been lettered on the toe of one shoe, CAGE on the other. With nearly 500 illustrations (half in color), the visual richness of the book comes partly because it was published in conjunction with a Black Mountain exhibition that took place in 2002 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain. The text is equally interesting, if not more so, because it consists of new essays about various aspects of the school by four different scholars: Its Bauhaus connection; its contribution to modern music; its publication of the Black Mountain Review; and a memoir about the poet Charles Olson by Robert Creeley, who actually taught at Black Mountain during its final years.

 (Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, Spring 2003.)

 

 

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