Some Thoughts on the Egyptian Uprising and the Attack on Art Institutions

A picture posted January 31st by blogger and Syrian journalist Danny Ramadan on Hyperallergic

**update** the Egyptian Museum as of 6:12 pm Cairo time appears to be on fire as reported on CultureGrrl's blog
**update** conflicting reports as of 12:12am Cairo time that the fires appear to be contained

Yesterday, I spent a great deal of lecture and seminar time discussing the Egyptian uprising with students and faculty. The images of massive surging crowds, standoffs between pro and anti-Mubarak supporters, and the spectre of violence and uncertainty have permeated the unfolding and escalating events. As I write this post on Wednesday morning (6pm Cairo time), tear gas and Molotov cocktails are now being used by the pro-government forces to attempt to disperse the crowds—the situation is beyond tense and very concerning.

For days now, these events have largely unfolded in Tahrir Square ("Liberty" in Arabic) only meters from the Egyptian Museum, and the conflicting reports about the looting and vandalism of the country’s cultural institutions have become a focal point of concern. Yesterday, I posted a YouTube clip reporting on the situation and the blogosphere has provided timely and on-the-ground reports about the status of many of the museums and libraries of Cairo (see examples here and here). Over the weekend, the National Geographic Society published a letter on its website from the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (the controversial Egyptian library and cultural centre in Alexandria) shedding some light on the nature of the tense and often confusing confrontations taking place on the ground:

To our friends around the world: The Events in Egypt
30 Jan 2011 

The world has witnessed an unprecedented popular action in the streets of Egypt. Led by Egypt’s youth, with their justified demands for more freedom, more democracy, lower prices for necessities and more employment opportunities. These youths demanded immediate and far-reaching changes. This was met by violent conflicts with the police, who were routed. The army was called in and was welcomed by the demonstrators, but initially their presence was more symbolic than active. Events deteriorated as lawless bands of thugs, and maybe agents provocateurs, appeared and looting began. The young people organized themselves into groups that directed traffic, protected neighborhoods and guarded public buildings of value such as the Egyptian Museum and the Library of Alexandria. They are collaborating with the army. This makeshift arrangement is in place until full public order returns. 

The library is safe thanks to Egypt’s youth, whether they be the staff of the Library or the representatives of the demonstrators, who are joining us in guarding the building from potential vandals and looters. I am there daily within the bounds of the curfew hours. However, the Library will be closed to the public for the next few days until the curfew is lifted and events unfold towards an end to the lawlessness and a move towards the resolution of the political issues that triggered the demonstrations. 

Ismail Serageldin
Librarian of Alexandria
Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Photographs of the destruction of French cultural symbols circulated as part of the unfolding events of the 1871 Paris Commune

The question of why Egypt's museums have come under attack, by whom, and for what reasons, was part of many of the conversations I had yesterday. Having just introduced the Dada movement to one of my survey classes—a movement which emerged as both anti-war and anti-art during the unprecedented violence of World War I—many parallels were discussed between that moment in the early twentieth century and the one emerging in Egypt today, concentrating most specifically about the way “art” can become a focus of harsh and sustained criticism and attack, seen as both a tool of the state and a way to separate people through its appropriation, institutionalization, and end use. Looking back on the history of revolutionary action, the attack on museums and institutions of art and culture has figured prominently as part of the street level action. Importantly, many of these isolated events gained even more power through the modern era via the circulation of powerful photographic images loaded with symbolic associations. As early as the Paris Commune of 1871 and as recently as the infamous scene of the pulling down of the Saddam Hussein statue during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the technologically mediated images of toppled statues and looted museums have entered historical records as representations of resistance to what the art and monuments under attack represent and for whom they speak. 

An Egyptian soldier protecting the Egyptian Museum, image courtesy of Associated Press/ Amr Nabil

In the case of Egypt, the attack on museums is tied up with the complicated associations that the art of Egypt has to the maintenance of a history of Western Civilization—a history largely located in the ancient past and clearly distant from the contemporary concerns of today’s Egyptians (the majority of whom are under the age of 30). As one of my students queried, “who cares about art and the protection of “precious” artifacts when the majority of people are living in poverty and without basic human rights?” On the other hand, as another student pointed out, the maintenance of Egypt’s lucrative tourism market “can not be ignored as part of its economic future.” There is also the very practical question of the high value and status of many Egyptian objects, fetching untold sums of money in the underground market for stolen art, and as another student suggested “provides quick and easy money for those who care nothing about art.” To whom do these objects belong, and for whom are they continuing to be exhibited and protected? As the fluid situation of Egypt unfolds, the question of art and culture with all of its loaded symbolic and material associations will no doubt continue to resurface.  But for now, the future of Egypt is being decided (quite literally) outside of the museum.

Focus on Research| How to Create Effective Lecture Notes

Biggest note-taking mistake in lecture? Trying to write down everything the professor is saying. Learn to discern what is important to write down.

An evolving skill for most undergraduate students is the ability to take good notes in lecture class. This is another of those tasks, along with preparing for seminar/tutorial discussion, learning to make use of PowerPoints, and scheduling to complete assignments on time that is usually left to students to figure out for themselves. Looking back on my own notes taken from university lectures, I can see this progression in action, moving from the attempt to write everything down in my first year in pages upon pages of notes (big mistake) to arriving at a system of highlighting key terms and creating quality notes while building the confidence to listen more and write less in class (far more effective and less stressful). All of this was gained from trial and error, and so I have attempted over the years to come up with a variety of pointers to help students with note-taking, many of which are usefully summarized in an online handout I recently discovered (and can be downloaded) from Dartmouth College.  The most useful part of this handout is found in a section titled “Note Making” that I have reproduced for you here:

1. Don't write down everything that you read or hear.  Be alert and attentive to the main points.  Concentrate on the "meat" of the subject and forget the trimmings.
2. Notes should consist of key words or very short sentences.  If a speaker gets sidetracked it is often possible to go back and add further information.
3. Take accurate notes.  You should usually use your own words, but try not to change the meaning.  If you quote directly from an author, quote correctly.
4. Think a minute about your material before you start making notes.  Don't take notes just to be taking notes!  Take notes that will be of real value to you when you look over them at a later date.
5. Have a uniform system of punctuation and abbreviation that will make sense to you.  Use a skeleton outline and show importance by indenting.  Leave lots of white space for later additions.
6. Omit descriptions and full explanations.  Keep your notes short and to the point.  Condense your material so you can grasp it rapidly.
7. Don't worry about missing a point.
8. Don't keep notes on oddly shaped pieces of paper.  Keep notes in order and in one place.
9. Shortly after making your notes, go back and rework (not redo) your notes by adding extra points and spelling out unclear items.  Remember, we forget rapidly.  Budget time for this vital step just as you do for the class itself.
10. Review your notes regularly.  This is the only way to achieve lasting memory.

If you think of it from the professor’s perspective, the lecture is normally devised to introduce and develop core ideas and themes with supporting context, terminology, and theory—importantly, these are normally the very same ideas and themes you will be tested on during exams. For art historians, the addition of visual imagery and core discussion encapsulated around individual works of art creates another layer of context. In my case, I devise most of my 2 hour lectures around no more than 4-6 main arguments/ideas and core supporting images/video. Your job as a student is really to look for the logical flow of the lecture’s argument (i.e. what is the "story"of the lecture) and isolate those limited number of points that are potentially examinable and/or most significant to the lecture at hand. 

You can increase the effectiveness of your note-taking ten-fold by simply dividing up the space of your notes

Another solid note-taking tool that I would recommend with this task is the highly effective but very straightforward Cornell note taking method—a system devised to help you practice identifying the most important parts of a lecture. If you look at the diagram of the system itself, it helps divide up a sheet of paper into three sections: 1) the NOTE TAKING column where you jot down the main ideas and questions raised in the lecture; 2) the CUE column where you periodically stop and summarize core concepts and terminology; and 3) the SUMMARIES section at the bottom of the page where you will return after the lecture to reflect and add additional ideas (from the textbook and/or other readings and sources) and gained while reading through the notes. This process is usefully summarized in another Dartmouth hand-out found here as a word document download. Whichever method you end up using, just remember that note-taking is highly individual all about the relationships you are building with the ideas being presented in class—take some time to make sure yours are more functional and productive than dysfunctional and stressful.

A simple and straightforward YouTube clip summarizing the Cornell Notes method. You will note in this example that the method also works great for taking notes on textbook and other types of readings:

Weekly Twitter Round Up

As many of us spent the weekend watching the important events of Egypt unfold, the Twitterverse played an incredibly vital role circulating information about what is actually transpiring on the ground. With the Internet effectively shut down by the Egyptian government, Twitter has stepped up support to ensure that the free flow of information be made a priority for those who have used the social networking service to post updates, pictures, and important minute to minute updates of what is happening on the ground (see the final Twitter link on this post for a timeline of what has been happening). Besides collecting some favourites for the week, I have been also following the reports and tweets concerning the vandalism that occurred in Cairo's Egyptian museum and have pasted a YouTube clip below from AlJazeera that shows footage and a report from the past several days concerning the event. The eyes of the world are watching....sending peace vibes to all.

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EVERYTHING you need to know about #Egypt: timeline, who's who, quotes from the ground + more 

Quick Compare| Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso on "Process"

Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, one of the twentieth century's greatest artistic rivalry.

In a lecture this week discussing the rise of modernism in the early twentieth century, I discussed how the history of this period has been carefully constructed around the notion of artistic rivalries and the competition to see who can more successfully “evolve” and push for a revolution of form in the establishing narrative of modern art. Perhaps no bigger rivalry exists in this regard than the one forged between Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. For Matisse, the struggle to move away from a traditional painting method lead him to the experimental realm and an attack on Western traditions of painting at both the level of iconography and form. We see this worked out in his epic and radically perturbing painting Joy of Life (1906). For Picasso, the motivation was very similar, but his experiments lead him towards more of an attack on the stability of signs and the radical questioning of the rules of representation all together. The final result can be seen in his monstrous manifesto painting, and the painting perhaps best associated with modern art, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907).

And even while these two paintings, created only a year apart, signal two landmark works in the history of modern art, they also represent a contrast in approach, stakes, and sensibility in the engagement with modernism. One of my favourite discussions of this rivalry and its many points of contrast can be found in the archives of Slate.com in an article by Jacob Weisberg who breaks down the differences between Matisse and Picasso along the one philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche established in The Birth of Tragedy between Apollonian and Dionysian Art. As Weisberg argues, 

“The Apollonian comes from the Greek god Apollo, the god of light, who was associated with rationality and its subspecialties law, medicine, and philosophy. The Dionysian comes from Dionysius, the god of wine and fertility, who was worshipped with drunken orgies in the woods at which nonparticipants were ripped to pieces. The Apollonian spirit is one of measure, reason, and control; the Dionysian is one of abandon, irrationality, and ecstatic release. The clash between the two principles was what produced Greek tragedy, according to Nietzsche. That Matisse is essentially an Apollonian artist and Picasso a Dionysian is evident even from the backhanded compliments they paid each other. Matisse called Picasso "capricious and unpredictable." Picasso described Matisse's paintings as "beautiful and elegant."

Weisberg goes on to produce a tongue in cheek list that I have pasted below to affirm these differences as an essential competitive struggle still being waged in contemporary culture. Where do you fit into this rivalry? Are you more of a Matisse or a Picasso?

Matisse's Joy of Life (1906) vs. Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) Matisse Picasso Jane Austen Charlotte Brontë Eliot Yeats Freud Jung Superman Batman Left brain Right brain New York City Los Angeles Pope Swift Puccini Verdi Johns Rauschenberg Bush Reagan Ego Id Stravinsky Schoenberg Windows Macintosh Hillary Bill Wordsworth Shelley David Remnick Tina Brown England France Madison Jefferson Mort Zuckerman Donald Trump Hetero Homo Army Navy Heaven Hell Shaw Wilde White wine Red wine Aristotle Plato Slate Salon Bonds Stocks Leviticus Genesis Felix Oscar North Korea South Korea Classical Romantic Cocaine Heroin Mies Le Corbusier The Clash The Sex Pistols Irving Kristol Norman Podhoretz Protestantism Catholicism Kant Rousseau Mozart Haydn Empire State Building Chrysler Building Magritte Dalí Mickey Mouse Donald Duck

To further this conversation, I have selected two clips of Matisse and Picasso in action-- it is always great to look back to these archival films to see the two "heavies" of modern art in action.

Focus on Research: How to Prepare For and Participate in Seminar/Tutorial Discussions

As the new academic term unfolds, it is useful to assess how well you are utilizing your time and efforts to prepare and participate in seminars and tutorials. These are special classes that stimulate critical conversations and introduce specific themes and ideas related to the course content, but seminars and tutorials are also designed to help students prepare for the art of reflective reading and shared inquiry and debate. As academics, your professors have spent years of their professional lives reading and analyzing important core texts in their field and contributing to the ongoing debates through their own published work. The seminars and tutorials you find yourself in are often organized around many of these specific readings, and so in order to get the most out of these classes, it is helpful to have something of a game plan in place:

Pre-Seminar Work: 

In my experience, I have found that many students believe they have prepared adequately for seminar by simply reading through the assigned text(s). This is a common misconception since reading for an academic discussion is very different from reading for a lecture class or even for pleasure. Simply put, you must read the assigned texts a number of times, and with a series of goals in mind including: 1) isolating of the main argument of the reading in a few short sentences; 2) determining how the author uses evidence and examples to make their point; 3) figuring out how the reading is intervening and placing the topic at hand in a new light; and 4) getting some sense of how the reading fits into the larger conversation occurring in your class around the topic. Once that is done, you can go back and begin pinpointing parts of the reading the surprised or intrigued you, flagging parts of the reading that can be usefully raised in a discussion. This is also the point at which note-taking and engaging in your own dialogue with the reading enters the equation (if you have been assigned questions ahead of time, think about how you can answer them by pointing to places in the text as your own evidence).

A wonderful post by educator Jo Van Every describes how she placed the process into some perspective for her students, providing clear guidelines for how to approach pre-seminar work:  

“I had to explain what a journal article was doing. That it was a contribution to a debate. That the author is making an argument and supporting it with evidence.  I told them they should put down their highlighters and read the whole article through once first and try to summarize it in one or two sentences. Then they should read it a second time, more carefully, focusing on the evidence and other details presented. Just the idea that it might be necessary to read the assigned article more than once is a surprise to most students. Many of them think that if they don’t get it on the first reading, it is too hard.”

Planning how to read the text and taking targeted noteswill prepare you for seminars and tutorials

During the Seminar:

If you do your preparation work effectively, you will feel confident and ready to contribute and listen to others once you attend the seminar. In most cases, your seminar will follow the Socratic Method, which involves a form of critical inquiry, reflection, and debate among individuals through the process of asking and answering questions. Often times one person or a group will lead the seminar, but it is important to participate in the discussion with the following useful guidelines from studyguide.org:

1. Refer to the text when needed during the discussion. A seminar is not a test of memory. You are not “learning a subject.” Instead, you our goal is to understand the ideas, issues, and values reflected in the text.
2. It's OK to "pass" when asked to contribute, but plan to make a contribution later on.
3. Do not participate if you are not prepared. A seminar should not be a bull session. 
4. Do not stay confused; ask for clarification.
5. Stick to the point currently under discussion; make notes about ideas you want to come back to.
6. Avoid raising hands; take turns speaking.
7. Listen carefully.
8. Speak up so that all can hear you.
9. Talk to each other (not just at each other), and not just to the leader or teacher.
10. Discuss ideas rather than each other's opinions.
11. You are responsible for the seminar, even if you don't know it or admit it.

Keep in mind too that quality over quantity also applies to seminar participation. If you are the kind of person who naturally likes to talk and share ideas, sit back at times and allow others a chance to reflect and give opinions. Silences and gaps in the discussion are also OK, as is the skill of knowing when to let someone else answer a question if you have already taken your fair share of air time. On the other hand, if you are a bit shy and more reluctant to speak up, get into the habit of planning where you could make a contribution and work on finding the confidence to speak up. Remember that not participating in a conversation prevents your valuable input and ideas from reaching your fellow students, and could also hurt your final contribution mark in the class.

After the Seminar: 

Once the seminar conversations are over, it is always a good idea to look over your notes and see if you can add any further summarizing reflections to help you when it comes time to study for an exam (if the readings are examinable) and/or when you return to the reading for future assignments. In the latter case, I often tell students that the readings they do this term could spark ideas in later years which will return them to the notes and ideas they had originally taken in their seminars. Do your future self a favour and create clear and focused notes to help flesh out the most important bits of the readings at hand. As always, the extra bit of effort you put in today will pay greater dividends in the future.