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Class in the Spotlight
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Field combines history, theory and practice
 Photo by Dane Sponberg Jonathan Field, Ph.D., enjoys crossing boundaries in his work — between theory and practice, various types of media, and traditional and online classroom formats By Monique Bos Published: Friday, March 30, 2007 Anyone who thinks art history isn’t intimately related to studio practice hasn’t talked to Jonathan Field, Ph.D. Field, an art history professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design, also is a practicing artist devoted to interdisciplinary perspectives. “There has always been a crossover in my mind between understanding the history and theory of art and the practical problems of making it,” he said. “History is not separate from making art; I see it all as very interconnected.” In fact, Field chose to earn his Ph.D. at Lancaster University in his native England because the program there allowed him to combine history and theory with practice. His dissertation was about contemporary painter Gerhard Richter, and his thesis exhibition included both painting and photography. “In my career as a teacher I’ve worked both in the studio and in the lecture theater,” said Field, who taught in the art departments at Coventry and Preston universities in England before joining the SCAD faculty in Fall 1999. “Wherever possible, I like to cross boundaries if I can.” He encourages his students to explore the connections between their work and the ideas and artists they study in their art history courses. “I ask students to bring in their studio practice, and I take them to exhibitions around town to apply what they are learning in class,” he said. “I encourage students to think about where their own disciplines might interact with others, such as history and literature … What goes on out there in the world is very much a resource for them to use to inform their work.” He teaches a variety of art history courses, from Survey of Western Art II to graduate-level Contemporary Art and Art Criticism, and said he enjoys various aspects of each. In the graduate classes, he helps students relate their own work to trends in contemporary theory and criticism. For undergraduates, he provides them with a context in which to ground themselves as artists. “Many of the [survey] students have not encountered the work we’re viewing before,” he said. “I can introduce people to art and ideas and see the light bulb come on. They see they’re not working in a bubble; there’s a precedent. I get to see them realize their discipline has history and tell them all about the ‘zeitgeist,’ the spirit of the age.” Field exhibits regularly, and his work was featured in six shows during 2006. “My art practice is really important to me,” he said. “It’s one of the engines that drives my teaching and my artwork is what keeps me sane. I’m enthusiastic and I have a lot of energy for art. For me, there’s always the crossover, looking at history and thinking what it was actually like to be an artist at that time and face the same problems we might face now.” Consistent with his interdisciplinary approach, he uses a variety of artistic media in his work, including installation, short films, painting and photography — a field in which he credits his partner, SCAD photography professor Liz Darlington, with being a “tremendous help.” “The ideas remain fairly constant,” he said. “What changes is the medium I use to work with, which is driven by the specific theme … A lot of my work is informed by American contemporary writing. That’s where I got interested in America and why I came to live here.” As an undergraduate student, he majored in fine arts and American literature, and his art reflects an ongoing fascination with American culture and writers, particularly Thomas Pynchon and William S. Burroughs. “Some of these writers in the mid- to late-1960s in America were living in a not dissimilar climate to the one we’re living in now. There’s a war and a counterculture, a sense of dissent among American writers,” he said. “What maintains my interest in these writers is that there are a lot of issues they explore in a literary way that I think have the potential to be explored in a visual way. We’re living in the same kind of time.” His “Maxwell’s Demon” series focuses on the portrayal of historic events by the media. By sticking stainless steel pins into black Neoprene, Field created reproductions of images from the first page of the New York Times on the first day of every month during 2003. “The series reflects my interest in history,” he explained. The title of the 2005 exhibition “W.A.S.T.E.,” or “We Await Silent Tristero’s Empire,” which showed at the college’s Pinnacle Gallery, is an allusion to Pynchon’s novel “The Crying of Lot 49.” Although he is not American, Field said a lot of his art expresses his own commentary on America. “A lot of it is angry and driven by an inquiry into media, culture and politics.” He also has worked with SCAD-Atlanta foundation studies professor Avantika Bawa on projects for online journal Drain, www.drainmag.com. “It’s a contemporary art journal and experimental space project,” he explained. “I fully believe that it’s a nice initiative, good for the SCAD community, and I promote it to students as a good opportunity.” He is becoming interested in VJ work as well, he said, and has learned from watching colleagues Jim Gladman and Sandro Imperato, both professors in the broadcast design and motion graphics department, develop their VJ practices. “They are two friends whom I’ve watched work using technology that’s really alien to me,” he said. “It seems to have huge creative potential … The VJ format seems to bring together two of my interests, which are music and the visual.” In his teaching, Field also has crossed the barrier from the traditional classroom to an online format. He said he was the first art history professor to offer a fully online course through SCAD e-Learning. “Since then, I’ve written 20th-century Art as a fully online program,” he explained. “As well as authoring courses, I’ve delivered them … The SCAD e-Learning department has been very helpful and supportive of the courses I’ve written and the more technical aspects of delivering art history courses online.” He said he likes teaching online but also finds it challenging at times. “There’s something that happens within Pepe Hall[, home of the SCAD art history department,] when you engage directly with students using body language and jokes and humor,” he said. “Those are things you cannot use effectively in e-mail … [But] I enjoy teaching online.” He also has participated in the pilot program for hybrid courses, combining classroom and online methods. “It’s one meeting a week instead of two,” he explained. “The format is blended. Students can read the lecture on their own time, and then the class session is devoted to discussion and feedback to study questions.” Field also has conducted off-campus courses. During winter break 2006, he spent two weeks in Australia with a group of students, and for the past three years, he has taught courses in New York City. “Typically, off-campus courses provide a wonderful opportunities to see art firsthand in another culture. Students actually get to go to a museum and engage with the real thing,” he said. “Blaine Hansen and Gail Burton in off-campus programs do a great job of organizing what are often quite complete travel itineraries and so on.” He also has taught at SCAD-Lacoste twice, and he and Darlington recently purchased an apartment five miles from Lacoste. “We fell in love with the area,” he said. “It’s been a great experience. What we’re planning on doing is using that apartment every summer as a studio space.” As much as he’s an avid observer of American culture, that international perspective also is crucial to Field — and it’s one of the assets he sees of working at SCAD. “I like the international flavor here. My partner is from New Zealand, and I have mates from all over,” he said. “In the classroom at any one time, there are American, Korean, Chinese and South American students, all bringing their own perspectives to material we’re discussing.”  |
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