The core examination is designed to test the student’s general understanding of concepts and materials implicit in the program of core courses (minor). The goal is to demonstrate an ability to relate general issues and concerns common to all the arts.
The Following Questions Represent the Types of Issues Assigned by Examination Committees During the Past Years (most recent questions are listed first).
1. Theatre directors occupy a curious position. On the one hand, the director is an interpreter of a text – namely, the play’s script – and as such is forced to consider the sorts of questions that arise for all interpreters: To what extent does the meaning of the text depend on the author’s actual intentions? Is the meaning of a text something that awaits discovery, or is meaning constructed by the interpreter?
On the other hand, the director is a creator (or co-creator) of works of art – stage performances. (Compare: a movie projectionist, who does not create works of art.) The director’s choices for a performance, then, are at once acts of interpretation (of the play’s script) and acts that are themselves evaluable from the aesthetic point of view; the eventual performance is at once the responsibility of the director and the playwright. (Not to mention the contribution of the producers, the actors, and the myriad other forces that contribute to the eventual production of a performance.)
What is the director’s responsibility vis-à-vis the play’s script? Are the author’s intentions to be respected? To what extent? How and to what extent does a play’s script constrain performances of it? Who, if anyone, is ultimately responsible for a performance? How are theatre directors different, in this regard, from other sorts of artists – painters, novelists, musicians?
2. Discuss the notion that art defines culture. How can art be used to help people experience and come to an understanding of the world? Does knowing about art, or doing art help a person learn about the world, or refine skills that are useful in functioning in the world? In your response, address both contemporary and one historical culture, including music, philosophy, theatre, and visual art (excluding film and TV) in your discussion.
3. What subjects are essential to a primary school education? Incontrovertibly, English, mathematics, and science (say), but it is not obvious to most that music belongs on this list. And while literacy is incontrovertibly crucial in a person’s education, music literacy (i.e. the ability to read and write music notation) is not. Zoltan Kodály, for one, maintained that, on the contrary, an education in music is the right of every student, and that a successful musical education is part of a complete spiritual and intellectual life.
4. Does music belong on such a list of essential subjects? Suppose that it does; what explains the importance of music education? What does an education in music teach one, other than how to create music? And what sort of music curriculum (if not the sort that is currently common) would warrant taking music as seriously as these other subjects?
5. Visual art and theatre, as much as music, are ‘inessential’ subjects in primary schools. (And certainly both are ‘inessential’ in high schools and colleges, inasmuch as they are not required subjects.) If there is currently a neglect of music education (and a neglect of a certain sort), is there a similar neglect of visual art and theatre education (and a neglect of the same sort)? Do Kodály’s claims about music (or yours, in reply to the questions above) apply, mutatis mutandis, to the visual arts and to theatre?
6. Certain critics of the current movie "Crash" have argued that the film is flawed because, in its concern with making a point, it hits the viewer over the head with its message; in some sense, it tells you what to feel rather than just having you experience the relevant feelings in some more authentic manner. Setting aside the question of assessing that particular film, consider the distinction between the different ways artworks have of communicating emotional qualities. (Some philosophers have, for example, tried to draw significant distinctions between expressing, betraying, evoking, and describing an emotion or such distinctions? Does it make sense at all, for example, to say that some modes of emotional communication are artistically superior (or better suited to particular art forms) than others? Why or why not?
Examining illustrations from visual art, music, and theatre, discuss emotive communication in the arts, and the question of whether there may be salient differences in such communication between the various arts.
7. While most people in the arts feel that federal or state funding for the arts is appropriate, and that such funding agencies often support programs of advocacy and education which help shape cultural policy, there are those who are opposed to such programs. Those who are opposed to federal or state funding often feel that the private sector should fund the arts and be advocates for artistic endeavors.
Discuss those areas of advocacy, policy, or education that are appropriate to government support and those that might more properly seek support in the private sector. Identify at least one program from each side of the problem that illuminates your position. Is it possible for the arts to exist in early 21st century society without some form of governmental support? If art does, indeed, define a society, why is external support necessary? Be sure to include visual arts, theatre, music and philosophy in your discussion.
8. Some assert that racism and sexism continue to be major problems in the arts. Give us a brief overview of the history of black women in the arts, i.e., how we got to this point. Determine the extent to which racism and sexism constitute contemporary issues for the arts. Are racism and sexism simply ethical and/or political problems, or are they distinctively artistic problems as well? Do race and sex challenge contemporary aesthetic principles? If so, how do they do this? Suggest changes and offer plans for creating those changes. Don't hesitate to refer to your own experiences, but provide, in addition, a logical rationale for a discussion incorporating art, music, philosophy, and theatre.
9. Theatregoing, in short, is one of a dwindling group of activities that bring Americans into communication with each other; it is, therefore, an enterprise that preserves some vestige of belief in the possibilities of society, if not of communion. It may also be one of the last remaining shreds of evidence that we are a people, and not just an isolated mass of frightened fantasists, barricaded in our homes, seeking safety from a sinister and threatening external world.
To my question, “Who needs theatre?”, then, I would reply, we all do – not for its superior aesthetic qualities, which it reveals so rarely, certainly not for its comfort or convenience, not even for its capacity to move forward in space and time in a culture of canned images, but because it represents social history in the making, both on the stage and in the audience. It signifies that community we have forsaken, the accidents and risks we would rather avoid, the sweat and gristle we prefer to disguise, the labor of humans working against odds.
--Robert Brustein, Who Needs Theatre: Dramatic Opinions. New York, 1987. 4.
10. How do the arts foster communication? Is that communication one-on-one – uniquely between the artist and the spectator – or is it plural: between the artist and the entire audience? Is communication among the audience a significant phenomenon? Is one of art’s central functions to reinforce society and its norms? Alternatively, should art have some other relationship to societal norms – for example, to criticize and challenge it?
In your response, include specific examples from music, the visual arts, and theatre, making reference to ideas from philosophical aesthetics.
11. During the period between 1865 to 1935 (the end of the civil War to the end of the Harlem Renaissance), African-American arts gradually emerged into the awareness of “mainstream” Americans. In many instances, when they came into contact with commercialism at the turn of the 20th century, African American arts were taken over and controlled.
With an example of each, explore this phenomenon in music, theater, and visual art. Consider, also, whether philosophies of art extant during that era facilitated or created resistance to a greater awareness of African-American arts.
In what ways did commercial forces, art criticism, and philosophical positions affect African-American artists in terms of their artistic decisions and productions in this period?
12. Barnett Newman (the abstract expressionist artist) famously said "Aesthetics is for the artists like ornithology is for the birds."
Arthur Danto (who dabbled in abstract expressionism himself, apparently), art critic and philosopher, insisted that in the late 20th century art was sometimes almost indistinguishable from philosophy, and that in any case aesthetic theory was absolutely essential to the practice and understanding of art in this period. What do you take to be the proper relation between art theory (philosophical aesthetics) and the practice of art? Is what philosophers study and argue and propose at all relevant to the activity of artists? Is it relevant to the activity of art critics, or to others engaged in the practical aspects of the institution of art? Why might one think so (with Danto, perhaps)? Why might one think not?
In your assessment, examine arguments on both sides of this question and be sure to draw on illustrations from the various arts of theatre, music, and visual art.
13. Artmaking is such a widespread activity among members of our species that it has often been characterized as natural--a universal (or almost universal) product of human nature and evolution. But many forms of contemporary art seem hard to make sense of from such a perspective. Much contemporary art seems highly theoretical. Its comprehension and appreciation appear to require the possession of a substantive body of theoretical knowledge. And even apparently non-theoretical contemporary art often seems to call for understanding in terms of a rich body of art history and art theory. Can this be squared with the putatively natural and universal character of art? If so, how? Or should we reject the idea that artmaking is a natural activity?
Make sure you address the visual, performing, and musical arts as well as philosophy.
14. Many theorists have thought that there are important distinctions to be made between fine art on the one hand and popular art or mass art on the other. Opposing theorists have dismissed the attempt to distinguish these categories. Are there significant distinctions to be made between these categories? More specifically, are there differences between these categories that are relevant for criticism (i.e., evaluation, interpretation, and appreciation)? If so, how might one go about making these distinctions? How are these distinctions critically important (or why aren’t they)? If you do not think the distinctions are significant, explain why the distinctions are still frequently invoked.
Make sure you reference examples in the visual arts, music, theater and dance, and provide a philosophical base for your position.
15. Some theorists have argued that knowledge about the context in which a work of art was made is crucial to our appreciation and understanding of it; others have argued that such knowledge is not important to our engagement with art.
How important is knowledge of historical context to artistic appreciation and understanding? What can one get from a work of art without knowledge of context? What might be missing? Is there an important distinction between knowledge of general historical context and knowledge of art-historical context (i.e., knowledge of the history of art)? Are there general answers to the aforementioned questions, or do the answers depend on the form of art in question?
Use examples from theater, music and the visual arts, and make reference to philosophical theorists that you have studied in your core classes.
16. At least twice during the last century, with the early 20th-century avant-garde and the much later conceptual art movements, artists have produced works that directly call into question the nature of art itself. Partly in reaction to such movements, philosophers have in turn been led to re-conceive their own efforts at defining art. Instead of focusing on time-worn criteria involving, for example, imitation or expression, certain theorists have suggested that we have to look beyond appearances to other factors in order to grasp that something is a work of art. Thus, Arthur Danto famously asserts that seeing an object as a work of art requires something “the eye cannot descry,” and other theorists, understanding it as a product of a cultural institution, or as part of an on-going historical narrative, and in any case against an understanding of its art-historical and perhaps, more broadly, cultural context.
Discuss one of these watershed periods in 20th-century art, using illustrations from across the arts. Go on to explain what it is about avant-garde or conceptual works that might be thought to suggest the inadequacy of traditional theories of art. Finally, spell out the particulars of one of the recent philosophical theories of art that might be seen to have arisen in response to the radical goings-on in the activities of artists.
17. Often, programs that purport to be interdisciplinary may, in fact, be termed multidisciplinary. What are the criteria for being “interdisciplinary” or “multidisciplinary”? Do meanings ascribed to the terms, or the importance given to the terms’ meanings, vary in their usage within specific disciplines? To the degree that you discover such disciplinary biases, provide a concise explanation as to why they may have developed.