Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 10:39:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com>
Subject: didactic puppetry


Bill Elston, a while ago, raised the question of whether educational puppetry
-- for instance, puppetry in the service of Christian ministry -- was art.
Well, it's not like I have any useful thoughts on this, but I am very 
interested in the topic of didacticism in art, and so I hate to see this
thread die prematurely. On the one hand, it certainly cannot be claimed 
that art and its use for didactic purposes, or art and being in the service 
of the Church, where at odds with each other in the past.  But it is also
true that there is something about these notions of "didactic use" and
"being in the service of an institution" that we have become much more
doubtful about.  I was reading an old (1966) article by Morse Peckham,
"Art and Disorder", in which he proposes that art has a biological purpose,
and that this purpose is to train humans to deal with cognitive tension.
Now I am very taken by this, mainly because it is such a charmingly blatant 
biologization (?) of an avant-gardist sensibility.  Now one can say that
if one pursues Peckham's proposal, then all art is didactic.  On the other
hand, it is only _art_, by his standards, if it does something beyond, or
different from, imparting information or imparting a view -- unless this
information/view is likely to engeneder cognitive tension in the audience.
I am not necessarily declaring agreement with any of this, just trying 
to re-stir the water.  


-malgosia 


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