National Art Education Association Studies in Art Education

National Art Education Association
The Nostalgia of Art Education: Reinscribing the Master's Narrative

Author(s): Jan Jagodzinski
Source: Studies in Art Education, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Winter, 1997), pp. 80-95
Published by: National Art Education Association
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STUDIES in Art Education Copyright by the
A Journal of Issues and Research National Art Education Association
1997, 38(2), 80-95
The Nostalgia of Art Educ

Reinscribing the Master's N
jan jagodzinski
University of Alberta
This essay presents a socially critical, psychoanalytic critique of the Getty Center for
Education in the Arts' multicultural program through a close reading of the effects of a
specific advertisement which appeared in NAEA News, by calling on three registers of
Lacanian subjectivity: Symbolic, Imaginary, Real. These registers of subjective desire are
described and applied to facilitate reading for those who are unfamiliar with the Lacanian
paradigm. It is argued rhetorically, often through personal address to the reader, that the
Getty's multicultural programs are a paradigmatic example of neo-racism.
How often does it happen that you are suddenly hit in the face by an image that is so
blatantly and powerfully iconic of what is wrong with art education today that you are
obligated ethically to respond to it? Seldom. What is more often the case is a clever guise
that shrouds itself under such master signifiers as progress, standards, and excellence. But
here, exposed in a full two page spread, is a rhetorical statement by The Getty Center For
Education in the Arts (see figure 1, page 95) that is so bold and daring in its expositionary
rhetoric that only the most cynical of art teachers would dismiss its address in a time of
pluri-cultural crisis. The discussion which follows does not try to interpret this advertise-
ment per se, or to offer a sociological explanation for Getty's program, nor do I want to
offer the outlines of a curriculum that stands in direct opposition, although that is possi-
ble as well. Rather, I want to provide a map of desire that interpellates (hails) the art edu-
cator' into three registers of subjective identification with the Getty's cultural world-view
as designated by Lacanian categories, Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real, that manifest them-
selves respectively in signifiers, images, and fantasies to get at the level of desire.2
' The concept of interpellation into ideology is developed by Althusser (1971) wherein he discusses the
phenomenon of being hailed as a "reading subject" constructed by the text. According to Althusser the
construction of subjects-in-ideology is the major ideological practice in capitalist societies. "Art educa-
tor" in this context does not refer to an actual social subject, but to a psychical subject of desire created
by the effects of the signifying structures of the Getty program. The empirical subject occupies this
unconscious position so that the coherence and readability of the text is established.
The Symbolic Order refers to that dimension of the human subject that is identical to language as it has
been identified with certain signifiers. The Imaginary (capitalized here, imaginary with no caps usually
refers to its common usage as a conscious mental image) refers to the preverbal aspect of subjectivity
and is of central importance when linking Lacan with the arts. The Imaginary is the order of perception
and hallucination, fantasy-full but never fanciful. The Imaginary is constituted by schemata of memory
and cognition that are dominant before the child learns to speak, and Lacan refers to this register as the
THE NOSTALGIA OF ART EDUCATION 81
Getty's seductive world, I will argue, provides a postmodern form of n

"differential racism," or "civilized racism" that is the very antithesis of
cultural program the Getty purports to be advocating.
Embodied Desire in the Getty as the Symbolic Other

I shall begin my psychoanalytic cultural criticism with the Symbolic Or
in the Lacanian paradigm it is the signifier that holds the key to desire.3 Wh
then be the master signifiers through which an art teacher would identify h
self? What is being offered here as an ego ideal by which an art teacher
nize the Other? What wish is being addressed by the Getty, as an autho
gives the impression that its subjects, art teachers, are cared for, even lov
of the signifiers the Getty embodies? Answer: a managed world of cultur
ny where virtually each and every familial, national, ethnic, racial, and
even sexual identity is potentially recognized. Pushed within the context
ing technologies, this is a "virtual community" where an identificatory s
created by plugging into the Getty system through its programs, thereby
active narcissistic desires to comply with the Getty's passive narcissistic
the teacher's Symbolic Other. There are five synecdochic avatars4 of this
ty which act as the art teacher's representative stand-ins. Four are named
visible, one remains absent, but acts anamorphically5 as a voice that is o
"mirror stage" of subjectivity. The Real belongs to the postverbal aspects of the subject, aspe
that have been excluded from the categories of language and are hence non-discursive.
never be attained in any direct way but is always mediated by the Imaginary and the Symbo
to imagine the interrelationships of all three registers is to consider the twisting relationshi
strip where one side refers to the Symbolic Order, while the other side is the Imaginary. Th
exists outside the strip itself; it "outstrips" both registers, so to speak.
3 The primacy of the signifier in the Symbolic Order is easily demonstrated by the story of
ual man who is erotically attracted to a figure seen from behind, sporting long blond hair
legs in tight jeans. As this person turns around, it turns out to be another man, dissolving d
in the elaborate registration of images and fantasies of lust. The signifiers "man" and "
precedence over the image; the image is therefore ultimately subordinate to the signifier. In ord
ual desire to be produced, the image has to be coupled (explicitly or implicitly) with the pr
er.
4 In poststructuralist textual criticism it is quite common to evoke the 'burden of work' that the synec-
doche as a figure of speech is asked to do to further the rhetoric of a text. Synecdoche refers to a part that
represents the whole or the reverse. In this case each signifier, i.e., African-American, is a whole that rep-
resents a part of the American culture. I use the term avatar purposefully here since an avatar (from
Hindu mythology) is the descent of a deity or a soul released to earth in bodily form. Each synecdochic
figure is, so to speak, an incarnation of a specific culture.
5 Anamorphosis is referred to here as any kind of construction that is made in such a way that by means
of a transposition (optical or otherwise), a certain form that wasn't visible at first transforms itself into a
readable image. Hans Holbein's painting of The Ambassadors is often referred to as the paradigm case.
82 jan jagodzinski
the frontal perception of the frame itself. As I shall demonstrate, this last avatar fig-
ures even more prominently in the next two registers.
The synecdochic four avatars as master signifiers (listed strategically in the mid-
dle of the six-part program, as product number #3 of the Getty system, refer to fig-
ure 1) are: African American, Pacific Asian, Mexican American, and American
Indian. The first three master signifiers bear the category "art," while the last avatar
is assigned only "artifacts." There is a very good reason for this signifier within the
Getty symbolic system. To assign "art" to the American Indian print series would
lessen the mystique of the changing American Indian culture. The mystique fortifies
an essential and exotic "Indianness" that opens the doors of active narcissistic
desires for both sides of the divide. Romantic notions of the "noble savage" can be
recuperated by the Getty who now demonstrates that it promotes a caring and mor-
alizing attitude for the preservation of a "dying" culture. Yet, the five posters in
Series II are more likely to homogenize the diversity than to promote difference.
Few art educators have the cultural competence to establish cultural differentations
in design, ritualistic use, and interpretation of symbols amongst the numerous trib-
al moieties of the past. Besides, some icons are not meant for public display.
Unfortunately, good intentioned ethnographic studies of American Indian artifacts
by art educators have inadvertently aided and abetted this mystique, recovering art's
lost "aura" as electronic reproductive systems of postmodernism have introduced an
age of the simulated image, i.e., digitalized simulacra.
On the other side of the divide, American Indians who have had to learn to play
the capitalist game, have recognized that land claims and cultural artifacts are the
only bargaining chips they still have left. Consequently, there has been a reevalua-
tion of the monetary and symbolic worth of these very objects. Cultic artifacts were
often discarded: their use-value "spent" after a set ritual (Blocker, 1994). Today they
have become "cultural capital," a way to prove the existence of an indigenous group
in a concrete way. In addition to undertaking "vision quests" to museums to
reclaim sacred artifacts that once belonged to their tribes, ethnic groups clearly are
seeking recognition, respect, and self-esteem. Their claims for material goods and
resources (land claims) often are related intimately to the process of gaining recog-
nition and respect, since Western capitalist culture equates the two. The upsurge of
this "revival" ethnicity, often referred to as "ethnogenesis" (Sollors, 1986), is relat-
ed largely to the perceived socioeconomic gains it allows individuals whose identi-
ties have been submerged or whose status has been denigrated in the past. In this
case, identity functions as a political assertion of pride in what a minority regards
as its rightful heritage, in spite of any considerations of cultural authenticity. Given
this symbolic logic, the word "art" is strategically barred as a signifier from
American Indians in this particular case, maintaining the illusion that the Western
concept of "art" and art education have somehow avoided swallowing up or chang-
ing these cultures in their wake. Within the Getty's Symbolic Order, American
Indian artifacts will continue to be fetishized if the Getty wants to keep its attention
and its options open. Likewise, art educators who spout multiculturalism
such identity politics will find a supportive ally in the Getty.
It should come as no surprise that the African-American avatar is giv
billing, and that the American Indian is placed last, with "what's in betw
ing the ingredients of "the Getty burg(h)er." This signifying chain pre
totemic hierarchy of managing the aspiring subject positions for recog
dominance within a racial discourse which frequently accords hypervisi
African Americans and a relative invisibility to Asian Americans a
Americans. African Americans usually are considered as the "racial othe
Asians and Latinos are viewed as "culturally" but not "racially" differen
white people. These distinctions are repeated within the Getty's "Multicu
Print Series." Series I includes two five-image sets, one of African-Americ
one of Pacific Asian art. There is no "American" signifier attached to th
Asian art which makes two provisions possible: first, it allows Japan, A
economic (but not racial) other to figure in the system, and second, it
the door to China, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, and Indonesia.
The second series, and later Series II, is consistent with the ranking of
American and American Indian Other as second place holders. Apart fro
major city centers like Chicago and New York, Mexican Americans are l
greater numbers on the West coast and along the southern borders than el
the United States. Given Getty's location, one would expect that Mexican-
interests would be its most pressing concern, felt immediately at its doo
such is not the case within their virtual system.6 In this signifying chai
Getty's Symbolic Order, we remember best what's first and politely nod
last. Prizes are even given for the last place finisher simply to remind us
person represents the end of the line, and also the end of the "race." In th
American Indian was (t)here first, but paradoxically finishes last. The c
between is recognized, given their due certificates for running, but the re
which master signifiers count most in the politics of identification.
The first product of the Getty system (refer to figure 1) asks you to v
a simulacrum-in video form, and identify with any of the five schools th
sented as its shining clones. This form of "illumination" allows you to enjo
sive narcissistic gratification that comes with the sense of security and w
of dwelling within the circuits of discourse created by translators of the
rative. "It" then comes at you as an "intelligent eye" (product #2). This "i
eye," you are told, has its place setting elevated by the vines of no less an
tion than Harvard, through a prestigious research program-Project Zero
6The question is not one of numbers but one of political pressure. California has a large
Asian Americans and African Americans as well. However, Mexican Americans have exer
to introduce Spanish as a second language in California schools, and the LA riots had a la
ment of Mexican Americans who were competing with African Americans for "lower level"
1992). Asian Americans in California are far better off with their network of small stores an
nesses, many of which were ransacked during the LA riots.
84 jan jagodzinski
bodied by its co-director David Perkins. From this height its spectacular logic, made
possible through "effective thinking strategies," can survey the landscape more
"intelligently" and "critically" examining, presumably, the print series listed as
product #3. The "it" is Getty's Eye/I.
In product #4, art teachers are given the tools for such surveillance techniques of
critical thinking and looking-the Discipline Based Art Education program
(DBAE) which requires little explanation within the contexts of this journal's read-
ership. The master signifier that "buttons dpwn" this program is "discipline"7 and
here, I suggest, another form of desire is activated and fulfilled by the promise of
the curriculum sampler-the eight instructional units of product #5. An active ana-
clitic desire in the Symbolic Order is activated here in order to possess, as a means
of one's own jouissance, the power of the Eye/I.8 Discipline, and all the paradig-
matic cluster of signifiers it "buttons down"-territory, form, procedure, formalism,
obedience, self-surveillance, clarity, directionality, definitionality-may be summa-
rized as the modernist "will to certainty." Discipline provides the art teacher with
the assurances of a concrete and irrefutable body of knowledge. In other words, you
can possess the "intelligent eye" for your own pleasure which may even lead to
jouissance by surveying the "non-Western world" in the following way through
their system. The Getty ad communicates to us: here's how it has been done (prod-
uct #5), and here are a further thirty "insightful and provocative participants" who
have also done it during the 1992 Center's third invitational issues seminar (prod-
uct #6).
Through the six sequentially placed Getty products, an art teacher's desire has
been mobilized along this chain from being to having. Beginning with Getty's pas-
sive narcissistic desire, which then changes to an active narcissism of the art
teacher, and then moves towards active anaclitic possession, the art teacher has been
led along a given path of desire. This path begins with narcissistically desiring to be
like the Getty in its benevolence of possessing an "intelligent eye" which it wishes
to share, and having the satisfaction of using it for similar beneficial ends. Here we
see how the use of metaphor as displacement, i.e., the art teacher wanting to be like
Lacan calls such signifiers points de caption (literally an "upholstery button"). They act as "nodal
points" through which signifiers and signifieds are temporarily sewn together. These overdetermined
points operate to fix the multitude of "floating signifiers" which circulate in the ideological field.
8 To help explain the use of anaclitic andjouissance, the first a Freudian term, the second a Lacanian one,
the following may be helpful. Freud makes a categorical distinction between anaclitic and the narcissis-
tic libido (sexual desire). The narcissistic libido is associated with the desire to be the object of the
Other's desire (by way of being loved, admired, idealized or recognized by the Other); or one can desire
to become the Other through identification, devotion, and love with the other. Anaclitic libido is associ-
ated with having or possessing the object of desire. Active anaclitic desire may refer to the possession
of the object (or Other) by the self as a means ofjouissance (ecstatic pleasure). Or it may take a passive
form where one can desire to be desired or possessed by the Other as the object of the Other'sjouissance.
Jouissance is more than simple pleasure (plasir). It is a hysterical pleasure that cannot be contained by
the Symbolic Law
the Getty, is informed, encouraged, supported, and gently cajoled meton

signifiers of the Getty's choosing. Metaphor and metonymy both inform
diplomatically in order to negotiate the desired relationship between the
and the Getty.
Possessing the Eye/I provides one with the power of critical thinking
ing, i.e., mastery and excellence. This Eye/I has many other names-the
disciplinary eye, the panoptic eye, the eye of critical reason, the ration
also the Eye/I of postmodern racism that lies buried in its third produc
useful to turn to the writings of Etienne Balibar (1991) and Homi Bhabh
help fill out how this racist ruse is staged. Balibar has called such cultur
a neo-racism or "differentialist racism" in the postcolonial, postmoder
where "decolonialization" is taking place. The democratic parading of c
ralism is a means to preserve dominant hegemony and national identity w
same time appearing tolerant, inquisitive, helpful, and respectful of the
In contrast to the old racial biologism which was presented in a direct
brutally physical fashion, neo-racism requires the reflective theorizati
anthropological culturalism for justification of difference and othernes
moder era, writes Balibar, "There is in fact no racism without theory (o
(p. 18). This "meta-racism," as developed by academics, constructs a sci
ory which immediately explains and justifies the racism of the masses,
their visible collective violence to a set of hidden causes, thereby f
intense desire for an interpretative explanation as to what it is that ind
experiencing in the current postmodern decentralization, and who they
social world. This new "differentiated racism," is for Balibar, a "racism
race;" that is to say, racial tensions exist only as the incompatible d
between cultures, lifestyles, sexual preferences, traditions, and so forth
sity of maintaining these differences is now ostentatiously held up as a
ic" solution. Such a theoretical position "naturalizes" cultural differences
contain individuals or groups in an a priori cultural genealogy. They bec
tial, fixed entities separated by a margin of cultural distance. In this way cu
ferences are maintained by erecting borders. The older notion of superio
is replaced by a multicultural theory which gives various groups st
grounds that there is an essential culture to which they belong, wh
observed and learnt from at a distance as long as the barrier, the bound
tance is maintained. The Other can be admired and exoticized for its diff
at the same time this very difference is maintained in order to maintain
No sense of cultural change or hybridity for the Other is allowed or permit
the other gets too close, begins to assimilate, then difference has to be r
order to maintain distance.
Getty's multicultural educational curricula and multicultural art educat
graphers partake in this new form of neo-racism by claiming to be more
in their attempt to understand the Other by getting at an emic or partic
A culture's informants and their artifacts (music, art, dance, myths, and
vide the authentic data on which to premise curricular material which e
86 jan jagodzinski
cultural diversity of viewpoints. In doing so, by implication, such action of the

"intelligent eye" presents the Other as less progressive and more primitive because
such inquisitive action on the part of the dominant culture is promoting, bestowing,
and conferring a sense of cultural individualism on the Other. "[T]he cultures sup-
posed implicitly superior are those which appreciate and promote 'individual' enter-
prise, social and political individualism, as against those which inhibit these things"
(Balibar, 1991, p. 25). Bhabha reconfirms this enterprise in yet another way:
In fact the sign of the 'cultured' [culture in the sense of Kultur] or the 'civi-
lized' attitude [here I would flag the word Bildung which makes a distinction
between academic and popular knowledge and between technical and folk-
loric knowledge] is the ability to appreciate cultures in a kind of musee imag-
inaire; as though one should be able to collect and appreciate them. Western
connoisseurship is the capacity to understand and locate cultures in a univer-
sal time-frame that acknowledges their various historical and social contexts
only eventually to transcend them and render them transparent. (1990, p. 208)
In meta-racism the claim is made that it is natural for groups of difference to live
together in a multicultural society provided the borders are not crossed. Doing so
would be committing the intellectual death of humanity, perhaps even endangering
the very mechanisms that ensure biological survival. Cultural pluralism (anthropo-
logical culturalism) is thus turned in on itself, for academic meta-racism argues that
it is 'natural' for human groups to preserve their traditions and their identity.
Cultural hierarchy functions as a double logic: it is both denounced and reconsti-
tuted at the same time through the practical application of the doctrine. As Bhabha
puts it, there is "a creation of cultural diversity and a containment of cultural differ-
ence" (p. 208). Culture now functions like nature. Should this necessary and 'nat-
ural' distance be abolished, then interethnic conflicts and violence are surely to
arise. Racism is therefore explained and a solution towards its prevention is also
given. Such a liberalist theory thus appears anti-racist at first sight, but actually is
a weaker form of apartheid; a more benevolent face of modernist (humanist) bar-
barism9 which can host the argument justifying white supremacist activities (such as
ethnic cleansing) on the grounds that such groups are simply preserving their own
"white culture" by maintaining distance and reinstating a tolerance threshold so that
racist conduct is prevented. Armed with this neo-racist theory, the Klan can claim
9Neo-racism forcefully shows how the humanistic project of the enlightenment can be effectively used
for fascistic ends. Zygmunt Bauman (1989), has usefully shown how the Holocaust represents the bar-
baric side of its rationalism, developing Benjamin's (1973) often quoted statement: "There is no docu-
ment of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism" (p. 258). The Holocaust,
rather than being "an aberration, more than a deviation to an otherwise straight path of progress" (p. 7),
was yet another face of modernist society. The principles of its barbarism exhibited the horrors of its
rationality. Structurally, the gas chambers were driven by the same presiding principles that were taken
for granted as the positive aspects of modernity: the principles of rational efficiency. The structure of
thought which facilitated the possibility of the Holocaust were inscribed in the philosophical structure of
the Enlightenment itself. See also Stjepan Mestrovic's The Barbarian Temperament (1993).
to be 'truly' anti-racist and 'truly' humanist, discarding their hoods and boldl
ning for senatorial office, as happened in the state of Louisiana with David
National Association for the Advancement of White People and with Grand D
Charles Lee who ran for the governor of Texas. They claim to represent dise
chised whites.
Getty's Imaginary Order

It is quite extraordinary to be presented with an image that is so confirmatory of
the neo-racist Symbolic order discussed above. Like the Mobius strip (see footnote 2)
this image couples (explicitly in this case) with the "intelligent eye" of multicultur-
al racism. The Imaginary order never exists in complete independence from the
Symbolic order, despite the rhetorical claim that "images speak for themselves." A
child's experience is structured indirectly by the Symbolic Order. We are all born
into a pre-given structured language. The Imaginary schemata forms the foundation
upon which the Symbolic order is erected in individual subjectivity. Human lan-
guage is structured around choice images which have a specific relation with the
child's life world. The faces of the three children in the picture clearly exhibit var-
ious emotional expressions of fascination with the sculpture: awe, curiosity, a sense
of excitement. The Imaginary order is composed of the schemata of meaning that
arise from our bodily experiences as infants, before we learn to speak. What desires
are then registered on the Imaginary for these children? What are they taught about
their sense of bodily mastery and identity to provoke their direct significant desires?
To begin with, the children have been placed in a position of bodily subservience
and surveillance. All three children stare up at the statue. Their teacher, somewhat
bent over in a gesture of pointing, acts as the conveyor of the statue's power; her
finger signifies the authoritative directive for their gaze. The viewer is positioned
at the same level as the statue, and is asked to identify with it to help facilitate the
conversation that is going on between it, the children, and the teacher as conveyed
by their eye contacts and her "point." This place of viewing is facilitated by the stat-
ue's scale, the turn of its head into the picture plane, and especially its appearance
in the foremost possible foreground of the picture plane. Its "animal" part recedes
into the picture plane, while its "human" part is forwarded with about two thirds of
its frontal legs cropped off, furthering its human dimensionality and thereby mak-
ing it possible to tighten and close the imaginary distance between it and the place
of viewing. Such pictorial coding repeats the imaginary body position of the view-
er, inviting the following metaphorical condensation: the viewer, as the statue, now
looks down on both the teacher and the children. What might be then the teacher's
directive of their gaze? What are they being asked to imagine? What is the view-
er being asked to imagine? What is "beside the point"?
An active narcissistic form of Imaginary desire involves loving and admiring the
image of the other person, to the point of desiring to become corporeally like that
person. In Lacan's reformulation of the Cartesian ego, "I think therefore I am seen,"
he acknowledges the Other's presence in the moments of all self-recognition.
Imaginary identification happens either in a literal mirror, with those facilitating
88 jan jagodzinski
recognition in the background, or in the virtual mirror of another person's face and
body. This "mirror stage," as Lacan called it, refers to that set of experiences by
which the infant eventually manages to attain a sense of itself as a unified being
when conflations between the external image, as the desire for the other's body lan-
guage, and the internal sense of identity take place. Desire in the Imaginary Order
is continually produced through the operations of cultural images to both confirm
and change our sense of identification. Fashion models, athletes, stars, and dancers
are obvious examples through whom such desire is created, but more subtle
instances of identification with the other's bodily form, and the desire manifested
by that form, can be found in responses to painted and sculpted human figures.
What then makes this statue meaningful for the children? What might be the mise-
en-scene of their desire so that it can "figure" for them in their Imaginary bodily
schema? What would make them invest in an identification with such an object?
It is necessary to introduce an obvious aspect of self identification in the
Imaginary Order, and that is the sex/gendering that takes place through "positive"
heterosexual Oedipalization.'? This aspect is especially vital to my understanding of
desire that is in operation here and to reading the children's expressions and the
"point" of the teacher. It is remarkable that of all the countless of thousands of
objects that could be chosen for this advertisement, the Getty presents children with
a "civilized" Greco-Roman centaur to re-enact, what I shall argue, as the scene/seen
of Oedipalization with the teacher acting as the surrogate Mother, and the centaur
being the surrogate Father.
The Father, as represented by the centaur, repeats the neo-racism of the Symbolic
Order, making more obvious Getty's paternalism, but also revealing a phallogocen-
trism that was deceptively veiled in the Symbolic Order.' As Lacan argued,
Oedipalization presents the Ur-example of the paternal metaphor as the substitution
of the Desire of the Mother for the Name of the Father. Metaphor, as the substitu-
tion of one signifier for another, i.e., to be as or like someone, is the source of the
point de caption which is produced when a signification residing in the unconscious
is untied. Here this scene/seen of untying is staged by the black female elementary
'?I shall not discuss the "negative" sexual Oedipalization attributed to the lesbian and homosexual sub-
ject positions for two reasons: first is an obvious question of space, and second, The Getty, as we shall
see, has staged the scene/seen of desire in such a way that the homospectatorial gaze has been mitigat-
ed.
"Phallogocentrism is a conflation of 'phallocentrism' and 'logocentrism.' Put bluntly, this means that the
male is set up as the norm, while truth is embedded in the authenticity of the word as a metaphysical pres-
ence (Derrida, 1976). The phallus acts as a privileged transcendental signifier around which sexual desire
is structured through its presence or absence (lack), as being or having the phallus in the Symbolic Order.
The Getty participates in 'logocentrism' through its claim to be presenting students with "authentic" cul-
tures through their curriculum materials. Truth is essentialized as a specific cultural presence. Like
Lacan, my intent here is not to reinforce phallogocentrism by participating in its tradition, rather to
expose its effects. This is why Lacan remains useful here despite accusations of phallogocentrism by
Irigaray (1985) and Jacques Derrida (1975).
teacher. To begin with, the centaur appears to hold out his hand in a poss
ture of greeting. To help facilitate this imagined possibility, his marbled
bronzed?) body has been rendered more plastic, more humanly flexible by a
ficial source of light that doesn't appear to shine on the children. Their ligh
barely evident by the faint shadows at their feet, but which illuminates alm
quarters of their faces, appears to come from the same angle as the gaze of
taur-left of center. The centaur casts his light on them. In contrast there s
be a floodlight outside the picture plane, slightly right of center which highlig
chest, abdomen, and rump. This is an artificially constructed collage. The
rian figure has been cut out and transported in from another location, from th
um of "civilization" I presume; his hand easily blends in and overlaps w
shades of grey of the grouped figures. Within the planar pictorial space of
lage, he is touching the children.
The stage of paternal and phallogocentric desire is furthered as the centau
at the children. We can imagine that the point of the teacher is to have the
gaze back at him, directly into his eyes. They all appear to be doing so with
ent responses of desired identifications. The Asian girl is delighted, but s
unsure, although she sports a smile of recognized fascination. She has bee
behind and to the left of the black girl in proper significatory status; not enti
missed but not central. It is the black girl who directly looks at the statu
teacher, ersatz for her mother, is giving her daughter the point of the less
bends closest to her, telling her to turn her desire towards the Father and aw
the Mother in proper Oedipalized fashion. The look on her face is one of ob
curiosity, and longing; the road to love for the Father has begun. That Af
Americans are over-represented (Frankenberg, 1993) in this image is given
repeats the art print series. It also is possible to read this "over-representat
another way, as a mitigation and a denial of any possible Afrocentric aspirat
challenge the Eurocentric one that is being staged. Here, that possible rep
tion is being "feminized" as a lack much like Said's (1978) now classical stu
the feminization of Orientalism as the West's Other. In this case this gestur
bled, for both the Oriental and the African are subjected to the centaur's pre
make up for the absence of what they lack. In Getty's attempt at a politica
rect representation of multiculturalism, Mexican Americans and American
don't even figure. There's an outside chance that the teacher is doubl
Mexican American which would change the inflection of my reading.
But now look at the boy! The white boy leans away from the group of
and metonymically pushes his head and right shoulder into the very Symbo
itself-products five and six to be exact! The Getty knows where he should
tually be placed. The awe on his face, as he catches the centaurs glance fro
side-anamorphically, not directly as with the girls and the woman-is t
repetition of Oedipal denial. In the history of photographic discourse, it w
"profile" which belonged to the cultured look, signifying prominence and
Slaves, deviants, homosexuals, and criminals were photographed and catalo
with their faces in full view to facilitate easy identification. Here we are p
90 jan jagodzinski
with another instance of its reenactment. The son loves his Father, ersatz for the Getty,
but he is unable to possess the phallus (power) for fear of castration and retribution, i.e.,
the look of awe on his face. There is a lack which exists in the gap between the son's
desire to own the phallus and the impossibility of fulfilling such a desire. The struggle
to fill this gap is played out in the social order in the projects of the ideal male imago.
The son must recognize this ideal in society and continually strive to possess it.
And, it is the classical male of Greco-Roman sculptures, like the comic book heroes,
who is the projection of this heroic ideal of the male imago for which he strives.
Since the powerful body image of the Father is such a threat to the sense of self,
there must be ways to make it palatable and palpable. Even though the centaur is
doubly phallused, as a man and as a horse, presenting it as an extraordinary power-
ful virile creature that harnesses the very "beast" within man, Getty has rendered it
as a castrated phantasm of the Father. How? For the girls, the Father's palpability
is metonymically presented as a horse. Horses are a favorite subject for pubescent
girls, for good reason. The horse, ersatz for the phallus in their Imaginary register,
is an animal they wish to control, master, and cope with. This is the very time of
their Oedipalization-the passage towards being sexually attracted to boys is taking
place. The horse embodies the very movement, freedom, power, and strength which
girls are generally denied in a patriarchal world wherein they are subjected to the
gaze of men to fulfill this lack. As subjects who lack, they must look (upwards in
this case) to where the power lies and be the symbolic phallus for the centaur. This
passive imaginary desire for identification is registered on their faces.
For the boy, the castration threat of the father is dissolved by feminizing the cen-
taur in the one place that counts most, in the pubic area, although the marred
bronzed (or marbled?) skin and the mammary-like pectoral muscles form secondary
sights/ sites/cites of feminization. The image of the centaur is presented as a cas-
trated Other. First, there is the obvious displacement of the penis onto the horse
where it remains "out of site/cite/sight." But its displacement is doubled. Where one
would expect the penis to appear, the centaur sports a triangular patch formed by the
cleft of the horse's thighs which looks as though it has been damaged. Besides the
left shoulder and part of the upper chest, the bronze (original marble?) appears
chipped here as well. The cleft formed by the protruding horse thighs immediately
and effectively dismisses any possibility of an "underhanging" penis. The castrat-
ed effect is enhanced by what looks like a white line that cuts across the waist of the
body separating the human from the horse. If the child is a boy he must have the
phallus; if the child is a girl, she must be it for someone else. To have the phallus
you have to enter the Symbolic Order acquiring a place in the masculine/feminine
order.'2 Getty has staged this heterosexual Oedipal drama racially for the viewer.
12 This discussion is complicated by the slippage of signifiers caused by the conflation of the penis with
the phallus which happens on the register of the Imaginary. The phallus belongs to the Real (outside of
language, in the psychic non-discursive realm) while the penis belongs to the Symbolic Order, in this
case as a biological signifier. In this sense their difference in meaning is between words which 'exist' (in
the Symbolic Order, i.e., penis) and 'ex-ist' or insist (in the Real, i.e., phallus). The phallus 'ex-ists' in
The white boy will eventually have the phallus, the African-American
girls and the woman will 'be' the phallus.
We, the viewers are ultimately asked to participate in this Imaginary
clitically; to actively take the place of the centaur, to hide once again un
and possess the power of the intelligent eye that comes with such an ide
It requires little effort to don such garb. The imaginary museum of Clas
and Rome stands for the eternal enduring "universal" human themes. It
enlightened thought as signified by the floodlight of "illumination;" i
rational and critical thought issuing from the gaze of the centaur. It sta
Getty profile.
Get Real Getty

I come to the last of the subjective registers, the Real. The Real is p
most difficult of the three registers to grasp because of the complexity
to its operation. Working at the level of fantasy, the promise of the Rea
all that we lack, to suture up the very split that we suffered as children
when we differentiated ourselves from our caretakers, usually our pare
it that the Getty offers which escapes its discourse at the very same tim
spouts this discourse? What is Getty's presupposition that is posed by th
tion of its Symbolic and Imaginary worlds? What is its ultimate fantasy
tion, that makes us its willing participants, and its membership believ
mately defend, its neo-racist vision regardless of the membership's own
tory differences? Such are the questions of the Real.
Lacan names this desire in the Real as object a. Object a may be describ
paradox of the homonym hole/whole. The Real, in and of itself, does no
whole. But it is impossible to understand the Real without representing
way, i.e., through language and images. But when we attempt to do so w
ately create a hole, a gap, a lack, because we can never grasp the Real i
ty. There will always be something which we cannot contain nor obtai
guage itself, it can never be completely mastered. The difficulty of wri
making art recognizes this impossibility. We continually strive to arti
some "thing" which will ultimately end in failure. Yet, our desire to do so
ed only through such a process. We are driven by the fantasy of complete
resented by the paradox of the whole/hole. So what is Getty's paradox?
it want to restore to itself so that it experiences the bliss of jouissanc
already argued that its Symbolic and Imaginary Order is a neo-racist ma
tem made possible by harnessing the Western panoptic I/Eye; an I that
paternal, specular, and phallogocentric. Why continue to believe in its
language only as an "insistence." It cannot be described by language. Castration is both "lit

level of perception) and psychic (at the level of the Real). The tension between its existenc
tence is played out on the Imaginary register both as an object of the look (penis) and as a
object of the gaze, the desire for the phallus that belongs in the Real.
92 jan jagodzinski
What thing is Getty blind to? What is

strives to possess?
To try and answer this, I go back to the
in the first place. Postmodernism is a tim
the decentering of knowledge. There is a
American central value system based on b
and its melting pot ideology that was to
dream is waning as its youth, the baby b
the same life chances as their baby boom
nomic and life style ground if two inco
documented by countless reports and st
phantasmic solutions offered to halt the
has been a search to once again find stabi
munal values of an all together too perm
been the call for a nostalgic restoration.
I am suggesting that the ultimate fantasy
an America that never existed in the firs
the entire Getty program. Getty's modern
the logic of its intelligent eye, offers its
py the Eye/I of the postmodernist hurrica
tection. Everything circles around the d
Real which is both a total and totalizing
centurion of the age. This is its Thing. T
master signifier of the Real exists within
obtrusively winks at you-off-center-fro
the advertisement. They are the CENT
Imaginary rotate. They are the black hole
diversity at the same time, driven by an
ashes of poverty, hate, and racial violenc
to the aura of indigenous peoples; to a vi
its place and allocated slot; to the nostalg
in school; to the nostalgia of an Americ
other and supported each other; to wher
were; to where there was no racism, no
ultimately a turn to Disney World itself.
The dystopic view of the cyberspace ge
of this age, acts as a further impetus for a
dome and find the "real" Thing. Comput
lacrum of the copy of a copy, the loss of t
authority of the individual artistic signat
the Real to the CENTER of Getty's whole
ers of every variety of identification a w
cholia in an age where the day of the Ro
theme parks in a nostalgic world where
historical and cultural appropriations are like total home environments

er label of a culture becomes a way to coordinate disparate elements int
tion" so that fashion literacy of the intelligent eye is centered on matchin
The Polo aristocratic world of Raph Lauren offers the same total hom
ments which are, at the same time, made obsolete to keep the flow of c
the perfect worlds of "New England," "Jamaica," "Thoroughbred," "Lo
"Safari" and "Marina." Little would be lost if Lauren's labels were
Getty's roster of individuated cultures.
Polo or Getty, is there a difference? These discrete totalities reflect L
talgia for aristocratic "old world elegance," and "genteel colonial
Getty's case the multicultural collection can be properly staged, manage
aged into schools. Like postmoder architecture, these are displayed as
verses, since both Getty and Lauren display several worlds at once. Li
architecture, they are full of historical allusions, faithful copies, alm
pieces as if they have come from some Hollywood set. And like each c
that has its building, each cultural label has its clientele. Dealing with t
cial ills of the racial "present" are avoided. In this logic the "present" r
bly flawed as the intelligent Eye/I looks back at the past (the "new histo
ward into the future ("the New World Order") for its new home, in blindn
is under its feet that it steps on. The centurion's feet have been cropped
the podium upon which it stands. But for an investment of $151.95 the
is offered to you. You need not spend all that money at once. You can bu
as little as $9.00. Who can resist entering this "virtual" world of labeled
has everything you can possibly desire, except...
Conclusion
To conclude then, I have tried to speak to the title of this essay through a c
reading of the Getty advertisement. My interest has been to dwell on the effe
desire upon entering its seductive world along three registers of Lacanian subj
othering. In doing so I hope I have been able, through my own rhetorical sk
persuasion and argumentation, to bring home, to redirect and relocate the p
anamorphically to another meaning of "EXPERIENCE THE POWER OF
EDUCATION," which forms the capstone of the Getty advertisement. All alo
have been staging my own David and Goliath fantasy for the moment of
interpellation, if you have allowed yourself to be fascinated by the effects o
text. Be cautious, therefore, of the tale I have woven, but entertain its possibil
References
Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Lenin and philosophy and other essays
(pp. 127-186). New York and London: Monthly Review Press.
94 jan jagodzinski
Balibar, E. (1991). Is there a 'Neo-Racism'?" In E. Balibar and I. Wallerstein (Eds.), Race, nation, class:
Ambiguous identities (pp. 17-28) (C. Turner, Trans.). London and New York: Verso Press.
Bauman, Z. (1989). Modernity and the holocaust. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.
Benjamin, W. (1973). Illuminations. Hannah Arend. (H. Zohn, Trans.). N.Y. :Shocken Books (original,
1935).
Bhabha, H. (1990). The third space: Interview with Homi Bhabha by Jonathan Rutherford. In J.
Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, culture, difference (pp. 207- 221). London: Lawrence &
Wishart.
Blocker, H. G. (1994). The aesthetics of primitive art. Lanham, New York, London: University Press of
America.
Derrida, J. (1975). The purveyor of truth, Yale French Studies, 52, 31-113.
Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology. (G. Spivak, Transs.). Baltimore and London: John Hopkins
University Press.
Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Howe, N., and Strauss, B. (1993). 13th gen: Abort, retry, ignore, fail? New York: Vintage Books.
Irigaray, L. (1985). The speculum of the other woman. (Gillian C. Gill., Trans.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Mestrovic, S. (1993). The barbarian temperament: Toward a postmodern critical theory. New York and
London: Routledge.
Miles, J. (1992). Blacks vs. browns. The Atlantic, 270(4), 41-68.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Random House.
Sollors, W. (1986). Beyond ethnicity: Strategies of diversity. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Figure 1, page 95. Reprinted with permission, The Getty Centerfor Education in the
Arts.
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National Art Education Association Studies in Art Education

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National Art Education Association

The Nostalgia of Art Education: Reinscribing the Master's Narrative

The Nostalgia of Art Educ

Getty's seductive world, I will argue, provides a postmodern form of n

Embodied Desire in the Getty as the Symbolic Other

nesses, many of which were ransacked during the LA riots.

the Getty, is informed, encouraged, supported, and gently cajoled meton

cultural diversity of viewpoints. In doing so, by implication, such action of the

Getty's Imaginary Order

Get Real Getty

language only as an "insistence." It cannot be described by language. Castration is both "lit

What thing is Getty blind to? What is

historical and cultural appropriations are like total home environments

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