Love of music led to career in art
By Randy Fitzgerald
Senior Writer, University Communications
Stephen L. Addiss never thought he would be a professor of art history.
For him, there always had been music. He graduated from Harvard with cum laude honors in musicology, received a post-graduate diploma from the Mannes College of Music and studied with the renowned composer John Cage at The New School for Social Research.
Then there was folk music. As a favor to Bill Crofut, a friend who had earned a grant from the People to People program, he embarked on a tour of Asia as part of the folk duo Addiss and Crofut. The tour, plus a second one in Asia and Africa, lasted an incredible 17 years.
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Addiss with his calligraphy "Exploding Mu."
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Although they never "had huge hits," the duo became famous, recording albums with Pete Seeger, Dave Brubeck and others and appearing on Today four times, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson three times, not to mention ABC's Hootenanny and Captain Kangaroo.
The duo was honored in a special ceremony at the White House for their cultural work abroad and had three invited performances at the White House.
There's a black-and-white photo in Addiss' office of him performing with Crofut and Pete Seeger, who was his eighth-grade music teacher.
Looking back on the idea of forming the duo and touring Asia right after college, Addiss said, "It was a little daunting. I hadn't picked up a guitar in years, but it was a free trip to Asia." So he dusted off the guitar and set sail.
The thing that made it work for him was being able to exchange musical traditions in Asia and Africa. "We were just as interested in their music as they were in ours," he said. "I learned songs and instruments (he can play about 20), and people loved that exchange."
He also loved the freedom to explore the culture of Asia, spending free time looking at some of the wonders of the world and visiting temples, museums and art galleries.
Eventually, he wanted to study art more formally and went to graduate school. In 1973 he received his M.A. in art history and musicology from the University of Michigan and followed that up with a Ph.D. from Michigan in the same fields.
Addiss came to Richmond after spending 15 years on the faculty at the University of Kansas. He was intrigued by the idea of the core course and how it could include texts from East Asia. "Core helped me learn how to teach," he said. "It was much more of a discussion format, and since no one is an expert in all core materials, we all learn together." Addiss is Tucker-Boatwright Professor in the Humanities: Art.
His love of the core class came out during a recent Chinese festival at the University. Addiss curated a small exhibition of Chinese culture in the Robins Gallery. One of the Chinese filmmakers, normally quiet and reserved, came to the core class and got involved immediately in a lively and spontaneous interaction with the class, he said.
In studying art and art history, Addiss says, he "learned everything: history, human attitudes, cultural attitudes, economics, religion, philosophy."
For example, in studying Buddhism or Hinduism, there is no better beginning than through the art, he believes. "It opens up a whole range of human interaction. It teaches you about people and yourself. It gives you a background into how people think and feel and act and makes your life a lot nicer."
In addition to core, Addiss teaches courses in Japanese art, culture, and fashion as art and is preparing an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy, called "77 Dances," for which he recently received a grant from the Blakemore Foundation.
He has written or edited more than three dozen books and exhibition catalogs, including the forthcoming The Art of Chinese Calligraphy and Traditional Japanese Arts and Culture: An Illustrated Sourcebook. He has published more than 130 poems, composed scores for four films and videos and 25 classical pieces, and had more than 50 exhibitions of his painting, ceramics and calligraphy, including four this year alone in Richmond, New York, Korea and Taiwan.
He believes old academic distinctions between studio art and art history are breaking down. At Richmond the department "mixes it up," he says, going back to the older tradition of great art historians being great artists. "There are so many opportunities here that teaching and learning never end."
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