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What’s Art Got To Do With It?
- Penn State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
1. Mieke Bal, “Visual Essentialism and the Object of Visual Culture,” Journal of Visual Culture 2, no. 1 (2003): 5. 2. See Section 1 of the Seminars, citing Howard Singerman citing Pierre Bourdieu. 3. James Elkins, Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001). 4. See Section 1 of the Seminars. 5. See Section 1 of the Seminars. Funny, at a time when so many young people identify as artists, so many theorists argue there is no point in looking to art. Many schools are dropping the “Art” prefix in preference for “Visual Culture,” “Creative Industry,” “Culture and Communication,” and so on. Mieke Bal puts the argument against art history this way: “to take visual culture as art history is to condemn it [visual culture] to the same future [as art]”; the problem is that the twentieth-century premise is irrelevant to twenty-first-century conditions.1 These conditions include the globalization of art and its networks; the democratization of art and its audiences; the impact of technological revolution on the exhibition experience; the postmedium conditions of contemporary art; and the postcolonial expansion of the concept of art to include a broader spectrum of sociocultural practices, including many operating outside gallery networks. Marta Edling reminds us that there is “no room for naivety” within art.2 Contemporary art has become a highly politicized public arena, dependent upon public funding. Outmoded practices are irrelevant to the curatorial initiatives that determine contemporary art. Thus, any question concerning the future of arts education must begin back at basics. What is art? My preferences are as follows: art as a critical instrument of cultural account to bring “being” back into play. Regardless of which métier, media, or technology an artist chooses, he or she must develop a responsive system of notation into a language of personal account to seize the day and speak to becoming. Joseph Beuys was right, “everyone should be an artist,” but, as James Elkins reminds us, an art education cannot make you an artist.3 Art education can’t do much for an individual talent. As Barbara Jaffee puts it, “talent is innate”;4 sensibility belongs to nature and stands beyond institutional control. “Attitude,” however, can be cultivated. Knowledge belongs to culture and must be cultivated . This is the production that Thierry de Duve defines as the “real political work” of an arts education. Christopher Frayling articulates this production as “an orientation towards the art world.”5 I imagine he means an orientation toward the shifting political economies, which determine the public face of art. But this is where the issues facing art become complex. Given that the institutional art world has become the patron of our times, it should come as no surprise that many have fashioned art practices to take WHAT’S ART GOT TO DO WITH IT? Gary Willis 00i-228_Elkins_4p.indb 162 9/14/12 1:17 PM assessments 163 6. Julian Stallabrass, Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 43–51. 7. See Section 1 of the Seminars. 8. See Section 5 of the Seminars. 9. See Section 1 of the Seminars. 10. Jacques Rancière, The Future of the Image, translated by Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2007), 18; Giorgio Agamben, The Man Without Content (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 51. advantage of public funding; not all of them artists.6 In this arena, the line between the artist and any other professional becomes fuzzy. Professionals from all disciplines can be contracted to illuminate the gap in the knowledge. Here the arts become preoccupied with ethics. However as Daniel Palmer notes, too much emphasis on “political critique” often results in the contrived posturing of “political correctness.”7 Artists become nonartists—nonartists become artistes. Frances Whitehead’s presentation does a great job of selling the artist’s skill sets to the public project manager.8 No doubt the capacity for lateral thinking and operational agility is a wonderful by-product of any education, and the ability to maneuver within cultural, social, and intellectual economies, a great asset. Nevertheless, I am impelled to ask, “What’s art got to do with it?” “Art” seems an unnecessary appellation. Artists are being generated from a broad spectrum of disciplines now, not just design but science, engineering, architecture, urban planning, history, politics, philosophy, film, fashion, music. High-level professionals are regularly imported into public exposition on the basis of the social relevance of their projects. The...