Sentimental education   2015

When it comes to ideas for a future organization of art education, I can only come up with vague and formless perspectives. In this respect, I have always been dependent on people with the ability to analyse and devise the realization of social and cultural organization. My contribution is rather to ask what principles might condition and fuel the organization of art education.

Anyone can call herself an artist without further notice

One such principle is based on the simple observation that anyone can call herself an artist without further notice. Anyone can claim the status and the function that qualify an artist simply by calling herself an artist.

When it is taken into account that the name, ‘artist’, is by no means fixed to the identity of a psychosocial individual, but can easily involve a group of people, just as one individual can claim a multitude of artists’ names, things quickly become not so simple.

That anyone can call herself an artist is, to me, one precondition to contemporary art and therefore to contemporary art education as well. Accordingly, art education has to be organized around the fact that the status and the function of an artist are established beyond the art educational organization itself.

In other words, it is not within the powers of an art educational organization to grant the status and the function of an artist. From time to time, this leads to the misconception that an artist is an autonomous being and that the education of artists is a contradiction.

One answer to the claim that art cannot be taught is that an artist is always already taught.

To call oneself ‘artist' implies a knowledge of the status and the function of an artist: otherwise, it would simply not be possible to claim that particular status and function.

But because the name, ‘artist’, is self-proclaimed, to call oneself an artist is also an act of interest. To imagine someone calling herself an artist without the slightest interest in the name, ‘artist’, does not make sense.

To call oneself an artist is therefore combined with a feeling or with an experience that this is of importance to one’s self.

So, the simple observation that anyone can call herself an artist has two equal implications:

First, that the one who calls herself an artist is always already educated, having already been deliberately formed by qualities established beforehand and beyond her self.

Second, that the one who calls herself an artist is driven by interest, acting in accordance with a feeling or an experience that the name, ‘artist’, is of importance to her self.

An artist is always already educated

Considering the first implication, what does it mean that an artist is always already educated?

To me, it has to do with the fact that art is an institution and not a profession.

The idea of art as a trade, founded upon specialized vocational training, simply contradicts the observation that anyone can call herself an artist.

On the other hand, to say that art is not a profession isn’t the same as saying that an artist is not educated, because the claim of the name, ‘artist’, implies a knowledge of the status and the function of an artist.

The idea of art as an institution produces a different understanding of the formative and educational aspect of art.

To define art as an institution is to say that art is a structure or mechanism, regulating social and cultural behaviour. In order to understand what it means to say that an artist is always already educated, art has to be defined as an institution in the most general sense, which is to say that art is a social and cultural regularity, which is not determined by the so-called art world.

Obviously, the art world regulates the concrete value and significance of an artist’s status and function, but it does not grant this status and function. Art is always already there, regulating the lives we live.

To give an example of what this definition of art as an institution means in everyday life, I could point towards the role that art plays in today’s reform of the labour market, where qualities ascribed to art practice are active in regulating the general conception and organization of labour.

Another well known example would be the way certain qualities ascribed to an artist are active in the process of gentrification, when run-down neighbourhoods are upgraded economically by a strategic and temporary moving-in of artists and other creative bohemians.

Or I could refer to the implementation of qualities related to art practice in educational organizations that are not part of the art world.

It has to be emphasized that I am not speaking about art as a social and cultural regularity in positive or negative terms. I am speaking about mechanisms of regulation, about institutions, as conditions for social and cultural formation in general. To define art as an institution in this way is tantamount to saying that art is an integrated part of social and cultural formation as such.

Therefore, to say that an artist is always already educated is to say that calling oneself an artist implies a knowledge of the social and cultural regularity of art.

An artist is driven by interest

Now, to consider the second implication of the observation that anyone can call herself an artist: what does it mean that the one who calls herself an artist is driven by interest, acting in accordance with a feeling or an experience that the name, ‘artist’, is of importance to her self?

I am speaking of interest as a mental state evoked by experience.

For someone calling herself an artist, it is therefore decisive that the experience of the status and function of an artist evokes a mental state of importance to her self.

What kind of experience are we talking about, then? What does it mean to experience the status and function of an artist?

As mentioned earlier, it has to be taken into account that the name, ‘artist’, is by no means fixed to the identity of a psychosocial individual, but can easily involve a group of people, just as one individual can claim a multitude of artists’ names.

Why would such a fluid and ambiguous name be of interest to anyone?

Because it is not fixed by the identity of one psychosocial individual, I would say.

Rather, the name, ‘artist’, is open to imaginary selves and therefore to the probability of a transformation of one’s self.

In other words, to call oneself an artist has to do with the experience of imaginary selves.

Which is to say that the experience of the status and function of an artist evokes a mental state related to the probability of a transformation of one’s self.

The ambivalent figure of an artist

From the simple observation that anyone can call herself an artist, a quite ambivalent figuration of the artist arises. A figure who is deliberately being formed by the social and cultural regularity, art, and who is being driven, at the same time, by the probability of self-transformation. To me, this figure of ambivalence represents a condition for – and a fuel for – art education.