Design, the applied arts and fine art in the UK are taught in current or former Art Schools, most of which have been absorbed into polytechnics and subsequently into new universities. Non studio based studies always formed a (small) part of the syllabus in these institutions and activities based around lectures, reading and writing have often been used to lend an intellectual legitimacy to art and design courses.
And there, already, we encounter the problem, the perception that activities based around the written and spoken word are more intellectually demanding and valid than activities based around drawing and making. This notion is still incredibly prevalent in the art school system and it was rendered more concrete with the demise of diplomas in art and design and the rise of the degree (theoretically a more valuable qualification) which demanded for the first time that fashion, textiles, illustration and sculpture students (amongst others) produced dissertations. And while personally, I thoroughly enjoyed working on my dissertation; it formed a pleasant break from the frenzied days and nights producing my graduate collection, it is notable that history students are not required to produce a collection of eight outfits, or to mount a final exhibition.
Focusing on art schools might seem somewhat parochial, but they are indicative of a wider phenomenon in which certain sorts of philosophical and literary thinking is crudely grafted on to visual culture and the arts, at its most malign manifesting itself in wordiness and self-conscious intellectualism of unsuccessful conceptual art.
In fact, I think it is vitally important that designers and artists are equipped with the necessary analytical skills to think about their work in the context of a broader culture, society and economy and within various sorts of power structures and hierarchies. However, it seems flagrantly obvious to me, that “theory” ought to be imbedded in the studio practice in which artists and designers develop technical, formal, and aesthetic ideas.
Despite some individual charismatic and exciting lecturers, the current system for teaching art history and contextual studies is appalling. Syllabuses are generic and students are expected to sit in lecture halls passively absorbing information without understanding its relevance or how it applies to their discipline or personal practice. This is sad, because it often results in graduates who are less culturally and critically aware than they would like to be, lacking a contextual framework in which to position their practice.
Perhaps what I’m trying to express more generally, is a problem in which artists/designers and theoreticians don’t engage with each other in honest terms, and as in so many problems, I think that hierarchies have their part to play. Literacy and an ability to convey complex ideas in writing, historically, and in contemporary culture have been important as markers of social status. Within cultural and connecting social hierarchies, artists have, over the past several hundred years, transformed their status from “mere” artisans primarily through engagement with, philosophical, theological and historical ideas – to which they have often paid no more than lip-service (for example in neoclassical painting). It is this intellectual insecurity amongst people who are often primarily skilled in make, design and aesthetics, as well as pressure from without, which inhibits authentic theoretical and critical models being developed by artists themselves. Equally, so much art and design criticism is weak, because it fails to adequately engage with the physical stuff of art and design, and with the make process which is so essential to the way that artists and designers think through and express their ideas. There have been numerous examples where the nexus between theory and practice have yielded exciting results, in the socially concerned design of the Bauhaus or in the posters of the 1968 Paris uprising. But the formation of such creative nexus, are in my view reliant upon genuine engagement between practitioners and theoreticians in which the distinctions between these two activities are broken down.
Focusing on art schools might seem somewhat parochial, but they are indicative of a wider phenomenon in which certain sorts of philosophical and literary thinking is crudely grafted on to visual culture and the arts, at its most malign manifesting itself in wordiness and self-conscious intellectualism of unsuccessful conceptual art.
In fact, I think it is vitally important that designers and artists are equipped with the necessary analytical skills to think about their work in the context of a broader culture, society and economy and within various sorts of power structures and hierarchies. However, it seems flagrantly obvious to me, that “theory” ought to be imbedded in the studio practice in which artists and designers develop technical, formal, and aesthetic ideas.
Despite some individual charismatic and exciting lecturers, the current system for teaching art history and contextual studies is appalling. Syllabuses are generic and students are expected to sit in lecture halls passively absorbing information without understanding its relevance or how it applies to their discipline or personal practice. This is sad, because it often results in graduates who are less culturally and critically aware than they would like to be, lacking a contextual framework in which to position their practice.
Perhaps what I’m trying to express more generally, is a problem in which artists/designers and theoreticians don’t engage with each other in honest terms, and as in so many problems, I think that hierarchies have their part to play. Literacy and an ability to convey complex ideas in writing, historically, and in contemporary culture have been important as markers of social status. Within cultural and connecting social hierarchies, artists have, over the past several hundred years, transformed their status from “mere” artisans primarily through engagement with, philosophical, theological and historical ideas – to which they have often paid no more than lip-service (for example in neoclassical painting). It is this intellectual insecurity amongst people who are often primarily skilled in make, design and aesthetics, as well as pressure from without, which inhibits authentic theoretical and critical models being developed by artists themselves. Equally, so much art and design criticism is weak, because it fails to adequately engage with the physical stuff of art and design, and with the make process which is so essential to the way that artists and designers think through and express their ideas. There have been numerous examples where the nexus between theory and practice have yielded exciting results, in the socially concerned design of the Bauhaus or in the posters of the 1968 Paris uprising. But the formation of such creative nexus, are in my view reliant upon genuine engagement between practitioners and theoreticians in which the distinctions between these two activities are broken down.
JMB 04/07/09
