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Kirsten Forkert and Patrik Aarnivaara |
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About Kirsten Forkert
About Patrik Aarnivaara
PROFESSIONALIZING THE ROMANTIC, OR,
LEARNING TO BEHAVE LIKE AN ARTIST
Today Stockholm's newest art fair is straight forwardly called
“Market”. And this year it is sponsored for the first time by the
American bank Morgan Stanley. This is another sign of a time where art
and capital goes hand in hand.1
Parts of the art world have been put in the dark and the art boom is
mainly connected to young artists. There is ruthlessness in the search
for new artists – if the art practice isn’t consistent and in good
form, then you look somewhere else. 2
For Goethe the world of organisms accommodate the same inner secret as
art and thus it is only through the form that one could sense this
secret. 3
Our text is an attempt to map out how seemingly contradictory concepts
intersect and mesh with each other within the art field and art
education in Sweden: Romanticism and professionalization.
Contradictory, because we generally think of Romanticism as a
deliberate rejection of the conformity and managerial calculation
associated with professionalization. Our starting point was noticing
three developments in the art field in Sweden, and wondering whether or
not they might be related 1) articles in the media heralding a
'Romantic shift' in contemporary art, 2) the expansion of the art
market and the 3) professionalization of art education.
If
these developments can be read as symptomatic of our present
political/economic conditions, what do they reveal? Might they be a
response to an increasingly competitive situation, the naturalization
of values of enterprise culture and an underlying sense of political
disempowerment? Our intention is not to argue for one style or medium
over another, but to question the intersection between the market and
conventional definitions of both art and artists. We will attempt to
trace the rise of these phenomena through media coverage and
exhibitions, particularly Remembrance of the Subject Past,
which took place at the Bonniers Konsthall in 2007, and also discuss
the hype around the ‘experience economy’ as well as market pressures in
art education.
For philosophers, poets and artists such as Friedrich von Schelling,
William Wordsworth and Joseph Anton Koch, Romanticism in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a reaction against the
Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and, in an art historical
sense, a rejection of the norms of classical art taught at the
academies. We are arguing that the current appeal to Romanticism is a
response to the increasing commercialization of the art field both
through the expansion of the art market, and the entrepreneurialism
promoted by creative industries and 'experience economy' rhetoric and
policy. We see this appeal as both symptomatic of market pressures
(through foregrounding the individual and de-emphasizing social
conditions) and also as reactions to them (through impulses towards
escapism, nostalgia, mystery, and purification, i.e. opposing the
purity of high art to the corrupting influences of consumer society).
In relation to the professionalization of education, our hypothesis is
that students learn to adopt the 'romantic artist' role as an ideal
subjectivity for market success: in other words, 'learning to behave
like an artist'. We will begin by discussing how aspects of historical
Romanticism are taken up today.
Few
romantics would have disagreed with Coleridge's opinion “that deep
thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling.” And because of
this emphasis on “feeling” they also insisted on man's individuality
and freedom of will. In his monologues Schleiermacher tells how he
revolted against the notion, still strong in Kant and Fichte, of a
“universal reason,” the same in all men. It finally dawned upon him—he
calls it his “highest intuition”—“that each man is meant to represent
humanity in his own way, combining its elements uniquely.” 4
Historically,
Romanticism was not one political, aesthetic, or philosophical
development but several, some of which contradicted each other
(including revolutionary politics, libertarian individualism and
authoritarianism). The aspects of historical Romanticism that seem to
be taken up today are those that privilege the role and subjectivity of
the artist, in connection with the definition of art as an autonomous
field. Social and economic shifts in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries led to the loss of the aristocracy's power in Europe, and the
emergence of a merchant class who was interested in collecting art as
symbols of social status. The result was that artists were no longer
immediately dependent on commissions from aristocrats or the church,
but on the interest of those who would buy their work. This freed
artists from the obligation to represent religious rituals or depict
the aristocracy (while creating other dependencies). The seventeenth
century also marked the emergence of aesthetics as a separate
discipline and the beginning of modern art criticism. 5 This led to the
definition of artistic practice as a liberal art rather than a craft,
and the centrality of the artist as an autonomous, creative individual.
The result was that the figure of the artist was as important as what
he/she produced, and the artist's subjectivity and autobiography became
the framework for the interpretation and judgment of artworks. In her
lecture for the the 2006 MyCreativity
conference, Marion von Osten connected the artist as exemplary figure
to the increasing importance, in the seventeenth century, of the values
of private property and personal aptitude combined with more
traditional definitions of the male genius. 6 The artist's exemplary
status also in some ways led to his/her outsider role. It could also be
argued that this basic perception of the artist never really went away,
as much as it has been challenged by aspects of the avant-garde, not to
mention feminism and postcolonial theory. We feel that it is
important, however, to ask about the implications of specifically
referring to Romanticism to name a new tendency in art, contrasting it
with nineties art practices such as relational practices or
interventionist art, which are now yesterday's news:
Fänge,
with his new surrealism signifies a direction in contemporary art that
looks more toward the hunting-grounds of fantasy than the thematically
oriented social critique that has been dominating during several years. 7
In
art one has talked about a Gothic sensibility and how artists have
turned to the domains of fantasy and the fantastic. This is what the
three curators formulates as the reaction against the programmatic
political art that has been leading during several years. 8
Now
when social criticism has cooled down the temperature rises with
literature. And what can be better in our troubled times than a
retrospective, absurdist and 'new romantic' art? 9
Beyond
this naming of a new tendency, we have seen few attempts to translate
the history of Romanticism into the present context in any systematic
way, or make a serious argument for its relevance today. This leads us
to ask if what we are in fact witnessing is a kind of fragmentary,
postmodern pastiche or even simulacral Romanticism. In Postmodernism,
Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Fredric Jameson uses the term ‘surrealism without the unconscious’ 10
to describe 1980s Neo-Expressionist painting, particularly the work of
David Salle (and as a side comment, we feel there are interesting
comparisons to be made between the present moment and the US painting
boom in the eighties). Jameson later uses another phrase, perhaps more
relevant: ‘surrealism without its manifesto or its avant-garde’ 11: in
other words, the use of aesthetic strategies associated with previous
historical movements (in this case surrealism) but without the content
or the politics. Historical quoting/recycling was identified in the
1980s as a key aspect of postmodernism, opposition to modernism's
ahistoricism, suppression of external references and fear of kitsch.
Some have argued for the subversiveness of this approach 12. However,
it can also have the effect, especially when referring to canonical
works of art, of creating 'instant prestige': to reference Goethe is to
immediately invite comparison. It is now twenty years since 'high
postmodernism' and we are asking whether historical quoting has now
become a kind of convenient automatic reflex, making it easier to
refer to previous (art) historical movements such as Romanticism solely
for prestige purposes, but without the irony, parody or ideology
critique associated with the 1980s.
There is a chapter in Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello's The New Spirit of Capitalism
entitled ‘The Test of the Artistic Critique’, which they define as the
reaction against the inauthenticity and standardization of consumer
society which was an important part of May 68. They also trace its
geneaology to the nineteenth-century concept of art for art's sake,
especially the rejection of the conformity and materialism of the
bourgeoisie. The chapter discusses the fate of this 'artistic
critique' in what Boltanski and Chiapello term a ‘connexionist world’
13, similar to Manuel Castell's 'network society' 14 where it is
increasingly difficult to distinguish between social interactions and
business transactions. They argue that 'the connexionist world' is
defined by a tension between two contradictory requirements: on one
hand to be continually flexible and adaptable, but also (particularly
in fields where it is important to distinguish oneself, such as
artistic and intellectual fields) to present an authentic self, in
possession of unique qualities:
To
the extent that in his person, his personality, he possesses this
'something' which is likely to interest them, he can attract their
attention and obtain information or backing from them. But for that he
must be someone that is to say, come with elements foreign to their
world and regarded as being specific to him.15
Boltanski
and Chiapello argue that the connexionist world paradoxically demands
the performance of the unique self, and the codes and signifier of
authenticity which they term the ‘grammar of authenticity’16 , rather
than leading to its rejection. We are proposing that this dynamic
increasingly characterizes the art field. To some degree this has
always existed; given the discipline's historical associations with
individual genius (as mentioned earlier), the ability to embody, within
one's own personality and biography, qualities which one alone
possesses, has always been a requirement for success. However, this
dynamic also increasingly reflects the position of the artist in
relation to the rest of society: the requirement for artists to perform
the authenticity we fear we are losing—and to speak using the 'grammar
of authenticity'.
We will now trace a brief timeline of both the
expansion of the market and 'new romanticism' in Sweden, with the
intention of tracing changes in the art scene, but also keeping in mind
that these developments can influence art students by presenting models
for emulation and signaling what will be rewarded. In 2003, the DNA
(Diesel New Art, sponsored by the jeans company Diesel17) competition
was established, receiving over 900 contributions. Around this time,
the artists Jockum Nordström and Mamma Andersson became very successful
both in terms of exhibitions and the art market. We are mentioning them
because they represent recent examples of Swedish artists who are very
commercially successful. 2006 saw the establishment of 'Market' 18, a
Stockholm art fair sponsored by the US bank Morgan Stanley, the
advertising agency Storåkers McCann, and in collaboration with
Konstakadamien. In 2007, the credit card company Diners Club started
the Konstlistan 2007
competition. Students from all art academies in Sweden, Denmark, Norway
and Finland send in documentation and a jury chooses 10 artists from
each Nordic country. During the same year, two exhibitions took place: Remembrance of the Subject Past at
the Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm (also a student competition
exhibition), and Painting, Space and Society at Göteborgs Konsthall.
While Painting, Space and Society does not focus on romanticism per se,
we are mentioning it because the media coverage discusses both the
ascendance of the market and a 'new surrealism'. 19
Remembrance of the Subject Past
20 is significant, in part because it raised the discussion of 'new
romanticism' and 'Romanticism' within the culture press, but also or
mostly because it was curated through student competition, which at
this point is a relatively new phenomenon in Sweden. The title of the
exhibition is significant, with its evocations of individual
subjectivity, nostalgia ('the subject past') and through the reference
to Proust's now-canonical work, allusions to both the author's
reclusiveness and to the prestige of high culture. The exhibition
encompassed a range of different practices, in a variety of media
including performance, sculpture, video and photography. What brought
these works together was not specific formal or stylistic issues but
their content: a focus on individual subjectivity in general, on the
subjectivity of the artist in particular, and on introspection. The
accompanying text, written by the exhibition's curators (Marianna
Garin, Camilla Larsson and Sinziana Ravini) and entitled The Eternal Return of the Romantics
describes introspection, or 'productive melancholy' as the
‘exhibition's red thread’ 21, as students search for the “right to
their own voice and space, both in the world and in art”. 22 The
curators argue that the exhibition takes a position against Nicolas
Bourriaud's Post-production 23 explicitly creating a binary between
Romanticism and relational aesthetics (though it could be argued that
Bourriaud does not really challenge the traditional definition of art
or artists, writing mainly about individual practitioners and
institutionalized practices). The curators ask if one can draw the
conclusion that today’s political situation and impending environmental
crisis produce hopelessness, carrying the same destabilizing and
disempowering effect as the shift from the Renaissance to the Romantic
period, leading to both an intropsective tendency and a fascination
with transgression. This provoked the following questions, in a review
by Mårten Arndtzén on Sveriges Radio:
Why
take the dust of the romantic artist role at this moment in time? What
is it with the lonely genius, with or without a Basque on the head
isolating himself in the studio and exploring the inner self? Why is
this suddenly attractive again- after a decade of social engagement and
collectivism? Have we simply got tired of all the fuss? That never
stops despite of all the engaged art videos made about it. Or is it
because they were so difficult to sell and right now the market screams
after young art? 24
We will now ask, what is the
relationship between this 'new romanticism' and professionalization,
signaled by the curation of exhibitions by student competition, such as
ROTSP)? We are arguing that it is ideally suited for several reasons.
First, because it has a close relationship to the perception of the
artist within the popular imagination (one only has to think of how
artists are represented in the mainstream media), it is easily
recognizable and marketable. Second, because unlike historical
Romanticism, it does not seem to be connected to a particular
philosophy or political ideology (although in the case of historical
Romanticism, this was often a reactionary ideology). This means 'new
romanticism' runs no risk of offending or alienating other art
professionals, audiences or potential buyers. This also frees artists
under pressure to connect with a dealer and sell work, from the
obligation of committing to a political position. Thirdly, the
references to historical Romanticism operate as signifiers for “high
culture’ and reassure us that art still has a special status at a time
when artistic autonomy seems to be under threat. The expansion of the
art market and its implications (the explosion of art fairs or
increasing market pressures in art education) raises the spectre that
the art field may now be structurally operating in a way that is closer
to other, more obviously commercialized fields such as Hollywood film
or mainstream music industries. Within this context, Romanticism, with
its historical weight, symbolic capital and high culture associations,
reassures us that art has not been subsumed into the entertainment
industry, and that the subjectivity of the artist is still more unique
and special than the film celebrity or rock star. In other words, we
are seeing the assertion of the boundaries of high art to resist the
culture industry—or, as it is defined today, the “experience industry’.
Richard Florida's book, The Rise of the Creative Class,
was translated into Swedish in 2006, 25, when he also gave a lecture
tour of the country. Florida's theories emphasize connection between
the cultural sector and technological innovation, promoting a
fundamentally entrepreneurial definition of creativity. This is also
the approach taken by KK-Stiftelsen, a foundation which was started in
Sweden in 1994 with the goal of promoting closer ties between education
and business, the use of IT, and the development of the ‘experience
industry’ 26. According to the Swedish Trade Council's website (which
also features a quote by Florida praising Sweden), KK-Stiftelsen
identifies thirteen areas within the experience industry:
‘Architecture, Art, Computer games, Design, Fashion, Film/Photo,
Food&Drink, Literature/Publishing, Market Communication, Media,
Music, Performing Arts and Tourism’ 27. The experience industry
categorizes art together with design or fashion, or even more blatantly
commercial activities such as marketing, the restaurant industry or
tourism. In contradiction to this but consistent with dominant
perceptions of art, 'new romanticism' maintains the boundaries between
art and the other fields. Instead of crossing over with fashion or
gaming, the art field operates in this context as a kind of niche
market for luxury goods. Appealing to Romanticism can be a way to
preserve this niche status within the experience industry paradigm.
This approach has already been taken up within the UK (where 'creative
industries' policy has been implemented since the early 1990s) as
Anthony Davies describes in Basic Instinct: Trauma and Retrenchment 2000-2004.
Davies
identifies a back to basics’ impulse within business, politics and
culture in the UK, in the wake of 9/11, the dot-com crash, and within
the art field, the controversies surrounding Young British Art, 28 and
the culture wars of the 90s. Davies describes how this is reflected
through an inward-looking tendency within contemporary art, described
as ‘new gentleness’29 He connects this shift to cultural policy
encouraging a domestic UK art market. Are we now seeing the same
development in Sweden: a desire to 'return to the drawing board', in
terms of conventional definitions of art and artists, in connection
with an expanding art market? To discuss this fully is beyond the scope
of this text, but we are also asking whether, similar to Davies's
observations, we are seeing a tendency towards escapism and retreat
into the private sphere, in the face of uncomfortable realities of
increasing economic uncertainty and inequality, destruction of the
welfare state or climate change. Does art play a role in this impulse
towards escapism and retreat, in a refurbished version of Matisse's
armchair? 30. And if it is doing so, is it in part out of a sense of
exhaustion with nineties practices such as relational aesthetics, and
the more institutionalized aspects of site-specific art? We should
acknowledge that what we have seen of calls for 'new romanticism'
simply dismiss nineties practices as passé but do not engage with its
problems. However, if this shift is also motivated by a sense of
fatigue and cynicism with critical practices (if critique does not lead
to change, then why not just make money?) then we feel that nineties
critical practices should also be interrogated.
It is a truism
that the art world has always limited art's potential for social
change. However, serious questions need to be asked about the
aestheticization and institutionalization of critique: whereby critique
becomes largely a symbolic gesture and does not lead to any real
change. We would like to focus on two aspects of this problem. The
first, which we see as inspired by aspects of post-structuralism, Hardt
and Negri and others, is a sense of melancholic institutional
determinism connected to the phrase 'no outside', and related to this,
the judgment that proposing any solution or taking a position is a
reductive, unsophisticated simplification. We would like to ask whether
the hopelessness of this perspective could lead, as a reaction, to the
current idealization on the artist as outsider figure, or the
withdrawal into interior fantasy worlds. The second aspect of this
problem is the contradiction of apparently open-ended democratic
structures (exemplified by the “platform’, the topic of both Pernille
Albrethsen's critique, Platform Formalism31 and Claire Bishop's Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics)
32 within hierarchical and in some cases exclusive settings such as
museums and biennials. Both Albrethsen's and Bishop's critiques point
to how this apparent 'democracy' can mask actual power relations, and
ask questions about responsibility: who participates, the nature of
participation, etc. The problem is that it can become very tempting to
see responsibility in individual terms, which Bishop does, and the last
part of her text calls for a return to aesthetic autonomy and
individual authorship. 33 Our position is that we should neither
dismiss nineties approaches for the sake of fashion nor defend them
uncritically, but instead seriously re-evaluate the relationship of
art, and art institutions to political responsibility and agency.
Having
discussed 'Romanticism' and reasons for its recurrence today, we will
now take up the second concept in our title, ‘professionalizing’,
specifically in relation to arts education. To connect the
professionalization of education to 'new romanticism', we are arguing
that art schools are becoming places where students learn to play the
role of 'professionalized romantics', because, for the reasons
mentioned earlier, this role fits very easily with the demands of
market success. More disturbingly, because it emphasizes the individual
artist, and de-emphasizes the wider social context, the
professionalized romantic is not encouraged to question the values of
individualism and competition prevalent in art education, and which are
intensifying as art schools compete with each other on for reputation
on an international scale.
A phenomenon we have noticed in
casual conversation is the hype surrounding ‘hot’ art schools. When
asked to explain why particular schools are 'hot', people rarely give
concrete information that would make the education at one school better
than another. Aside from rumour, we speculate this may reflect: 1) the
number of famous artists who have graduated from the school, 2) the
number of famous artists who have taught at the school, 3) the ease in
getting a dealer either while in school or immediately following
graduation, and 4) the visibility of the school within the
international art scene, based on the other three factors, or how
aggressively the school markets itself.
Of course,
competitiveness and prestige economies have always existed within art
education, but at the moment it could be argued that art schools have
more at stake in their reputation in both the international
contemporary art scene and the market. In other words, instead of
operating as more or less autonomous spaces for experimentation, art
schools function increasingly as a conduit to both the art market and
the contemporary art scene. This is similar to the pressures on other
forms of education (to produce recognizable results of success) but
different in that, unlike design education for example, the focus is
not on employable skills. Instead, we again see the contradiction of
both promoting the market, and on the other hand, conventional
definitions of artistic autonomy and artists. The current market
interest in young artists should not be underestimated here. With more
galleries and art fairs than ever, there is also potentially money to
be made, which can result in increased pressures on students to get a
dealer, sell work, and use art school as a networking opportunity34
(especially if the teachers are successful artists). The 2006 election
of the right coalition government in Sweden and their regime of
cutbacks and privatization, may also force students to see the art
market as the only source of financial stability.
A related
point is that the reputation of a particular school is created and
maintained by both students and teachers, in a symbiotic
career-building relationship: if students and teachers are successful
in the art world, this helps the reputation of the school, which
attracts more 'star' teachers and greater competition for student
places. The relationship between Young British Art and the art
department at Goldsmiths College in the UK is an obvious example, but
it could be argued that other ‘hot’ art schools (Frankfurter
Stadeschule, Yale University, etc) also follow this pattern. If this is
the future direction taken by Swedish art education, then we feel it is
important to ask how it affects the learning environment. If students
and teachers are under pressure to build and maintain a school's
reputation, then what happens when students produce work that is not
immediately, obviously successful? Another point is that is a highly
competitive atmosphere is not exactly conducive to producing a sense of
community, let alone solidarity. In such an atmosphere, what happens
when conflicts arise between students, teachers and administrators
(such as breaches of student rights or academic freedom issues, or
labour disputes)? Will people have the support of their peers and
colleagues? Or will quietism, self-censorship, conformity inevitably
result from such a competitive and managed environment?
Art
school, as Howard Singerman has argued, is not only a place where we
learn to make art, but most of all to take on the role of artist.35
While his book is largely a historical account of how postmodernism,
theory and the dematerialization of the art object affected US arts
education, we feel his emphasis on the artist-subject is useful because
it draws attention to the process of 'learning to be an artist': the
assimilation of appropriate codes of speaking and acting, the often
unexplained value judgments which reward some approaches and discourage
others, or the interest or disinterest shown by teachers and other
students. The question then becomes, what kind of artist are students
learning to become? We are arguing that pressures for market success
entrench the traditional definitions of the artist we have discussed
earlier: the artist who continually produces for eager collectors but
who does not take responsibility for the discourse or context around
his/her work, and presents a compelling, mysterious and charismatic
persona that will create intrigue and therefore market interest. The
contradiction of the professionalized romantic is that the art market
may be a business and success within it requires considerable business
savvy, but the artist must never be seen to behave like a businessperson or bureaucrat.
One
of us recently graduated from Konsthögskolan i Malmö (the other studied
there in an international program) and we will now share a few
impressions from the classroom and the overall climate of the school
signifying the tendencies we have described). The 'artists' we were
encouraged to become were for the most part mute figures, working alone
in the studios. There was sometimes a relationship between the verbal
and nonverbal (pedagogy's emphasis on communication vs. the art field's
traditional emphasis on the nonverbal and the unarticulated). This
tension was apparent during group critiques, especially at moments when
the conversation stopped, because the creative process was seen to be a
personal, and private matter. In-depth discussion of one's intentions
was rare, which we feel is the result of an education structure that
does not lead students to develop art historical knowledge or
familiarity and experience with group discussion—perhaps in accordance
with the belief in the mysterious, and therefore unteachable nature of
the creative process. Students can take technical courses and work
exclusively in the studio for 5 years without being exposed to
criticism, and are only required to present work to their classmates
only twice (once in the first, and once in the fifth year). The role
of theory was even more controversial (having been the object of
pedagogy battles for many years): controversial because it is seen as
potentially killing what is special about arts education through too
much exposure to the cold light of rational analysis; but also because
it contradicted dominant perceptions of the artist as a mute and
intuitive figure. The awkwardness of theory played out in reading
seminars: the impression was of simultaneously being encouraged and
discouraged to engage with readings: to engage would produce a better
discussion, but to engage too much would be to cease to be 'the
artist', enigmatic and mysterious. In contrast to Kant’s notion of
disinterest (where the beautiful does not create desire) not only did
the beautiful produce desire but art was defined as a product of
desire36. Desire and passion were defined within an anti-intellectual
framework: because they were part of personal, subjective experience,
they were beyond criticism; the logical conclusion is that if artworks
are the product of desire, they could not be discussed.
In
conclusion, we feel that serious questions must be asked of art
education. For students, the pressures for the consistency and
productivity mentioned at the beginning (which can mean something as
crass as a consistent product, or the demand for an identifiable style)
can pressure artists to produce formulaic work—especially if it is also
being rewarded both by the market and by state funding. We feel this
goes against the principles of learning, as under these pressures it
can be very difficult to take risks, make mistakes or experiment, or
even develop one's practice—as signs of change may be seen as
'inconsistency'. We also feel these pressures can be damaging to
artistic development the long term, because, in a climate where
collectors are showing an insatiable appetite for the latest hot young
artists, the cycle of stardom can be very short (three years, by a 2002
account37). How does one continue to make work once this cycle has
finished, let alone for the rest of one's life? If one has not had a
chance to explore or take risks during one's education, to develop the
sense of ongoing, independent investigation crucial to a sustained art
practice—because what is being rewarded is 'consistency'?
We
are concerned, not only for the long term effect on students, but also
for the learning environment. A climate where art schools are
continually trying to market themselves, and because of this, show that
both students and teachers are actual or potential star material, can
place huge pressures on both students and teachers.. The effect,
(ironically, in direct contradiction to the rhetoric by which art
schools use to market themselves ) is that art schools are no longer at
the forefront of new developments in the field, but in a position of
continually following market trends and rewarding what has already been
proven as successful. We also feel that under such pressure, what
suffers is the diverse range of different practices that would allow
students to learn from each other and be exposed to different
perspectives and approaches. Rewarding the already-successful will only
produce more predictability and homogeneity. We also feel that the role
of the 'professionalized romantic' within art education is a limiting
one, not only because it so suited to the individualism, competition
and careerism mentioned above, but also because it discourages a sense
of community among teachers, students and others in the field, and the
taking responsibility for the wider context of one's practice.
We
are calling for a re-evaluation of art education, as art education
increasingly plays a central role in the definition of art and artists.
An important aspect of this evaluation (beyond the scope of this text)
would be to open discussion around the definition of autonomy: where
political and aesthetic autonomy might either enable or oppose each
other. We hope that our text can contribute to this re-evaluation.
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