I understand that what I have written below seems hard and dry. It is because I have attempted to be as simple and reductive as I can be to offer ideas carved out of our collective experiences of teaching, learning and thinking. I believe everything below is in fact much more nuanced and complex. This is to be read as an outline, not a thesis. Reactions will be appreciated.
Cedoux Kadima leading an art workshop during a trans European youth project photograph: Robert Golden
There are 3 uses for two-dimensional visual arts in society, and therefore 3 separate ways artists can purpose themselves in relation to society.
1 To teach art to young and old, offering formal and technical skills and ways of discovering meaning.
A. Formal skills are those which help people understand how a picture looks in terms of shapes, volumes, tonality, colour, sharpness of softness, rhythms, and over all composition.
B. Technical skills are about how to use and employ the tools and materials of a particular medium
C. These two elements, form and technique, join together to create Style. Style is a consequence of assumptions, tastes, attitudes and yes, goals and values which inhabit everyone, often with them being unconscious of these processes of inhabitation. They arise from the individual’s place and situation of birth, the conditions in which they grow and develop, the social and moral attitudes implanted in them through their being taught and trained, and also encouraged or oppressed by their families, friends, teachers, the surrounding community, and by the education, news and general culture that also inhabit them. For style to work, it must be appropriate to the content.
D. The discovery of meaning to be used in making art is another and more complex matter. There are 3 elements which create meaning:
a. Subject Matter is what fills the frame – it can be social - as exhausted hospital nurses, or personal - as about the daily life of one’s children, or abstract - as how our crumbling world surrounds us.
b. Each of these subjects would be chosen as they represent or express specific concerns or Content. We have chosen nurses because their condition represents unfairness or exploitation. We have chosen our children because they represent care and concern, responsibility, or our future. We have chosen the crumbling world because it represents a failure of governments and politicians to maintain our environment.
c. Underlying this content are more profound concerns, the Values which rule our lives, consciously or not. It is out of our values that our Themes arise. For instance, exploitation ignites one’s sense of injustice; children encourage our longing for a better, perhaps more innocent world and our need for love; and destruction of our world challenges our sense of injustice or inequality. longing for a better, perhaps more innocent world and our need for love; and destruction of our world challenges our sense of injustice or inequality.
2 To use the arts as an activity to bring groups and communities together in informal educational projects, the aim of which is the process itself rather than producing a fine piece of art. Whilst what is produced is to be enjoyable and to be proud of, it is not because it in itself has profound artistic merit, but that it represents not only the collaboration amongst people, but may also represent underlying attitudes and beliefs revealed in images or texts produced. These can become stimulants for discussions, bringing into the open issues that can be more easily be accessed.
A sign in a Brixton asking for something better. Photograph Robert Golden
3 And of course the third practice is for artists to produce work which offers audiences engagement with the social, personal and philosophical issues of being human. That is, for artists to produce art unencumbered by the demands of the state or the rich. There are two distinctions to take note of here.
First, when artists succumb to the ideology of the state, of a ruling party, or when artists are seduced into submitting to the lure of wealth and fame to make their art, the art will most often be antagonistic to the well-being of the people. It becomes more like propaganda: a one-sided, single dimensional hollering of orders at the audience, forcing them to accept or at least pretend to believe the ideology of their masters. Whereas, fine art represents the complexity, doubts and multidimensional realities of being human as it asks questions to create a dialogue within the viewer. Complexity and curiosity are dangerous to the status quo.
Second, Art is not simply an entertainment or craft dedicated to making useable objects (a jug, a dress, a chair for instance). Useable objects do not address the human soul as does art. At times a finely crafted object may cross over to become art because the perfection of its form alludes to the perfection of human capabilities
Entertainment financed by the status quo is superficial and loaded with values which only support the needs of power and wealth. Consumerism, materialism, sexualization and momentary fame are central to the banal and soulless popular culture foisted upon the rest of us day-by-day. Entertainment preserves the power and wealth of our rulers; rulers who are always oppressive, undemocratic, unfair, immoral and unjust. This is why almost all art will be in opposition to the status quo.
I believe that artists must offer those they mentor in 1 and 2 above, the highest level of instruction. I believe they must not stoop to popular cultural modes and momentary fads but offer to raise their students to the most critical, thoughtful and honest way to respond creatively to the world that surrounds them.
The linguist and author, George Steiner wrote, “my role as teacher is to lead my students to the doorsteps of their own imagination.”
These are of course useful things to consider. But the most useful thing I learned about the teacher student relation is the importance of a teacher not pulling punches in their criticism. I learned this because my first painting teacher always found something positive to say. It was not helpful. My second painting teacher would say "can't you see that perspective is completely wrong." Or he would say "Look a hand is as big as a face." I learned a lot from him.
These are of course useful things to consider. But the most useful thing I learned about the teacher student relation is the importance of a teacher not pulling punches in their criticism. I learned this because my first painting teacher always found something positive to say. It was not helpful. My second painting teacher would say "can't you see that perspective is completely wrong." Or he would say "Look a hand is as big as a face." I learned a lot from him.
absolutely Robert.