THE ART SCHOOL OF THE 21ST CENTURY III

Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998
From: Katalin Herzog
Subject: The discussion up until now

THE DISCUSSION UP UNTIL NOW

Up until now, I have experienced the discussion as stimulating, although some of the opinions expressed astonish me. I would now like to present some of my own reactions.

A remarkable feature, I find, is the mixture of makeability and fatalism with regard to the future which is expressed particularly in the reactions presented by Arjen Mulder. The idea that the future could be made by imagining it in a certain way, and then seeing how we get there, does not take into account the 'unintentional consequences of intentional action' as Hegel concisely formulated this concept. We can, and indeed must, make plans for the future, but not all the consequences of our actions can be anticipated, so that our intentions, once realised, could even turn out to be completely at loggerheads with these plans. This is the reason why each Utopia, however well meant, can become a disaster, and it is also the reason why the unintentional consequences can lead to serendipity-like discoveries, as Paul Perry commented.

That art is the realisation of possibilities does seem plausible, but not on the grounds of a kind of Hegelian 'spirit' that realises itself, or a God who communicates with Himself. Moreover, this idea is absolutely contrary to any, even partial, makeability of the future. Art does not develop under the auspices of the 'spirit' that uses people as mere tools, as Hegel postulates, it is a realisation of human possibilities and is aware of its restrictions in this field. People can generate new concepts, can realise new objects, but this newness is always set against a background of what currently exists. This is due to the impossibility of abandoning all internalised values and ingrained customs, in other words, the personal habitus and the prevalent culture. And it also concerns the fact that new ideas and objects must be recognised as such within this prevalent culture, otherwise they will be lost (see Margaret Boden, The Creative Mind, 1990). Thus, the future and future art are generated within a culture that contains the old as the potential for the new, and that is always created by and for people.

Accordingly, it is impossible to detach art and separate it from culture, as Mulder would like. In my opinion, the makeability of the future and, with it, new ideas and objects, is radically more complex than Mulder maintains. Allow me to quote (in abbreviated form) a section of my review of the book Ober das Neue (On Newness) by the Russian philosopher Boris Groys, in which I also react to Jouke Kleerebezem's remarks on Mulder's Utopian manner of thinking:

Groys demonstrates that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, modernism aimed at achieving fundamental newness, the ideal society, true art, the theory-of-all. This was a Utopia that could only be reached by relinquishing and destroying tradition. Tradition had to be conquered because it was regarded as being only capable of reproducing itself repeatedly in an identical way. This urge towards newness corresponds to the search for the essential and the elementary, which has typified Western thought through the ages and particularly since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The presumption at the basis of this pattern is that people can, in principle, gain access to true reality. Those who possess the privilege to demonstrate this reality, artists and thinkers, only have to remove from it the dust of cultural conventions. In the postmodernist vision, in which Truth has become unattainable and essences no longer exist, it appears as if the search for newness has been abandoned. Purposeful progress and revealing that which is concealed no longer have a place in contemporary thought. In that case, some may ask, isn't it better to stick to the old values? In Groys' view, however, this is impossible. Returning to old values is a Renaissance that always means a renewal. After all, the old is in a continuous process of redefinition. Nonetheless, postmodernism also possesses its own hidden principles, such as those expressed by Derrida, for example, concerning the difference between language and that which it refers to. This gulf cannot be bridged, but the longing for the unreachable truth is productive and generates the 'other', in Groys' view, the 'new'.

Ultimately, thus, both modernism and postmodernism aim to bring about renewal. This is inevitable, in Groys' opinion, because "new for newness' sake" is a law within our culture. But although both modernism and postmodernism adhere to this law, neither of them has insight into its workings. Groys defines the mechanism, by means of which renewal manifests itself in Western culture, as an economic operation of exchanging values between two different areas. In his view, culture does not create from a vacuum and also does not reveal that which lies outside culture, that which is hidden. It combines and reassesses matters that are already known, but which are situated on different grounds. This concerns the domain of the 'archives' such as museums and libraries, in which the already consecrated items are stored, and the domain of the 'profane', the banal, which encompasses all topics that are uninteresting and without value.

These two are brought together when there is mention of renewal. The profane is connected to the highly valued and, as a result, is assigned more worth. At the same time, recognised cultural assets are temporarily corroded. This mechanism is governed by a hierarchy of values that works unceasingly, even though people in postmodern times speak of its disappearance.

Although Western culture displays a tendency to look for the 'new' outside tradition, this 'new' can only be defined, in Groys' view, in relation to the tradition that is stored in the cultural archives. In our culture, the relation to the tradition can be either negative or positive, but the latter does not produce any new matters or theories. In fact, Western culture esteems innovation, originality and profanity. The profane is equated with extra-cultural reality, whose wild threats have to be tamed by sacrificing tradition. Some people are of the opinion that, in our times, the new, in the form of domesticated profanity, will cease to exist because everything has already been cultivated. Groys' believes, however, that the profane will never run out: culture not only produces new, valuable items but also much worthless rubbish. This is formed as a result of high-level cultural assets being popularised and commercialised. The masses pull on these assets and ideas, so that they descend from the cultural archives to the profane area and become worthless. After they have been in the hands of the profane for a while, they again become 'wild' and can subsequently again come into consideration for revaluation in art and thinking. (Metropolis M nr.4 1993)

(* To this could be added that Groys still assumes a large antithesis between high and low culture, whereas in 1998 this is longer quite so explicit. This means that, although the mechanisms he outlines have not disappeared altogether, they have become more subtle. The current exhibition by Mischa Klein in the Groningen Museum provides clear evidence of this.)

Despite the fact that longing for extra-cultural items is productive, there is, in Groys' view, no way around culture. Mulder's call to relinquish culture and abolish tradition in order to arrive at a place of possibilities is more of a vehemently formulated longing than a good insight offering a fundament for plans for art education. If we wish to achieve anything in that direction, we must indeed cherish these feelings but also analyse the mechanisms governing Western culture up until the present. If I have understood Paul Perry correctly, he shares this opinion. In reaction to one of his questions, the culture I am discussing is the Western culture, which is imperialist right up to this day. Although Europeans no longer actually go out colonising, Western culture, with its advanced ideas and technologies, possesses such a dominant character that wherever it appears it usurps other cultural values. Partly for this very reason, culture criticism forms an extremely important component of all types of education and thus also of art education. Artists must not become unconscious trend-followers who are only swept along on the 'spirit of the age'; they must be given opportunities to present other values in their work.

I would also like to react to the metaphor of time being a path that one can walk along. Jouke Kleerebezem is correct when he says that we find ourselves surrounded by changes, but that does not mean that the usage of a metaphor is not worthwhile. We can conceptualise time and must do so because we understand it to some extent. Time as a path or time as a stream (flux) are two different metaphors and the question is not which of the two is correct, but how we make use of them. In my view, a combination of the two metaphors can be productive for thinking about new art education: we make plans for something we see lying ahead of us, which we tinker with as we go, swept along by ever omnipresent and imminent changes, which we are only capable of influencing to a limited degree.

Finally, I would like to respond to Perry's more elaborated ideas on art education. Students, in general, are young and can learn a lot. They are right at the hub of the new culture and, as a result, have other opportunities to create forms and meanings in their work than older people do, including their teachers. But I believe that their possibilities in relation to the 'new' are often mingled with unreflected values concerning art and being an artist that are rather cliché and even dogmatic. For this reason, art education, populated by hungry students and highly motivated teachers from various disciplines who jointly carry out all kinds of projects, cannot be an ideal 'co-operative body'; it must be a real school.

The picture that Paul Perry sketches closely approaches the 'power-free communication' that was presented by Habermas as an ideal within a democracy. I think that a better view consists of seeing the school as place and time for study (N.B. scholé is Greek for leisure time), with a well conceived structure in which the relationships are clear, where one can develop oneself, and also receive lessons, be 'supervised' and also clash with teachers. I find that none of Perry's models of schools fulfil my image of a school. Trial and error cannot be a plan for future education; it will work with whichever plan is applied (see the metaphors concerning time). But in education one cannot just do this or that to see what actually takes root. Evolution will not shed any tears for unsuccessful sorts, but unsuccessful artists must not be allowed for in advance. Transdisciplinary, transcultural institutes seem to be very attractive for second-stage education, but for education at the initial level they probably provide too little footing. Traditional elements certainly do have a place within future art education, but an Art Academy based solely on 'arts and crafts' would offer a basis that is too narrow for a contemporary artist.

Let us, therefore, think further. Perhaps the 'habitus of the artist', which has not been discussed up until now, will provide a new point of departure for a good model of a future school.

Katalin Herzog