Joseph Beuys' Expanded Concept of Art gives us a place to start. For the time being, I am going veer around the political ramifications involved in selecting this idea as a point of departure, though, I promise you, in the long run it will be impossible to avoid. But what Beuys gives us when he states something like ART=CAPITAL (or Kapital=Kunst) is a way of looking at our everyday activities under new light. He is implying that things such as art and work cannot be as divisively delineated as we may once have wanted them to be, but that they are, in essence, the same thing.
Beuys' classes at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art often had many times the number of students that his fellow professors would allow, and this often caused him trouble with his peers and the academy in general. But Beuys relished the conflict, which he felt in some way served his purpose of expanding on the concept of art, as well as expanding the number of people that were being infected with his ideas. Art was to go outside of the studio and gallery, in fact it already had. Everyday life in or out of work is ripe with types of behavioral effects commonly thought of as "creative," though the specific behaviors were not often thought of that way. After all, everyone is an artist, in some way or another, since we all survive from day to day somehow, and that takes some clever maneuvering and revamping of our ideas, does it not?
His students, therefore, were not training to become "artists," per se, not in the typical sense. Instead they left his class and went on to be business associates, teachers, social workers, what have you. Most art teachers would consider that a great failure, but to Beuys, it was the agenda. It was social sculpture.
It would be hard to imagine all the tools Beuys passed on to his students, and what it is that they had taken with them, if anything, that others working in the same fields may not have had. But we can begin to take an accounting of our own work, and understand what we have brought to it from whatever arts we may have involved in.
Is it only a coincidence, for instance, that there are so many classically trained musicians working in information systems technology? Or is there something in the cognitive training of a musician that seeds the ability to think in the same structures needed to think in computer languages. If so, what does this begin to imply about the relationship between our art and our work, and what does it say about the possibility that work and art, instead of hindering each other's progress, may actually be used to support each other, if managed intelligently?
For those of you who have creative ambition, but find yourself working in a field that is not of your choosing, might this offer a route to think upon? To me, it does. And if it can make any difference to my work, my life and my art, it may only involve changing the intention behind everything we do.
1 comment:
John, Interesting stuff you have going here. Not sure how to respond, really.
"After all, everyone is an artist, in some way or another, since we all survive from day to day somehow, and that takes some clever maneuvering and revamping of our ideas, does it not?"
I like the line, but I'm not one who believes that everyone is an artist. Why not: "After all, everyone is a windsurfer, in some way or another, since we all survive from day to day..." Or a dairy farmer? There is something that one DOES to be called an artist or windsurfer or dairy farmer.
I think everyone CAN be creative and "artistic," whatever that means, in the various aspects of their lives. But then everyone CAN be just and fair, too, but they're often not. The potential is there, but I don't see the fulfillment very much.
On the other hand, I hate the whole MFA-Factory/Professionalization of Poetry trend in this country. Not to disparage your hard-earned degree. Oh for the day when pediatricians and insurance salesmen were our major poets!
So that leaves me not "in between" but off to the side of the everyone in the tub vs. only the professionals/experts in the tub.
"what does this begin to imply about the relationship between our art and our work, and what does it say about the possibility that work and art, instead of hindering each other's progress, may actually be used to support each other, if managed intelligently?"
Sure. They don't HAVE to hinder each other's progress. The lucky people find a way to integrate their lives. I'm not one of them. I'm torn up and too dualistic and unhappy. Oh that it were not so. But you'll get fired if you write poetry at work. You will never get fired for doing work instead of writing poetry.
Part of me wonders if you're looking for a way to tell yourself that it's okay not to be writing poetry. But maybe that's my own tortured existence creeping into the disucssion. I just wonder how many people writing a lot would ask these kinds of questions. Those of us who struggle seem to be the ones who think of these things. I ask myself all the time if it's okay that I'm not writing more. It has to be. Otherwise, I would kill myself.
Keep on with this. I'm curious to see where it's going. It's a work in itself.
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