- Venue
- Edited by David Mollin and John Reardon. Ridinghouse Publishers.
- Location
- London
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes is a compendium of interviews with art teachers from colleges and universities in Britain, Germany, Switzerland and Ireland. The bowiesque title links only tenuously to the content. The focus is less on change than on nostalgia for by-gone times. It’s not a forward-looking book, as evidenced by the disproportionate ratio of male to female artists interviewed and the occasional sexist language, whereby anonymous art students are invariably assumed to be male.*
Voicing the opinions of two generations of art teachers, the editorial premise is transparent in purpose and method: the expressed goal is to ‘delete’ misunderstandings about art teaching. The introduction, however, doesn’t signal an optimistic outlook on art education – ‘a good deal of mediocrity still comes through the doors of art schools…’ complains the editor and interviewer, John Reardon.
Sober discontent extends to the academic system and the weight of the art market. Despite the book’s underlying disillusioned tone, the academics generally enjoy their teaching role, with most of them feeling that it enriches their own practice by keeping alive a vital dialogue about art critique. Ample space is given to philosophise about education and the role of art, and discussion is rich in thought-provoking opinions that often reveal a clash between institutions (universities, the degree show, the art market…) and personal values.
Significantly, many of the artists speaking teach usually only for a few days a week, to have time for their own creative output. For the up-coming generation of artists, teaching as a support of one’s practice may no longer be viable, since part-time teaching is not the economically sustainable career that it used to be, and teaching full time is seen as unbearably draining.
The contributors generally express a consistent approach to art education, one in which students are guided, quite freely, to develop their artworks and perspectives without any imposition of dogma. Some claim to intuitively spot students who ‘have it’, the small percentage that will shine. Attitudes to students vary, from deriding them as ‘smelly’ to labelling them ‘young artists,’ with some rare, celebratory passages relishing student-teacher interaction.
The freestyle type of teaching preferred by most is made difficult by new regulations. Academics dwell on the dangers of standardisation of educational establishments and of heavy bureaucratic burdens. There is much regret for the loss of creativity and freedom in teaching, commonly thought necessary for a wholesome development of future artists. The dichotomy between formal institutional requirements and experiential pedagogy leads to a debate about the value of research-based PhDs, which are conflicting for the practising artists who find it antagonistic to make artworks that are dependent upon theory.
One myth this chunky volume questions is that of teaching as a second-rate activity, entered into by artists whose career never quite takes off. This maligned idea, it seems, is mainly a British and Swiss social prejudice. In Germany, where ‘the most important artists were always the ones who were teaching,’ being a ‘professor’ is a prestigious occupation that enhances the status of one’s art career. One wonders what the omitted Mediterranean voices would add to the German and British perspectives selected.
Most interviewees are strongly opposed to the idea that non-practising artists should teach. The arguments about the need for art teachers to be practising artists are amongst the most interesting parts of the book. Phyllida Barlow, for example, introduces the idea of serendipity. She acknowledges that learning to be an artist can be a case of being in the right place at the right time, as she feels happened when Rachel Whiteread and her cohort studied at Brighton, during a period in which the ‘extraordinary exceptional group of staff’ working there provided a ‘critical dynamic’ for nurturing talent.
Barlow has witnessed a big shift in the last 20 to 30 years, but remains one of the most enthusiastic educationalists in the publication. She believes that the main influence on students nowadays comes from the art world itself, which puts ‘intense pressure’ on emerging artists. Other practitioners also reiterate the difficulty of surviving as an artist in present times. The problem is not so much a financial one, which nonetheless is very real and openly examined, it is the expectations and social values surrounding emerging artists.
The book closes quite suddenly: the interviews just stop. An index at the end would have been useful, to allow easy browsing of the artists and schools mentioned. Instead, the reader is left with Erwin Wurm’s wariness of an overwhelming teaching commitment that can ‘destroy too much of the rest of my life.’ Overall, Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes suggests one thing: teaching, like art practice, must be regenerated periodically or risk burnout.
· It is unclear if this oversight is due to the literal wording used by some of the academics or to the translation from German.
