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Where's the Art in 'Art' Class?

Billy Wright
Write About Art 2
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Within the system of secondary schooling, where the outside artworld has little or no contact, does the presence of ‘art’ exist? Even in the paint-smelling, ‘weird-end-of-the-school’ art rooms, is art really still a pure and free expression of the self? Or is it that art scholarship is less of an imaginary free fire zone and more of a discursive dictatorship where freedom is necessarily evil, dissent is subversion and the punishment of difference is a natural state of being. 

‘Art’ can perhaps most accurately be defined as an individual’s form of expression. An imaginative creation, housing the artist’s heart and mind. Yet, in high school, where we have all spent a significant and formative part of our lives, and where the forced shaping of cognition and perception is a standard operating procedure, can this ever be the case? In the end, schools are in the business—for some the multi-million dollar business—of metrics. Of measuring performance against rigid criteria. Where, in this scheme, is the space for the transgressive, the uncomfortable, the paradigm changing?

Universal to secondary schools, is assessment marking and assignment criteria (or ‘assignment sheets’ when printed on paper). Assessment results can vary from ‘excellent’ down to ‘appalling’, or from ‘A+’ down to ‘E-’. No matter what system of labelling a school uses, assessment marks are used solely to segregate the ‘good’ student work, from the ‘bad’ and the ‘ugly’. These marking systems are used in all secondary schools, including in the art classrooms. 

But can this system of branding really be applied to art? If art is indeed one’s ‘individual free expression and wondrous form of communication’, who is anyone to classify it as good or bad? The... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Dylan Janssen, The Janssen Portable Steam-Powered Rhythmitical Audio Developing Machine, 2009

Dylan Janssen, The Janssen Portable Steam-Powered Rhythmitical Audio Developing Machine, 2009. Timber, copper, brass, perspex, acrylic paint. Creative Generation Excellence Awards for Visual Art and Design 2010-11 Touring Exhibition.

Dylan Janssen, The Janssen Portable Steam-Powered Rhythmitical Audio Developing Machine,

Dylan Janssen, The Janssen Portable Steam-Powered Rhythmitical Audio Developing Machine, 2009. Timber, copper, brass, perspex, acrylic paint. Creative Generation Excellence Awards for Visual Art and Design 2010-11 Touring Exhibition.