Chitchat

I had an interesting, if brief, conversation with another student a couple of days ago. She was a barista making my coffee. She saw my student id, and said how she attended a different art school, joking that we were "enemies". It's a lighthearted/common joke, but I think indicative of something bigger we face as artists and art students.

Beyond some healthy ambition, I think the idea of bitter competition between artists is so destructive and sad. It implies that art has a stratified, lateral movement. It supports the idea that art is something to commodify, consume or possess. already entrenched in our culture. Whoever can make the best consumer object, wins (whether the consumer is the paying public or the consumer are critics who lead to paying collectors). Also, it ignores or generalizes issues of skill level, conceptual purpose, artistic vision, cultural background, and creativity in general.

When I say competition I don't mean artists critiquing and discussing each others' works, or comparing their own. That's a healthy, important exchange. Also, I'm all for having a critical eye and strengthening it. What I mean by negative competition is the "wow, this painting is so much more realistic than mine, I hate mine" or "my school is a real art school, unlike that degree mill over there".

Ironically, this latter attitude is shared by students at my school and the barista's school. They are very different types of art schools, both graduating students who will produce amazing, beautiful, important work. Yet both will think of the other as the ultimate epithet in higher education, a degree mill.

I could go on about this forever. Basically, I want some bipartisanship in the academic art world. After all, we haven't even gotten to the academic vs. non-academic art world division, or collector-driven vs. underground, etc. etc. headache induced. So, to end with a fat old cliche, "Can't we all just get along?" Feel free to critique that.