Theory and practice, in my opinion

Hunza Vargas

 

The first semester I taught classes in an arts department, I heard a story that I’d like to share. During class in an art school, a student presents the progress of her work and begins talking about it, based on different authors that she has read throughout the semester. The teacher interrupts and asks her to stop reading, arguing that the student has lost the ability to speak from herself, but she hasn’t lost the right to do so. However, at the end of term, the student gets 5 as final grade, to which other students reply with disqualifying phrases such as “so I’m just going to read books to get straight fives”.

As an anthropologist and teacher, I was shocked with this story, because I’ve never heard of a teacher who discourages reading among her students. However, it wasn’t the last time that I heard such an intention or prevention against reading in arts in a university context.

In a college of arts, I’ve heard that the practice (to do) is as important as reading, writing or research. Also, I’ve heard many times, how reading is underestimated against plastic work. By students, when referring to projects that require a theoretical framework along with a basic writing exercise when defining, describing, building or deconstructing an exercise of creation, it’s quite common to hear phrases like “reading is not necessary” or “I just read the first part, ‘cause I found there what I needed”. By teachers, when you hear phrases like “you don’t judge an artist by his texts” or “the artistic references are clear, that’s enough”.

It is not my intention to make theory more relevant than art practice, for it doesn’t depend on a broad consensus, but on each project, if I want to put theory in an equitable place with practice, for in fact, reading and writing are practices that have much of visual and of creativeness, and in many cases are plastic exercises themselves.

The argumentative qualities of art students are usually linked to their artistic referents more than to a concept that they have worked on along the process. This implies, on one hand, a permanent interest in the process of other creators to nurture their own work, but at the same time, a lack of interest for the notions, concepts and arguments that lead those creators to develop certain works in specific ways. Thus, theory is understood through third-parties that have had a particular process, and one’s work turns easily into an exegesis of someone else’s work.

Of course, you can’t expect that in a single project an artist (least of all, an student of arts) address a concept completely and deal with its definition, but what can be asked is that there is a reasonable amount of theoretical work around concepts, ideas and forms, to such an extent that a critical revision enhances a plastic project involving materials, media, procedures and personal comments about what the plastic process has to communicate on a particular subject or concept. In this regard, theory in arts goes through the making, but you can’t stop reading or writing.

The nineteenth idea of an inspired artist or an artist with capabilities beyond perception of majorities has been severely questioned and criticized in arts, but criticism that have lead to a whole structure in which theory has provided all the scaffolding, have simultaneously lead to an appreciation of technical means above rigorous reflection in theoretical terms, inside the academy, mostly driven by students. Why might be this due?

The conflictive relationship between theory and practice in arts has lots to do with the art academy, but which are the options in theoretical matters for students inside the art school? The courses taught by artists or people with studies in art history? Which is the emphasis in the courses that art students usually share with people from other undergraduate programs?

These questions have grounds in one idea: art cannot produce knowledge in the same ways of sciences, but this doesn’t exclude it from the production of sense and meaning in the social and cultural life of people. Which is why it’s vital to generate critical approaches in the new generations, with analytic and argumentative capabilities, within the forms built by art, having in mind that precisely art has always appealed to reinterpretations of scientific methodologies, for there isn’t anything more practical than good theory.

 

Hunza Vargas is an anthropologist that works in the Fine Arts department at Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano, in Bogota-Colombia