There is Art... then there is ART.

After having to pretend (play the game) at university to get my visual art degree, I set about making what I think of as real art. Institutional art in my view is not art but illustration for a theory. Let me explain. For art to be "taught" at university it needs to be assessed. The obvious problem is how does one assess a work of art. A student could come in drunk off his or her face, throw some paint on a wall everyday for 3 years and get a degree. So to make it assessable universities force everyone to do conceptual art. That is art that has a theory. The student comes up with a theory then sets about making art to resolve this theory. I remember one student who was failing because he could not make art under this structure. He kept wandering his art away from his theory and could not explain to the teachers how his images fitted with his theory. In my view he was failing because he was making real art. His art had broken free and was running wild. He was getting quite a hammering from the teachers and I could see his spirit failing. I took him aside as soon as I could and told him to make the art first, and then invent a theory for it... but don't tell anyone. This he did, and he was successful and a happy man.

My point is that the universities have got it wrong. And many institutionalized artists are , as I said, illustrating a theory. I believe this is why much art is missing the mark, and is no longer beautiful. And by beautiful I don't mean so much aesthetically, but that it can move you. Psychologists have been telling us for years that our consciousness is but the tip of the iceberg of our being, and is nothing compared to the power of our unconscious. I am sure some of you can remember some dreams you have had where your unconscious had created a magnificent story, or work of art or fantastic music, far far beyond what you would be capable of in your conscious state. So why are we letting the less intelligent and less creative part of ourselves call the shots in art? Art is the very thing that can tap directly into the power and infinite ability of our unconscious.

What we need is for artists to do the art first.... let it run wild... choose subjects and images on feeling, not theory... then, and only then theorize, or conceptualize the art (if you must). Because only in this way will we truly find something magnificent and moving. Something really unique and that reaches out beyond the norm.

My student colleague who I told to lie nearly didn't make it through university. To me he was a real artist. I saw other real artists in the first week of university, sitting forlorn in the university car parks in stead of in the school, head in hands wondering how they were going to fit their round pegs of being into the square holes of the institutional art establishment. Just about all of them I never saw again at university. The system of educating artists is turning the real artists away in droves. The ones that could perhaps save or resurrect the pieces of a world loosing itself year by year. This is not to say we don't have real art that moves us or artists that can and do... but more to mourn what we could have if things were different... if we let art and our larger unconscious lead the way and not our minuscule consciousness.

I remember a quote form a Californian art group, it went something like: art is like a car. You can sit it in the driveway and take it apart, or you can get in it, and go somewhere.