Deconstructing and Reconstructing Artists with PhDs

Abstract

MICHAEL CRAIG-MARTIN: There are hundreds of kids in Britain doing PhDs – PhDs! – in fine art. And the terrible thing is, where does a PhD have meaning? In the art world? No. It has meaning in one place. JOHN BALDESSARI: Teaching. MICHAEL CRAIG-MARTIN: Now what’s going to happen is we’re going to end up with schools that are entirely run by people with PhDs, who have no experience of the art world at all. It could not be a worse situation…[Artists] are doing the highest-level research in the world. If you want the highest-level research, you need to go to Jeff Wall or whomever. You need people who are out there, in the world, doing what it is that an artist does. (Baldessari/Craig-Martin1)Except: 'What does an artist do'? Is there a definition or a set of necessary or sufficient conditions which captures and describes what an artist does? Arguably, since the transition in the 20th century from the readymade, through happenings and conceptual art, to socially-engaged art practice, there is no longer a set of clearly defined actions or properties which belong exclusively to art practice. Art is now an open concept, appropriating, subverting, challenging or rearticulating any context or discourse with which it comes into contact.