White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 14contract teaching, i.e. short-term wellpaidjobs, bringing in internationallyrenowned artists, has been seriouslyundermined by a misunderstanding ofthe role of high-level contract teaching.This is the most significant issuerequiring a solution in the next fewyears: liberalising and promotingcontract teaching should not be amakeshift measure to shore up staffshortages, but a way of bringing leadingcultural figures into our universities.As of April 2008, there are only twofaculties in state universities which gounder the name of “Design and Arts”:one in Bolzano and the other inVenice. Only the IUAV in Venice has aspecialist degree course in visual arts.Created in 2001, this course attemptsto foster lively exchanges withinternational artists and critics, also byexploiting the opportunities offered bythe presence in Venice of the VisualArts Biennale. Significantly, the courseis often boycotted and not only by thelocal Accademia. But in fact underlyingthe boycotting and difficultiesexperienced by the DAMS and theAccademie in general, there seem to bedoubts about the need to offer arttraining at university level at all.The deep-rootedness of this opinion –i.e. considering the visual arts not to bea “cognitive activity” – is confirmed bythe state of abandon of the so-calledLiceo Artistico (“Art GrammarSchool”). Considered on a par withtechnical colleges, these schoolsbasically focus on painting andsculpture but do little to supplyfundamental theoretical tools. Anotherserious shortcoming is the low-keyapproach to teaching English, which isof vital importance to anyone wishingto work in an international context.All of this is happening at a time whenart education facilities in othercountries are developing fast accordingto several models: the fine arts schoolmodel (Germany, France and China),the art college model (UK and formerCommonwealth countries), or theuniversity-type schools (especially inthe USA). Whether the model adoptedis the German meisterklasse or that ofthe UCLA and the CalArts in LosAngeles or the Staedel in Frankfurt, inwhich rotating teaching involvesleading artists, for many years now themajority of top international artistshave come from one or several centresof excellence. German artists whostamped their influence on the 1980sand 1990s – Thomas Ruff, ThomasStruth, Andreas Gursky – were taughtby Bernd and Hilla Becher inDüsseldorf. The “Young BritishArtists”, who won such clamorousfame in the 1990s, nearly all came fromGoldsmith College, London.Moreover, student exchanges areincreasingly frequent in these schools(see for example the annual Real Presencemeeting, usually organised in Belgrade).In 2003 a similar meeting was held inVenice, Italy, as part of the BiennaleRecycling the Future event. But in Italy,the initiative in most cases forattending these kinds of internationaleducation meetings is left up to theindividual without the activeencouragement of the art schools.Suspicions about the cultural validity ofthe visual arts in the years of theirgreatest success has been compoundedby the fatal embrace of entertainmentWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 328