Speaking directly in an indirect way

Paul Deneer

This essay focuses on the connection between personal and artistic growth. The starting point for the essay is my position as a student counsellor at the University of Arts The Hague dealing with students that have personal issues that affect their artistic development. First I take a bigger view by focussing on personal growth in general, from a dialogical perspective. I also make a connection to mental health. With the concepts derived from this wider perspective, I investigate how they could play a role in art. I present material I gathered, about artists who struggle on a personal level with a possible effect on their artistic work. Also in regard to art, I make a connection to mental health. I look back on the reports from my conversations with students, and analyse the data of an interview I did with 14 students. To illustrate my argument, throughout the essay I present cases of students that contacted me during the past years.

Chapter 1

Artistic development in
the context of education

Being a student counsellor of the University of Arts The Hague for the past 22 years, many students contacted me, asking me for help, dealing with their issues. Many of these issues affect their studies and therefore indirectly affect their artistic development as well.

Every one of these students likes to pursue a professional career as a performing or creating artist. To that purpose, part of the curriculum the conservatoire or art academy offers involves developing skills. In the end a student can call himself an expert, a virtuoso, a craftsman. During assessments however everyone in the exam committee seems to agree that, besides the craftsmanship, the growth into an artistic personality is what should be assessed. The part of the curriculum that deals with artistic growth however is harder to put into concrete skills. That is why some teachers at the conservatoire, who notice problems with students having to present their artistic personality during a performance, stick to the concrete skills and suggest technical solutions or simply advice to study harder in general.

Gert Biesta (2016, p. 4) gives an interesting description of artistic development within the perspective of education. He identifies three aspects: qualification, socialization and subjectification. Qualification is connected to knowledge, skills, values (which I described above as craftsmanship) and socialization is dealing with being able to proceed within a culture, traditions and ways of doing. Subjectification concerns with the student being a subject. This is the part that deals with his personal and artistic growth, the freedom but also the responsibility that goes along with it (also see 3.2: Art and inner dialogue). Biesta stresses the importance of a student teacher-relationship that actively works on subjectivity and therefore has to accept the risk of dialogue between teacher and student. In a research for the lectorate of the Royal Conservatoire (Deneer, van Zelm 2014) I focussed on the relationship between student and teacher, stressing the importance of reciprocity in this relationship. Reciprocity and dialogue are inseparable, as I will hope to demonstrate further on.

In my role as a counsellor I noticed that students who struggle with their ability to focus; find it hard to work in a disciplined way; have trouble receiving feedback or suffer from fear of failure, have lack of artistic growth but also tend to deal with personal problems (also see supplement 3: Response on interview questions). In the academic year 2017-2018 85 students contacted me for having personal problems affecting their studies at the Royal Conservatoire, while 44 students contacted me for different reasons such as financial problems, housing, struggling with the curriculum, etc. At the Royal Academy of Art 75 students contacted me for personal problems last year, while 35 students contacted me for other reasons.

The impression these students give is that they are surviving instead of growing. Inviting them to take a more global perspective during my conversations with them, it appeared that being in survival mode was something that could be identified with more aspects of their life. This made me think of a connection between artistic and personal growth. There are however numerous stories of painters, musicians, movie stars that suggest you have to struggle with personal issues - possibly blocking your personal growth or creating a destructive life - in order to be successful as an artist.

< >

Go to Table of contents

Casus trumpet male 24

On my exam I received feedback about that my musicality being suppressed. With my secondary subject piano however there is no musicality problem. My teacher thinks something is blocking me.

I cannot take decisions; I tend to say yes to other people too easily and therefore I’m too busy. I’m afraid of damaging relationships if I make my own decision; I might be wrong. Is it okay if I take the risk?

It feels like I’m practicing for other people. I try to please the teacher and I’m hard on myself, trying to be the best. There is a lot of outside pressure and suddenly I find myself playing on a lower level.

Casus photography female 20

I want to prove I can do things myself, not being dependent. I’m diagnosed by a psychiatrist with having: ADHD, PTSS and fear of failure. In my family there is a history of violence and abuse, my grandma from fathers side and my own father.

I notice I always hand in my work late; I hate if things are an obligation. I tend to be perfectionistic; a deadline creates a lot of stress. It takes away my freedom of thought. I have great difficulties with receiving feedback; I tend to resist the suggestions my teacher gives. It makes me feel being critiqued.

Tip

Tip