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The Cultural Roots of Authenticity in Art Schools in UK and China Yanyan

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The ‘Real Art School’: the Cultural Roots of Authenticity in Art Schools in UK and China Yanyan Liao Shanghai International College of Fashion and Innovation, Donghua University, Shanghai, China Room 103, Yifu Building, Donghua University, 1882 West Yan’an Road, Changning District, Shanghai City, 200051, China. Email: [email protected], +86 158 1118 0330 Yanyan Liao is an associate professor at the Shanghai International College of Fashion and Innovation, Donghua University. She has been awarded her PhD degree at the School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University in the UK, doing research on British and Chinese art schools’ culture and identity. She got her MA at Tsinghua University in Beijing and BA at Xi’an Academy of Art. Her research interests are in Western art and design history, art school studies and the area of art and design higher education. Tom Fisher School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK Nottingham Trent University, 50 Shakespeare Street, Nottingham, NG1 4FQ, UK. [email protected], +44 115 848 8455 Tom Fisher has been Professor in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University, where he coordinates research, since 2007. He has worked in art schools since 1985. He was awarded his PhD from the department of Sociology at the University of York, and his BA in Fine Art and Art History from the University of Leeds. 1 Abstract This paper investigates the identity of independent art schools, and art schools in multidisciplinary universities, in the UK and China. Its cross-national research approach uses the concept of collective identity from organizational management theory as a theoretical framework. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Chinese and British academics, the article addresses the ‘image’ of art schools – which has both positive and negative aspects. Governments and public opinion takes them to be both the setting for creativity and innovation, and at the same time as being less effective than the other subject disciplines at contributing to economic growth. The article explores this not through an economic argument, but a cultural one. It shows that both independent art colleges and art schools in universities preserve a ‘bohemianism’ in their organizational identity. It is not novel to note that in the West, this is based in Romanticism, however, it is possible to identify an equivalent, and more ancient, strand in Chinese culture that underlies the identity of ‘real art schools’ there. Key Words The real art school, art school identity, bohemian ethic, bourgeois bohemian, Neo- Taoist romantic tradition, UK and China Introduction The last thirty years have seen significant changes in art schools’ organization, in both the UK and China and the merger of many schools into larger multidisciplinary universities might be expected to have changed how art schools are understood. Outsiders might now see art schools as ‘just another university department’ and art school teachers, managers and students might think differently about where they work and study. To understand the consequences of changes to the way art and design education is organized requires we understand what art schools mean in Chinese and UK society, which in turn requires that we consider their place in the cultural history of the two countries, and identify what traditions these meanings draw upon. 2 This article draws from an interview-based study that used testimony from participants in British and Chinese art institutions1 to gauge the effects of merging art schools into universities on their ‘character’, as defined by people who work in them, ‘insiders’, and university employees who work in different departments – ‘outsiders’. It used two complementary frames of reference. Aspects of identity theory from organizational management helped to understand how outsiders and insiders understand art schools. Other strong themes in the data pointed towards deeply embedded, culturally potent ideas that both these understandings draw upon that are part of the cultural history of both countries. It was clear from the interview testimony that the concept of a ‘real’ art school is current in both countries. The analysis of the interview data consequently focused on identifying what makes for ‘real-ness’ in this sense and it became clear that this denotes a place where certain values and life patterns are prominent, and promoted. The ‘real-ness’ of art schools, as such, draws on a bohemian ethic, which is present in both Western and Chinese cultural history and underlies the ‘real art school’ idea in both countries, and in both independent schools, and those merged with larger institutions. This article compares the Western Romantic ethic of bohemianism and the strand of Chinese neo-Taoist philosophy that we take to be its equivalent, to show two things. First, both independent art schools and art schools in universities can be understood as ‘real’ art 1 There were thirty participants (14 in the UK and 16 in China) from British and Chinese independent art schools, art colleges in multidisciplinary universities, and non-art and design schools in universities. Four of them were female. The gender imbalance is because the authors concentrated on those in management positions, in which women are statistically less likely to be employed. Nineteen participants (nine in the UK and ten in China) were from art and design schools located inside of universities. Five were from independent art and design institutions (two in the UK and three in China; one UK participant had a background in both a specialist institution and university). Six participants were from non-art and design schools in universities (three in the UK and three in China). The participants’ ages ranged was from 35-70. Nineteen of them were Deans, retired Deans, retired Pro Vice Chancellors or Vice Chancellor from art schools, universities, and non-art and design departments in universities. Twenty-five of them have had more than 25 years’ experiences in art and design higher education. Some of them had witnessed the art education from the 1960s. 3 schools, as long as they preserve the deep beliefs and core values of the bohemian ethic. Second, the idea of ‘real art school’ works both in the UK and China, as both have a bohemian ethic in elements of their cultures, which is the source of the meaning of art schools in both places. We use “art schools” to indicate Higher Education units that offer art, decorative art and design subjects. The UK interviewees testimony showed that in the UK schools that have both art and design subjects are called “art schools”, whether they are independent or merged into universities. Similarly, in China, both insiders and outsiders call schools that have arts and design subjects “Mei Shu Xue Yuan” (美术学院) sometimes shortened to “Mei Yuan” (美院). This literally translates as “academies of fine arts” but the implication is actually “art schools”. The Chinese word “Yi Shu” (艺术) literally translates as “art” and is equivalent in usage to “arts” in English, and the literal translation of “Mei Shu”: “fine art” has the sense meant by the English usage of “art”. Moreover, there is a sense of connection between “art schools” and “Mei Yuan” – they share a sense of nostalgia in art and design people’s feelings, to remember and to inherit the characteristics of earlier art-based schools. Based on this small equivalence, “art school” as a short name for art and design institutions both in the UK and China is used in this article. We first discuss the methodology and theoretical framework the article uses. Second, we introduce the idea of art schools’ ‘attributed’ identity, which refers to how outsiders think about them. This leads to the third section, which discusses the collective identity that art school insiders subscribe to and the concept of ‘real art school’. The article then discusses the source of this concept in the ‘bohemian’ tradition in the UK, and in the corresponding Chinese neo-Taoist ideas, arguing that the interview testimony shows that they underlie the deep beliefs and core values of art schools. Finally, we compare these two traditions to evaluate Western and Chinese Romantic cultures and their influences on art schools’ identity. Methodology and Theoretical Framework Semi-structured interviews gave access to the experiences of 30 participants in British and Chinese art and design higher education, whose careers spanned the period of the mergers of art schools and universities, assembled by ‘opportunistic or emergent sampling’ (Patton 2002, 240). This approach gave access to their ‘lived experiences’ (Seidman 2006, 9), and a broadly grounded approach to the analysis (Thornberg 2012, 85) gave insights into the ‘meanings’ 4 (Denzin and Lincoln 1994, 361) of these experiences. This made it possible to build the theory of the ‘real art school’, which emerged from and was grounded in the interview data and is complemented by reference points such as the Romantic ethic that is present in both cultures. The study was necessarily cross-national, and its comparative framework focused on ‘cross-national similarities’ and ‘cross-national subsets’ (Elder 1976, 210) to understand and compare the respective socio-cultural contexts and ethics underlying art schools. Art schools and art and design higher education were examined as ‘cross-national subsets’, while the UK and China were investigated as ‘contexts’ rather than in their entirety (Kohn 1987, 714). Consequently, we adopted a ‘context dependent, societal approach’ (Hantrais 2007, 4). This range of socio-cultural, economic, political, and educational contexts together give access to the similarities and differences in the identity of British and Chinese art schools. To understand the implications of the aspects of the data that relate to the identity of art schools, we turned to organizational management theory and used Guillaume Soenen and Bertrand Moingeon’s theory of the five facets of identity to explore art schools’ identity as understood by ‘insiders’, and in the world at large 2 .
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