May you teach in interesting times

I've always been puzzled by that old Chinese curse; may you live in interesting times, because to me it sounds more like a blessing. I suppose for people who perceive change and innovation, uncertainty and doubt as scary, it's understandable why interesting times might be something of a curse.

But for those of us involved in the teaching and practice of innovatory thinking, whose social functions include challenging stereotypical thinking, questioning conventional perceptions and instigating change, coping with not knowing what might happen next is the norm. Feeling invigorated in the face of uncertainties is the normal state of affairs for us.

And what interesting times we are in! Never before has the domain of Fine Art been so wide, broad, deep and nebulous!  Never before have so many innovative technological facilities, materials and processes been available to artists and teachers. And never before have artists and teachers had to address such a rapidly burgeoning range of theoretical bases from which practice and teaching might be informed. Wolfgang Iser’s (2006) recent book identifies no less than twelve!

Of course, to a certain type of artist/teacher, this particular development is anathema – another kind of curse. For them, Barnet Newman’s fifty year old quip about theory being as useful to artists as ornithology is to birds is still the default dismissal of theory, even though Newman’s sleight of logic had equated the cultural with the natural. But should we deny the next generation of artists the opportunity to explore contemporary theory in relation to their practice? I’d answer ‘certainly not’, which implies that we need teachers who...