DEFINICIONES OPERACIONALES

The end of degree exhibition is an important aspect for some art students in their journey to becoming an artist. The degree show is a culmination of a student’s course work and final year assessment, structured as an institution wide exhibition of work which is open to the public. For some, the degree show is their first experience of showing to the public and a gateway between their time in an institution and their time as an artist.

110 Emma Flynn

The degree show may be taken as a synthesis of an art student’s work to date, and as such forms the basis of their practice as they enter the art world. Unfortunately for many the process became more of an exercise in ticking boxes (Harry) for the benefit of tutors and assessing staff, and less about a display of work that they are necessarily pleased with. Lewis was informed by his tutors that although his final work was strong, his lack of sketchbooks, as evidence of the development of his ideas, led to low assessment marks. There is some grounding in the exercise of creating sketchbooks as a way to demonstrate artistic capital, through making their knowledge and development of ideas explicit. The degree show assessment symbolises how judgements in the art world are subjective and even tutors who might have considerable artistic capital might find it difficult to determine what is good without access to supporting material. Preliminary material, or works in development, experiments which showcase the development of an idea or technique, can perform the function of making an art student’s inner processes and artistic practice more accessible to others. In making these more accessible artists are opening up opportunities for critical development which can contribute to their artistic capital. An example is given by Nicholas, who found that in his early career preliminary work he had discarded was selected by a gallery during a studio visit. He stated that

“the gallery came to my studio and sort of picked up works and there are things that I might have… there was one of the paintings – was one that was lying on the floor and I'd been sort of standing on it because I thought it was rubbish and they were like ‘oh wow! this is great’ and I was like ‘oh really?’ ” (Nicholas: 5)

There were mixed feelings amongst the group about their degree shows, whether it was their first major exposure to the public (Kristen: 3) or whether it did not amount to much as the ‘publics’ that come to see these shows, particularly in more peripheral art schools, are mostly family and friends (Harry: 3) not art world insiders offering opportunities to ‘discover you’ (Sophie: 2). One artist spoke of the view of degree shows in London in comparison to other towns and cities across the country where the ‘savvy’ students are confident that discovery at this early stage is a very real possibility. Sophie pronounced,

“I think a lot of students have this idea that, especially in London actually, that they’ll be kind of discovered at their degree show, I don't think there's that feeling in Scotland so much; but I guess cause occasionally it does happen, in London.” (Sophie: 2)

111

Very few artists sold work from their degree shows but for those that did this again reminded them that a career was possible. Robert and Chris both sold work from their master’s degree shows, Chris was surprised that a large scale installation he made for his was bought by the national government collection, whilst Robert explained how his work was collected by another national collection, “The first museum that ever bought my work, [a national gallery], bought three pictures from my Masters show so I thought, shit, I can do this” (Robert: 4).

The assessment process might be compared with occasions later in an artist’s career where individuals and organisations assign values to work; from economic to social values and most critically, cultural values. In some circumstances the artists may not understand or agree with these valuations but they must learn how these value judgments are calculated. It is important they have at least a basic understanding of the constructs behind the creation of these judgments so that they can further develop their capitals. The first experience which most of these artists had of assigning a value to their work was the symbolic value of degree marks. Two of the artists felt their 2:2 marks were undeserved and believed the marks were intended to knock their confidence, which left them leaving art school on a discouragingly low note, but also motivated the artists in question to continue working. Adam complained,

“we were totally incensed by…the fact that the establishment – as far as what we saw as being the establishment at that time – didn’t appreciate us, so we were going to prove them wrong by hook or by crook” (Adam:3)

Their artistic capital, in isolation, is being given a value judgement in the eyes of their tutors, the assessors. The commercial elements associated with economic capital are assumed to not be of any concern since the aim of the art school is not to cater to commercial concerns but to develop artistic capital. What should be drawn from this performance, in the context or artistic and commercial and the broader framework of capitals as employed in this thesis, is how art schools are sanctioning a one sided valuation of artistic practice based only on artistic merit; as is the premise of art for art’s sake. By excluding judgements which might concern commercial aspects of the market, and also by excluding assessors drawn from the commercial side of the market, they are tacitly endorsing artistic over commercial and thus signalling the insignificance of commercial concerns to artistic practice. This is one of the artist’s first, and possibly most profound

112 Emma Flynn

experiences of valuation, since it is ultimately addressing their development over this formative four year period, and the process of assessment is reaffirming to artists both that the power to value art must come from those with the artistic capital to do so, but also that commercial concerns are not valuable assessment criteria in their domain. This can be seen to contribute significantly to artists’ aversion to the commercial side of the art world.