What lacuna?

18 months down the track and I'm still humming and hawing about what the hell this is meant to be about.

I was/am/will be (until quite late tonight) writing up a paper I gave last year. It's kind of based roughly on the intro to the tome that will be. It starts with a nice affective story about modelling and then goes one to describe my big fat lacuna of a topic.

And the paper that I have given so far, give a nice hearty 'cheers' to the bright brave approach towards the sociology of art that I think i'm trying to pursue. I go and diss art writing, the impossibility of doing direct research on living artists that is research rather than nice cataloguey gloss things. of producing something as yet unknown...... of doing more than stamp collecting the life dteails of someone established and famous and alreayd selected by someone else as significant.

Listening to the delivery of one version, and listening to the discussion that folllowed, I was struck by something that the panel chair asked. I've presented my work as taking an art history topic researched within cultural studies, but the chair in this case, pointed to a big screaming gap in my paper, which is that I haven't actually discussed how the latter day life class, mainly the preserve of amateurs, is actually relevant to ART. More to the point; how my research inot this marginal amateur activity actuallly has any relationship to the existing complex and rich and quite seperate literature and research on contemproary art.

err.... ahem.

Well. first draft of response goes here. Bit I forgot in paper is the bit I keep not wanting to write. the chapter 2 that i'm leaving til the end of the year. the bit I raved on about to someone.

I'm interviewing artists and art educators, largely in the context not of their oeuvre (TM) but off something quite marginal - that was part of their own training, and some of their paid work. so I'm getting a nice sociological discursive overview of their attitudes towards nudity, voyeurism, traiditional skills etc. It's all quite sweet.

then i'm interviewing artists' models and getting a nice sociological discursive overview of their attitudes towards nudity, voyeurism, posing, transgression etc. Most of this aspect isn't particularly unique and has been done before, possibly not as well as I hope to do it, but certainly not too badly.

what I am doing that is, hopefully more interesting, is situating the artist model exchange, not as a metonymic fragment of weird abstract relatinos of artist/subject/voyeur/exhibitionist, or some other ghastly trope...... but (thnaks to dear old bourdieu) but as historically significant groups of poeple. Art is a field of relations. The models I'm interested in researching are largely artists or ex-art students themselves. SOme of the teachers and artiists are also ex-models. i'm interested in models as a certain class of artists (often but not always amateur, but mostly less successful), and as a certain type of witness to changes in art education and art practice in the last half century.

I then want to compare the various accounts; the ones form established official art authorities, the ones from the press, and the ones from models. arits models have genrally seen far more types of life drwing classes than any art student or art teacher, and are in a far better position to provide a critical perspective on what actually occurs.

this is the hope.

in fact, most models (to date) tned to respond in a surpeficial journalese. the social observations tend to be about nudity, voyeurism, posing, transgression etc.Maybe its just my questioning style. Acutally listening to my interviewing style is really horrendous. I hate hearing my voice, hate how I stumble and babble and often interrupt people, and don't give them space to pause, and stop and think slowly.

None of the critical writing on qualitative ehtnogrpahy actually mentions this. noone says "I think my interviewing style is shit". No one even seems to flag the possibliity that their interviewing style is shit, or that interviewing can be done badly. (or well). It appears to be assumed that the direct relationship with the voice of the subjects is iteself implicitly meritorious or authentic.

so I reckon maybe I need to fess up and retreat into my boring head for a bit. cite the big cool men doing big cool stuff. ground my work in a thorough sociology of art, even in relational aesthetics. prove that it matters. write my own stupid stories. Oh no. I'm sick of them actually.

thhere's one model who i interviewed, who i need to interview again. in fact the most interesting models do occupy this dual role of model and artist, and the most interesting interviews are very very long, but do involve both roles. I think it's because models are generally marginalised, and occupy a marginal position as artists, and acutally the modeeling isn't so implicitly interesitg on its own, but as a quasi professional practice, as a temproary and precarious occupation by struggling artists - IT IS. Again its the social relatios that make somehing interesting.

and lots of models have been on the edges of things, have seen things in the art world. and I do, rally do beleive that derridean thing of looking a tthe frames, at the edge sof things in order to understand their meaning. And the thing about art isntitutinos that make them interesting is the proous nature of the frame. who is avante garde or not.... changes.

and in australia, in sydney there is no comprehesive written history of postwar art education. the 60' and 70's were a really interesting time in sydney. lots and lots of stuff happened, and massive changes in art and art educaiton took place, and almost none of it is documented well. there were a lot of egos and a lot of shitfights and there still are. I think that there were (and are) so many careers built on the types of changes that occured, that noone has been able to do an assessment of what realy happpened.

so I reckon I like my perverse little approach of going "ok i've read that the life class vanished then, that it became so irrelevant to ART that it stopped being talked about and even stopped running in a few places..... so I'll look at that, and interview the practitioners, the models, and see what they did in the context of this dissapearance". It'nd not only saying that this practice did continue, but seeing how it continued wihtout a critical discourse, and seeing how the practitioners related to the art world outside of this marginalised little pocket of it.

Of course lots of models and amaetur sketch club teachers come up with this really boring neurotic 'oh, I hate the art world, I hate the postmodern conspiracy'. And other really dodgy and reactionary claims about their own practice and its marginalised context. So I then just want to shift the discussion back to some nice cultural studies area like nudity, or posing, or looking because its less..... icky.

But I came across a NICE article in some TATE gallery art education seminar book form a guy - who was actually addressing the parallel art worlds really well, and it made me believe that it is possible and necessary. what is ART, and what is the art world? Is it contemrpoary art? is it what gets institutinal funding, is it fahsionable cutting edge stuff? is it the avant garde? there are so many art worlds! and what i think is funny in the context of sydney rt educaiton - is that each school has writtine their own little histories almost oblivious to the other schools as if they don't exist? kind of claiming to be "the history of art education"

now, EVERY art school in sydney, every design college hs life drawing and has had it since world war 2. That is the one thing they all share. so I reckon its a good basis to actually explore the types of pedagogic practices, and the social relations in different art schools. I DON'T think that the life class is the most important part of art and design training - but it's got a strangely significant role that is mobilised in oss many funny ways that it is interesting.

so here is the dillema again. Do I make the thesis ABOUT the life class in the context of art education? or do I fit that into one part of WHAT the life class involves? and all the fun sociological stuff of what is posing, the concurrent history of fashion modelling, the social relations of the gaze, etc. Because all of this stuff is what I know, what other models (and some artists ) know, and what is coming up again and again in my interviews. It's interesting stuff and I could write about it with my eyes closed (almost).

what do i want this work to do? who is oging to read it? will it change anything?

shit, better get back to the serious stuff.