UNLEARNING/ UNDOING ART
As an Art practitioner it is vital for personal development to unlearn, coming to my practice armed with prior knowledge and experience of what art is or should be. Studying 20th Century art has informed the learning and teaching process within Critical art and design studies as well as Contemporary work by artists such as Alison Watt and Alison Dunlop. Looking back at the Dutch masters of the 16th Century has provided research information and style and methods to explore. Therefore embedded in memory are images created by these artists which have become a source of inspiration at their skill and mastery within a specific area. Nostalgic memories have been informed, perhaps etched in the mind. So to unlearn would mean to abandon a Romantic notion and forget works so beautiful, good and true. Therefore one must be prepared to unlearn, not have expectations.
‘Is art ever done/undone?’
One can undo a piece of art work by simply painting in another line, adding more colour, thus re-creating it. It is difficult within the creative process to know when to stop to give oneself the luxury of knowing when to stop, step back and say ‘it is finished’. This can be difficult for an artist who may be in pursuit of perfection or who may wish to know what happens next. By turning a work on its head, changing composition, viewpoint, perception, we (un) do art. I read in an advert for an exhibition at Patriot Gallery, Edinburgh by a textiles group known as Frayed Edges, ‘Nothing is perfect. Nothing is finished. Nothing lasts’.
In order to truly develop as an artist/ teacher in search of a sense of place and of me forgetting the past and moving on with the present is vital. The realisation of self as an artist and deciding when art is ever ‘done’ wilfully not returning and deciding the work is complete at the stage it is at present. To add more to the work would be to undo it, making something other than it is. To continue to work into a piece in the act of developing it, one could actually be undoing it. Baldacchino (2013) states ‘We are always trying things, getting it wrong, you almost want to get it wrong to resolve it’. He goes on to say, ‘You learn by ways of unlearning, by making mistakes. Something which may have worked before no longer does, so we have to unlearn it’. That is what art research/ practice is all about. It is also what art education should be about, the discovery through a process of getting things wrong, learning from them then moving on with this new knowledge and experience.
UWS Artist Teacher Programme (Baldacchino) (2013):
Art as Unlearning: Finding a Place Seminar [Video webcast].
Retrieved from http://vimeo.com/58982833
