Statement as an artist – searching for the creativity
Is artist a job? Is artist an occupation? Is artist a profession?
Actually, there seems to be many artists who want their being artists as professionalism. In general, professionalism is understood as “the social process whereby people come to engage in an activity for pay or as a means of livelihood.” Historically, the concept of profession began with the works of medicine, theology and law. The artist has begun to be recognized as a profession when certain curriculums for the artists were developed in the university level.
However, I am still very skeptical about the idea that artist is a profession. For me, professionalism is a self-defined power elitism or as organized exclusivity along guild lines, much in the sense that George Bernard Shaw characterized all professions as “conspiracies against the laity.”
Greenwood introduced 5 general attributes or indicators of a profession. Among them, “a set of knowledge” comes first. Here I find a problem with the idea that artist is a profession. In the arts, the focus is not on a set of knowledge but on the creativity!!!! The creativity is not exclusively possessed by a few “professional” people.
In a certain point of view, the process of the professionalization (the level of individuals) is pretty similar to that of the institutionalization (the level of organizations). However, as I mentioned before, I believe that the institutions are composed not only of arts organizations but also of individual artists, critics and audiences.
Therefore, again, as being artists, (more specifically, as an arts administrator or a researcher in this field) I believe that I am certainly within the artworld. And because I believe the arts should be for everyone by everyone and because I believe that the core of the arts is creativity, I believe that searching for the creativity within this world will be my mission. As you see, it may be all about the belief. It makes sense because I believe artist is a calling not a profession.
Thus, for the first task of searching for the creativity, I am now searching for the creativity in my son’s works here.