Unlived Life
Intrapsychic-loss

Naturally, I am interested in the question of what has happened to all those Academy graduates that we know nothing about. Those who, like myself, make up the dark matter of the professional pyramid, at the top of which stand a very few successful artists.  How do these people look back in retrospect at what art education has meant

in their lives? What they took from it and what they had to suppress in themselves in order to free themselves from it. How they work with this potential.

In the interviews, I carried out, several additional questions were repeated, which kept coming back to mind: "What forces you to work?" The replies to this question were often along the lines of it being a necessity and automatic, such as: "I no longer have an opportunity to choose whether I'll work on my own projects or do something else.". I searched for a definition of what makes being in the process of creation addictive. How the time spent at work is different from everything else. How is it possible to work in a situation where you've been excluded from everything else? How is it possible to work in a situation of exclusion from the professional functioning of the art world? The second question was whether the interviewee had worked continuously and, if not, what were the breaks like, and what returned them to the process. The essential thing was to find out what the period following graduation from school was like.

It must be mentioned that in the interpretation of the responses, and in the dissertation in general, my work borders on sociology. However, sociologists would doubtless approach the work differently, and would not be able to overcome their own distance arising from the foreign (to them) nature of the subject. The sociologist, of course, works with such distance a priori. The fact that I myself am in a situation like that of my respondents, and have gone through education at the Academy, was irreplaceable and created an immediate, powerful, non-verbal bond of shared experience between us. Sociology merely provided me with a method of data collection, but left me the freedom to interpret that data, and how to further work with that data. I am not trying, by looking in from the outside, to establish a diagnosis for us artists, of odd deviation from a normal life, but instead I am striving to enable us to define for ourselves the specificity of artistic thinking and exploration, superior to actual production of finished artworks, and to teach us to work freely with this

knowledge. In other words, so that we know what we hold in our hands and could attempt to find our own definition rather than some definition set for us by art historians.

An anticipated objection is the position of this work, in which it can be viewed as an art project, which is parasitic on the unfortunate situation of unrecognized graduates of AVU. This is a valid criticism, of which I am aware.

The group of respondents I met with comprised 17 women and 33 men. I did not have a limit on how many people I would address, on the contrary, I wanted to include the oldest generation in the greatest possible number. I searched for contacts gradually, starting from class years of 1957/58. The first contacts I found were from the 1962/63 class year and two men and one woman granted me an interview. They were two Praguers and one graduate who lives in Paris but maintains his studio in Prague, which he sometimes visits. From the class of 1963/64 I interviewed three men. Two were from Prague and one had moved from Prague to Polička near Svitavy to his parents' home after losing his studio in Žižkov, which was built by the Dílo company in its time. From the class of 1964/65 I met with and interviewed three women and two men. They are all from Prague. From the class year of 1965/66, I had extensive conversation with five men and three women. I conducted the interviews at their places of residence; one each in Příbram, one in Brno, one in Sadek near Žatec and one in Černošice near Prague, and three interviews took place in Prague. One was a telephone interview. From the class year of 1966/67: I interviewed two women and one man. One interview took place in Zbraslav, and two in the center of Prague. From the class of 1967/68: two men. The interviews were held in Prague and Nové Křečany. Class of 1968/69: Three men. This year is specific because it was the year that several AVU students emigrated that I know of, and one of the interviews was provided by a student who emigrated to the USA just before graduation. He therefore does not have a diploma from the Academy. The two remaining graduates live in Prague. The class of 1969/70: Four Women. I met with three in Prague, and one in Brno. Class of 1970/71: I met with one graduate in Prague. 1971/72: Three men and two women. Two interviews took place in Prague, one in Kostelec nad Černými lesy, one in Brno and one in the form of a three-hour phone call. 1972/73: one woman and two men, one meeting in Kublov and two in Prague. From the class of 1973/74 I met two men, and both meetings took place in Prague. From the 1974/75 class year, I visited and interviewed one woman and one man. Once in Prague and once near Kolín.

I did not study the remaining graduate classes as thoroughly. I might have been able to find more contacts, but it was no longer my primary goal. Rather, I tried to capture the stories of the older generation, making use of their years of experience. When I talked to graduates who are already older people now, my experience was that their narration described a period that is either over or fading away and it was easier for them to evaluate it more comprehensively from a distance. The second significant value for me in contacting older graduates is that their life consists of several different periods. Childhood, study, parenthood, work, and eventually a second career, old age, etc. These narrators then rank the individual periods according to their importance in their life based on their feelings and their own discretion.

For graduates who are still working or caring for others today, the post-school period is still too raw and unfinished. It would be more interesting for them to meet me as someone who would be able to highlight their work and make it visible. But that was not in my power in this research project. It was therefore in my interest to explore the narrative of their lived life rather than their artistic work.

For the sake of interest and comparison, however, I contacted several other young graduates in the first year of research. From the class of 1975/76 I interviewed one man, meeting him in Stará Boleslav. From the class of 1977/78 I interviewed a man in Brno. From the 1979/80 class, I met with one man in Veverska Bytyska. From the class of 1982/83 I met and interviewed a man in Prague. From 1989/90 I had an interview with one man in Prague and finally, from the class of 1990/91 it was an interview with two men, one in Prague and the other in Boršov nad Vltavou.

So to summarize the topography: In my research there are thirty-two graduates from Prague, twelve from the Czechia outside Prague, four Moravians–mostly from Brno–and two who relocated abroad.

Eventually, I found contacts for fifty-nine older graduates aged 65-85 and asked them to meet. In seven cases the meetings did not take place, being canceled at the last minute. In one case, even though I know the artist a bit personally, I was refused at the first telephone contact. Two of the interviewees would only allow me to interview them by phone. Forty-nine Academy graduates were happy to meet with me and in most cases, were delighted to share their thoughts and memories with me. In the clear majority of cases, it was also the very first time that anyone showed interest in their experience with an AVU education. I then examined three of the interviews thus obtained in detail, through blind panels inspired by Tom Wengraf's interpretative part of the BNIM method.

I composed this term from two words: Artistic and Competence. The term artistic I understand to mean everything regarding professional art as taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Competence then refers to a complex set of qualities acquired by this education, which are necessary for the performance of the artistic profession, but are not necessarily limited to the artistic environment.

This construction suggests that the artist has the competence to pursue his or her profession. By this I suggest that this is a set of capabilities that can be given as a rational enumeration. I am deliberately not mentioning talent and creativity, because both terms, in my view, illustrate the linguistic crisis in how we talk about the capabilities of a fine artist. They rather belong in the 19th century, and are not current today. Talent and creativity are vague terms that do not allow us to develop a way of communication in the artistic environment, and I would even say that such terms contribute to silencing the artist and leaving them dependent primarily on art language. In contrast, talking about the artist's competencies indicates that the role of the artist in society can be described more precisely, and seen in context.

Luis Camnitzer, in his lecture at the Academy, talked about artistic thinking as a cognitive practice, existing right beside artistic creation in material, and criticized arts education for not sufficiently developing this aspect of itself. According to him, an emphasis on artistic thinking would equip students to feel better in non-binding theorizing. An education fully supplemented by this neglected part would combine practice with imagination.

As he says: “Thinking as an artist really means looking at everything as a problem that has to be either understood, reformulated, or searched for. By search for I mean that sometimes we encounter solution without knowing yet what problem it is supposed to solve. In what I called art thinking the problem has infinite solutions and the solution corresponds to infinite problems. In traditional education the student is assigned problems most often following the scientific model. In their majority these are problems with one single correct solution and infinite incorrect ones. This is an opposition to the Art model where there are infinite right solutions. Working on a problem corresponding to design and not to the Art, the designer is looking for the best solution among many. This best solution is embedded in the conditions that outline the problem, it is there to be duged out. In Art, on the other hand, one confronts infinity. The artist has complete freedom to determine parameters from which to start and to change them at any time in connection with the problem, or to define a completely different problem. There is a permanent process of feed back and also what Brian Massumi calls Feed forward. There is therefore total freedom to propose a solution that will work as long it represent it self as whatever one is looking for, or for what whatever one may find.”

Further, Camnitzer develops his reflection in the sense that artistic thinking is not purposeful, does not seek the best solution of certain resolutions, but rather is an environment that enables the problem to be seen on many levels, and offers many solutions, which opens more and more possibilities. The term as I use it suggests that it is not necessary to speak for the artist. Artists have their own unique way of thinking. If enough space is given at schools to develop artistic thinking, the artist will be able to emancipate himself theoretically.

I have noticed that it is very difficult for a person to honestly admit they’ve finished with art. That it has lost its meaning for them. On the backdrop of three very powerful confessions about the abandoning of art , the remaining confessions seemed like alibistic to me. A phenomenon related to this, and which I have borrowed from the very stimulating book, Missing Out: In praise of the Unlived Life by author Adam Phillips, is the unlived life of what a person expects and wishes to happen, as a parallel second life that is a part of a person’s living reality. Something that is unfulfilled format that is kept alive. It is a prism through which I would like to examine the stories of my respondents, because I feel it will bring me closer to a trauma, that has been suppressed, and which arose out of excessive expectation and the will to become a great artist.

I ask myself if a person who feels he or she is an underappreciated artist is justified in blaming everything besides oneself. In Luis Camnitzer's remark, it is clear that it is possible a systemic error occurred already at school. Camnitzer argues that an artistic education focuses only on a few who show talent and leaves others by the wayside. The best, who others look up to, are put on a pedestal, instead of education being democratic. A student of the Academy of Fine Arts is expected to be an outstanding artist, while this is not so in other fields. A student of literature does not aspire to the Nobel Prize, nor does a student of logic want to be the next Descartes or Bertrand Russell, as Luis Camnitzer goes on to say.

"When students learn how to write, nobody expects them to aim at the Nobel prize in literature. When students learn logic, nobody expects them to become Decart or Bertrand Russell, however when students learn Art, they are only encouraged if there is promise of gallery or museum recognition at the end of the line. The system is geared to indentify and follow those believed to have talent, and leave the untalented by the side. The process is consisted with a generalist notion that education is needed to build a meritocracy. This makes schools want to identify and refine the best instead of helping those those who need betterment. As a consequence those who need the education the most are the ones who happen to be discarded the earliest."

A very strong bit of essential knowledge I arrived at through this work is that the vast majority of graduates who cannot make a living through art, do not fully develop an alternate career. They work only occasionally, mainly as employees or even part-time workers in a manner that is common for students. In addition to his or her own creative work, a graduate of the Academy earns a living by occasional side jobs that do not take him or her too far away from art. In this way, he or she is on stand-by, prepared to launch a successful career in art at any time.

If graduates restart themselves, they usually work under someone - if they are graphic artists, they work in a graphic studio if they teach, they are assistants, they teach folk art schools, or even teach at secondary and high schools of art that they have not established and whose workings they do not influence. So, what does it mean? Artistic thinking is kept alive in its least active form. The graduate works for himself, "for the drawer," as this generation says, and his or her potential is kept in a pending state. "I have not had a show for several years now, but if the opportunity existed, I have things I want to show." The Artistic Thinking on standby is a term borrowed from a military vocabulary. Graduates stand by waiting in case society requires art, just like soldiers after basic military service, are a reserve for war.

The narratives of the graduates directly imply that they are delighted if someone asks them for a painting reproduction of a bear photo, as one graduate told me: "why wouldn't I ..." and so on. But this is too little for someone who has studied art for at least ten years, and has known all his life that he wanted to devote himself to it. There have been too many disappointments and concessions in these people's lives.

Concerning AVU graduates' dormant abilities, it's interesting to compare Gregory Sholette's use of the dark matter metaphor to illustrate the art scene: A handful of famous artists at the top of the pyramid formed, from its base to its peak, by a mass of amateurs and various renegades in the process of artistic education; all of them on the lower tiers, like dark matter, are uniformly referred to by the top-professionals as the unsuccessful ones. Sholette, who is himself an artist and a writer, sees this dark mass of people as very important and indispensable, because without it, the few successful artists would basically lose their credit. In his book, he examines the influence of the dark matter on professional art. This is also indicated by the

astrophysics term used – dark matter forming invisible energy can be observed only thanks to its gravitational pull on the surrounding entities made up of common “light” matter, such as stars and galaxies. This energy is what holds space together, so that it does not fall apart. Here we have, therefore, many analogies, not to mention the fact that our knowledge of dark matter is roughly the same as of the creative dark matter from our artistic environment.

When looking at the entire art machine, the dark matter then becomes evident, as described by the author:

„[…] this type of dark matter is invisible primarily to those who lay claim to the management and interpretation of culture - the critics, art historians, collectors, dealers, museums, curators, and arts administators. It includes makeshift, amateur, informal, unofficial, autonomous, activist, non-institutional, self-organized practices - all work made and circulated in the shadows of the formal art world, some of which might be said to emulate cultural dark matter by rejecting art world demands of visibility, and much of which has no choice but to be invisible. While astrophysicists are eager to know what dark matter is, the denizens of the art world largely ignore the unseen accretion of creativity they nevertheless remain dependend upon."

Visibility is associated with success and everything else is excluded from what constitutes our culture and our society, for various reasons.

I would like to make one more comparison related to the standby state in which the Graduate of the Academy remains after graduation. This comparison is the 1968 generation (in this case, referring to Paris, May 1968) as described by Deleuze in his essay, May '68 Did Not Take Place. He talks about people who do not fit into society, are not active, but they comprise potential for the future. He says: “The children of May 68, you can run into them all over the place, even if they are not aware of who they are. Each country produces them in its own way. Their situation isn't so great.

These are not young executives. These are strangely indifferent, and for this very reason are in the right frame of mind. They have stopped being demanding and narcissistic, but they know perfectly well that nothing today corresponds to their subjectivity, to their potential of energy. They even know that all current reforms are rather directed against them. They are determined to mind their own business as much as they can. They hold it open, hang on to something possible.”

One thing all of the graduates I spoke with have in common is that they are not needed. For example, if they want to have a show, they must organize and pay for it themselves. They are therefore impaired by a certain nonconformity, thanks to which they are excluded from society. Along with what it means to have potential is disability, handicap, impairment, which may just be another form of higher abilities. Just like hyperactive children are diagnosed with ADHD as disabled for normal education in schools. There are many forms of exclusion from an active social life.

“What we institutionalize for the unemployed, the retired, or in school, are controlled "situations of abandonment". For these, the handicapped are the model.” as Gilles Deleuze writes. I believe the situation of graduates of the Academy of Fine Arts is similar.

Is the Academy of Fine Arts therefore an institution that is supposed to produce more and more artists of this type, or should it to continually seek the role of art in a changing society? Is it worthwhile to add new artists to the structure of the pyramid according to the established model?

It seems to me that if the AVU turned its interest inward towards itself, that it could better see, and consequently, also defend its raison d’etre.

Can we therefore indicate the life of a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts, who is not recognized as a creative artist, as affected or marked by this in any way? I presume that yes, we can. One of the manifestations is that a person must create a protective atmosphere around oneself, and accept failure as part of one’s life, which then hinders that person. That's why I'm interested in what happens, or what effect it has, when one tries to systematically suppress something within themselves.