The ‘Real Art School’: The Cultural Roots of Authenticity in Art Schools in the UK and China

Abstract

This article investigates the identity of independent art schools, and art schools in multidisciplinary universities, in the UK and China, using the concept of collective identity from organizational management theory and drawing on semi-structured interviews with Chinese and British academics. It addresses the positive and negative aspects of art schools’ ‘image’. They are taken to be both the setting for creativity and innovation, and as being less effective than the other subject disciplines at contributing to economic growth. The article explores this not through an economic argument, but a cultural one. It shows that both independent art colleges and art schools in universities preserve ‘bohemianism’ in their organizational identity. It is not novel to note that in the West, this is based in Romanticism, however, it is possible to identify an equivalent, and more ancient, strand in Chinese culture that underlies the identity of ‘real art schools’ there.

Keywords:

• the real art school
• art school identity
• bohemian ethic
• bourgeois bohemian
• neo-Taoist romantic tradition
• UK and China

Notes

1. There were 30 participants (14 in the UK and 16 in China) from British and Chinese independent art schools, art colleges in multidisciplinary universities, and non-art and design schools in universities. Four of them were female. The gender imbalance is because the authors concentrated on those in management positions, in which women are statistically less likely to be employed. Nineteen participants (9 in the UK and 10 in China) were from art and design schools located inside universities. Five were from independent art and design institutions (two in the UK and three in China; one UK participant had a background in both a specialist institution and university). Six participants were from non-art and design schools in universities (three in the UK and three in China). The participants’ ages ranged from 35 to 70. Nineteen of them were deans, retired deans, retired pro vice chancellors or vice chancellors from art schools, universities, and non-art and design departments in universities. Twenty-five of them have had more than 25 years’ experiences in art and design higher education. Some of them had witnessed art education from the 1960s.

2. To investigate the outside perception and the inside reality, hence the collective identity, of art schools, as John Balmer (2001, 248) suggested, ideas from the broad area of business identity studies might appear to be relevant, including organizational identity, corporate identity, and visual identity. However, visual identity, which studies the organization’s ‘visual (and verbal)’ symbols that ‘communicate what/who’ the organization is (ibid., 254) is not the focus of this article, but would merit further research. In a similar way, although the ‘corporate image’, which in corporate identity theory refers to the ‘perception’ of the ‘central ideas’ by various audiences (Rindova and Schultz 1998, 48), points to the outside perception of art schools, because corporate identity mainly relates to the visual aspect of identity and corporate communication (Balmer 2001, 254) it is not within our scope here. Furthermore, though organizational identity is concerned with beliefs and ideas that are believed and expressed by the organizational members as ‘central, enduring, and distinctive’ (Whetten 2006, 220) and therefore is relevant to this article, its complex interrelationship with the study of organizational images in corporate identity (Rindova and Schultz 1998, 49) introduces unhelpful definitional and semantic debates (Balmer 2001, 254; Soenen and Moingeon 2002, 16). For these reasons Soenen and Moingeon (2002, 13–34) provide a model of collective identity which the paper can follow to study aspects of both the outside perception and the inside reality, hence the collective identity, of art schools.

3. 1920s–1960s in the UK, 1920s–1980s in China.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yanyan Liao

Yanyan Liao is an associate professor at the Shanghai International College of Fashion and Innovation, Donghua University. She has been awarded her PhD degree at the School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University in the UK, doing research on British and Chinese art schools’ culture and identity. She got her MA at Tsinghua University in Beijing and BA at Xi’an Academy of Art. Her research interests are in Western art and design history, art school studies and the area of art and design higher education.

Tom Fisher

Tom Fisher has been professor in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University, where he coordinates research, since 2007. He has worked in art schools since 1985.  He was awarded his PhD from the department of Sociology at the University of York, and his BA in Fine Art and Art History from the University of Leeds.