Bazon Brock: Vision

The vision of a continual ‘art recipient’ professionalization arose out of the practice of educating visitors at visitor’s schools as it was developed in the 60s and offered at diverse institutions, among them documenta 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 in Kassel. I expressly contradicted the frivolous opinion (unfortunately widely spread today) that poverty, lawlessness, chaos and radicalism bolstered the creativity, the existential deep dimension and the formative power arising from resistance. At the visitors’ school I postulated that the decisive challenge for artists was the public: The more professional they became – i.e. the more able they were to adjudicate and the more adept they grew at expounding upon problems – the higher the demands they placed upon the artists. And these demands upon the market have stimulated art much more than the dynamic inherent in the artists’ expressive behaviour. This approach can even be maintained to encourage the further development of the arts.

As an example-giver in things without example, I illustrated to those attending the visitors’ school the rules of man’s perceptual apparatus in order to demonstrate to them that the most significant thing about an exhibition is what it does not show; the visitors of an exhibition can only judge the achievement of the curators when they know what choices the curators had at their disposal. Thus every exhibition ought to be offered in two forms: on the one hand, as a choice of what is to be shown, and, on the other hand, as the inventory of what is not to be shown from which those choices were made. Unfortunately, no event organiser can yield to the logical necessity of exhibiting what is not to be exhibited. And many people cannot comprehend where the distinction lies between exhibiting what is not to be exhibited and exhibiting what is actually exhibited. The most affordable solution to this conundrum is to delegate it to the visitors’ school. At this school, a contemporary specialist offers an example of how one can deal with such difficulties. He himself is not a model, not an example, but an example-giver: an exemplificateur who demonstrates to art recipients how they can cope with the imposing challenges awaiting them in the confrontation with works of art. We learn by example. The method of learning is practice. Practice implies imitation to the point where one becomes an example-giver for others. But an example for what?

For instance, an example in dealing with the question of how societies profit from the artist as an authority in authorship: what does the principle of individualisation and of maintaining the author’s autonomy mean for those non-artists who strive towards self-realisation following the example of the artists? How do you develop a biographical plan for creating works and for yourself as a person?

The need to professionalize the spectator of art is founded upon the recognition that we do indeed educate artists of all disciplines at respectable academies and universities. Here the artists learn, study and work for years on end before they appear in the larger public. James Joyce spent ten years writing his novel Ulysses; for decades Michelangelo agonized over the commission to design the grave for Pope Julius II; from 1849 to 1882 Richard Wagner completed his truly astonishing concept for his oeuvre, labouring systematically and according to his plan – 33 years of continuous effort! Despite appearances, modern artists also labour for years over their proverbially ‘highly demanding works’, following the most intricate of methods and sophisticated concepts.

But just how much education does the public receive? And how can we create a partnership between production and reception? Such questions lead to our vision of the future: why do we believe that, in a glance of just a few minutes, or at a single performance of a play, or in the most concentrated and yet intermittent reading of many-levelled texts, we are really a match for the demands of these works? Where do we, the public, learn to do justice to the work of a composer, to a sculpture or a painting, or to an epic? It is high time to professionalize the public just as we have demanded such professionalization from the artists of all fields at the art academies!

If artists complete apprenticeships, receive degrees or pass state examinations, then the viewers, the listeners and the spectators of their works ought to be educated in similar skills. Since documenta 4 in 1968 I have been offering a programme to professionalize spectators, democratically participative citizens, consumers, and autonomous patients. But where can you study to obtain a degree as a recipient? Beginning in the summer term of 2010 students at the University for Design in Karlsruhe will have the opportunity to obtain a degree qualifying them as recipient, as patient, as consumer, as citizen, or as believer.

Listening and watching is also work. And that is why we pay our public, as we did at our Symposium on ‘Museumization’ as a Civilizing Strategy, held on the 24th of November 2009 at the Temporary Art Gallery in Berlin: 25 Euros per person for an entire day of intellectual activity. This payment to our public is characteristic of our struggle to professionalize the recipients of art, the patients, the voters, the believers and the consumers. And you, too, can receive a degree as a recipient, as a patient, as a citizen, etc., to ensure that you will finally be taken seriously as a partner by artists, doctors, producers, priests and politicians.

Professionalization of Patients

The Professional Patient as Self-Saviour

On the Birth of the Patient from the Spirit of Therapy

Exercises in Suffering: The Art of Survival in Today’s Therapy Terror

Educational Courses offered on the Professionalization of Patients, Recipients, Consumers, Believers and Voters

Bazon Brock (b. 1936) studied German literature, philosophy and political science in Zurich, Hamburg and Frankfurt/Main, and he has also completed an apprenticeship as stage director. In 1968 he pioneered the concept of the “visitors’ school” at the documenta in Kassel. Since 1980 he has been professor for art and aesthetics at the University of Wuppertal.