Monday 18/01 2010 1pm-3pm Ambitions and Values LEVEL 1

AMBITION
For the artist 'ambition' may be of a special nature.
Clearly, since the Renaissance artists have been diverted by the fame their skills can attract, and we can still observe that cliche within the 90s generation of Saatchi-chasers, Turner Prize hopefuls, and mass applicants to 'New Contemporaries' etc.

Nevertheless, this recent tendency doesn't overshadow many other significant ideas regarding the history of artist's ambitions. e.g. to use art in serving a religion, a political cause, to serve huumanity or the furtherment of art itself.

The artist, may, after all, have a special sense of what 'ambition' means, above, beyond or parallel to the banal, professional and pragmatic ambitions, of the kind with which we recently became familiar, according to the ironic, deferential and severely limited vision of postmodernists.

Interestingly, though grand scale and spectacle are associated with ambition, it can equally be the case that the artist demonstrates ambition by the most of modest of means, and this is something we can discuss further.

VALUES
'Values' is one of the most important words for any serious and searching thought about art, about people and the world. When philsophers (like Nietzsche) try to boil down what makes us 'tick', this notion of 'values' often peers out from the depths of their considerations.

Underneath our opinions, cultures, class and status, fashions and judgements, you can find 'values', operating, as a kind of engine room.

It is therefore significant that artists have played a strong part in shaping, challenging, representing and renewing values, through their acts, attitudes, choices of materials, transgressions etc. How might we continue to do this? What are the current values with which our own might be in dialogue?

In Monday's session I will -as usual- present a short paper that expands the two themes above and try to bring them into a meaningful relation, then hand the opinions over to you to challenge and develop what I have proposed.

Meanwhile, please check this site for some further quotes and notes that I will try to load up later today (Friday) and tomorrow.