manifesto for art schools

The following is the introduction to the annual study guide, which is handed out to all students of the fine art department at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Thus is the version from 2021 (english only)

A process of making, which is based on intelligent intuition, intelligent decisions, and an intelligent reflection upon our worlds

Only a deep commitment, a persevering practice and a sustainable discipline can give birth to works of art which leave the short-lived moment of sensation and entertainment behind. Art is not a hop on / hop off activity.

Much more than a collection of individual careers. Artists are well advised to be generous with each other and with their work, but within the confines of a very decisive practice.

Including political knowledge, intrinsic knowledge and public knowledge. Without art we would know less.

That still matters, including aesthetic beauty, disturbing beauty, revealing beauty and pleasing beauty.

Art schools create the climate to attract students and tutors which might think differently and very individual, but they encourage, challenge and inspire each other. At art schools they create the networks of the future.

Because art schools provide breathing space, fully aware of, but also with a critical distance to market conditions and pure career thinking. Here we can experiment with the role which art and artists will have in the future, for the well-being of our societies.

We prepare students for an entrepreneurial professional practice called culture, including all aspects of how we live together on this planet and how we practice the highest possible level of inclusiveness. That is why we are so culturally curious and directed towards international diversity.

We learn from history to build the future.

Any form of making, as long as it is decisive.

The department of Fine Art at the KABK aims at aligning the past of fine art with its present and its future. We embrace history and traditions and root our discourse firmly in the contemporary. At the same time we research and imagine the future of fine art as an indispensable contributor to culture, society and economy.

We try to equip future artists with skills, competencies, strategies and confidence to shape their future and the future of the arts.

We embed learning at the fine art department in shared values. We see democracy, tolerance and respect as the fundament for understanding differences, living with differences and even loving differences. We understand otherness and antagonism as attractive, rather than as a threat.

Art comes in many, and often controversial forms. We cherish art as exciting, stimulating, motivating, pleasing, disturbing, illuminating, revealing or just beautiful. We value the small interventions as well as the great gestures. The quality of making stands side by side with the development of ideas and artistic strategies. Critical reflection and a relevant academic discourse are the kernel around which artistic practice revolves, but the most effective arguments in the debates around the arts are artworks themselves.

All art making happens in the frame of a context. Intuition, aesthetic preferences and individual decisions matter.  It is of utter importance to understand that the own making relates to parameters and incidents in our actual world. It is equally important to understand, that art making has a historical and a contemporary frame. We want to enable our students to enjoy their making and demonstrate their contextual awareness at the same time.

We see art emerging from the communities of artists in alliance with all other communities of our societies. Therefore we put a strong emphasis on the experience of making, thinking and discussing in close contact with fellow students as future artists. Art is not a string of individual careers but a cultural phenomenon depending on the input of many individual artists.

Students get the opportunity to expand their artistic and other skills, such as collaboration, communication, self-management, observing from unexpected angles, decision making, critical reflection and critical distance to yourself — skills that are of high value for the arts and many other professional careers in the future.

Our students are learners. Our artist teachers share their experience and knowledge with them, support and challenge their artistic results and engage in a constructive critical reflection of developing strategies. Students carry the responsibility for their learning and the development of their artistic practice. Although learning is continuous there is no necessary order of given steps that need be followed to be successful and prepared for the BA Fine Art. Therefore the individual work of the students is the centre of all learning. This is flanked and supported by presentations to groups and a wider public as moments for feedback and critical reflection, in short assessments. But students and tutors also have a shared responsibility for the continuous development of fine art in a contemporary context.

At the fine art department a team of highly motivated artists, art historians and theorists welcome students from all over the world. We try to craft a truly international mix carefully. Our teaching language is English.

Making art can be an isolating process. As a fine art department we provide the community and the critical context that breaks this isolation. Through this community, we sustain a meaningful relationship to life and to higher art education that is at once pragmatic and idealistic. It is this collective ethos that strengthens our commitment to maintaining the high-energy of creative ambition and engagement that continue to attract students and staff to work with us.

The aim of the programme is to enable students to participate actively in the continuous renewal of art as an important contribution to the cultural, economical and social wellbeing of our societies