Work and the democratisation of art

Connecting art, class, work and happiness



(image courtesy of Indigo Arts Gallery)

"I cannot ever forget, nor should I, that I come from a blue collar, in fact in some cases no collar, background. By no collar, I mean slaves. Craft and handiwork were a form of communication for slaves, and are also traditionally African: within those communities there were no artistic echelons. Everybody was engaged in some kind of art activity, whether they were musicians, singers, dancers or visual artists, as a normal aspect of their everyday life. Artists per se were not separated from the rest of their community. I didn't want to forget my heritage, I wanted to extend it. My mother's grandfather was a basket maker and a blacksmith; he made brooms and sweet grass baskets. Both of my grandmothers were quilt makers. My father's father was a woodworker who made decorated canoes. I'm very specifically proletariat in the sense that I know that I'm engaged in this same activity. You have to consistently look at what I do and challenge your own ideas about what is 'visual' art and what is 'fine' art. I think that there is something strange about the idea that it's not as aesthetically profound for someone to make a cup as it is for someone to make a painting of a cup."

— Joyce Scott, artist

Earlier this week I went to hear Alain de Botton talk about his new book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (more about that later). Afterwards, in the bathroom, I overheard an intriguing snippet of a conversation between two, relatively young girls: "…condescending middle class conversations…". It's quite mysterious – were they referring to the Q&A with the author? Judging purely from observation, the auditorium did seem to have been filled with a middle-class, mostly caucasian, Guardian-reader audience. And indeed a lot of the conversation was about the shift from work being regarded as punishment to a point where for people to do their best work, they often need to take some level of enjoyment from it. This idea of doing work you love, is often seen as a luxury for the privileged – the poor are seen to prioritise feeding their families, facilitated by any work necessary.

However, I'd like to challenge this assumption and go back to Joyce Scott's point. To go back and, in this instance, put artistic endeavour back into the picture of the everyday (and design is a part of that). People who are not necessarily engaged in explicitly "artistic work", still incorporate art and/or design in their daily practice – through how they eat, how they entertain themselves and others, how they interact, what they wear, their working environments. I mean, look at the barber shops and hair salons in deprived African neighbourhoods – these are sites of work! And love is often visible in the products of blue collar work – often even more conspicuous than in the products of white collar work!

So maybe the middle class white collar elk has got it all wrong and their (our?) empathy has been distorted by a certain megalomania. Does the magic – and the reason why so many white collar workers seem to be unhappy with their jobs – lie in the fact that blue collar work tends to be rooted in the present moment? Is the blue collar's attention to the everyday, as opposed to an automatic dismissal of it because of its perceived mundaneness and triviality, what makes her/his everyday richer (and happier)?