If you don’t do theory, theory does you

When my wife was in grad school for her MFA, one of her professors often said “If you don’t do theory, theory does you.”

Even if all you want to do is [draw gladiators,] or sell Nike shoes, I think this is true. If you don’t know what you’re doing as an art student, someone will definitely point this out. It just gets more acute the further you go in the usable direction. In a way, however much you need to “do theory” can be seen as as a response to the basic function of art school or Online to tear apart the work you feed it.

Much of Art Theory is founded in some version of the questions “what would or could other people think about this art?” or “what is it like to experience this art?” or even more simply “how is this art part of the world?” To be fair, that’s about as helpful in understanding most of contemporary theory as it is helpful in understanding a modern computer by saying they’re based on switches that can go between 1 or 0. However, these are the questions to start with when we try to distinguish between usable and self-contained [[ qualities of art ]] (or conversations about art). Is it made with a notion of how it fits into the world, and if so what is that notion? If not, how should we try to fit it into the world as viewers?

No matter how self-important, jargon-filled, or bullshitty Theory can be, the field exists because asking these questions sends you down the usable fork in the road, and there’s wild country and glittering cities down that path. Note that these questions are all not self-contained. To be self-contained is to leave that question to the viewer or the genre, and not trouble the making with those questions.

So, in that sense, doing theory means trying to understand how to fit your art into the world. And it only takes a few bad crits to realize that this is a self-reflective process – trying to fit or understand your art changes its shape, but then you have to try to fit the new shape. And so on.

Some students indeed learn how to “do theory”; many more are done in by it. The process is an ongoing and precarious one.

The easy answer to this is to just not care and make everyone come to your self-contained notion of art. That’s only an answer for individuals who are in a position that does not require them to care, or those who have reason not to care. Placing yourself in the position of an art student means you have to care. Or, rather, deciding you care will place you in the position of an art student.

Fin.