On Use: Art Education and Psychoanalysis

Abstract

In this article, the author uses a key moment in Michael Fried’s essay ‘Art and Objecthood’ – Fried’s reference to Tony Smith’s car ride on the unfinished New Jersey Turnpike with his Masters of Fine Art students – to think about the possibilities offered to art education by psychoanalysis. In considering Smith’s experience and Fried’s interpretation of it as instances of both pedagogy and Winnicottian ‘use’, the author allows this analogy to echo and expand throughout three different pedagogical moments in which she has put ‘Art and Objecthood’ to use within her teaching, and back through to Sigmund Freud’s idea of ‘after-education’. In this article, she asks: How have I used Fried’s text? How, in turn, do art students use it? How and why do we as teachers and students use theory? What does all this using tell us about art education and the academy? And, ultimately, what is the role of psychoanalysis within art education?