How I learned to love...creativity, Jake Chapman

Interview,Jessica Moore
Wednesday 22 August 2001 00:00 BST
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The controversial artist, who with his brother Dinos forms a famous artistic duo, explains how his creative enthusiasm was first inspired...

"I went to the local comprehensive boys' school in Hastings, where I grew up. I don't remember very much of my early education. From when I was very young, art was presented to me in school as something of a 'retarded' subject. It was something teachers dragged out as a way to pacify unruly kids. I'm sure they did try to bring it out of me, to nurture some talent, but I didn't want to collaborate at that time. I wasn't really willing to be taught. Or, at least, only to a certain point. I don't think school offered me anything especially exciting by way of art training. I realised that studying art was something I wanted to do, purely out of my enthusiasm for being creative.

I was always interested in drawing. As an extension of that, I was interested in images. I think the momentum for that came from my parents. My father had been an art teacher, and my mother comes from a Greek Cypriot background. The combination of their influences and beliefs meant they were keen to share expression of culture with their children. With regard to schooling, it was more a case of realising that art school was a more appealing option than working at a factory or building site. Art school at that time was a place of suspended animation. I went to North-East London Polytechnic and then on to the Royal College of Art to study fine art at postgraduate level. But, again, both institutions were, to some extent, useless. I felt happier taking my development into my own hands.

The prevailing problem in art edu-cation is that art is seen to be a spontaneous intuition, which cannot be taught. This is obviously a great paradox, because it renders the teachers of an art college entirely redundant. The catch-phrase of the Royal College was this saying: "A sculptor is born, not made." I don't agree with any of this. The idea that art is not taught but felt, as though it were some metaphysical activity, is just snobbery – that, or an arrogant over-complication. Art is a language, a series of disciplines, which can be taught. My experiences are of a version of art taught with a kind of ignorance factor. It's almost as though the less we understand it, the more worthy a work of art or art movement is seen to be. I've always been far more politically motivated. I see art as a critical action.

Art is wholly teachable. Nothing is coded to the extent that many institutions would have us believe. But art is not easily accessible to all. It takes attention and perseverance.

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