Art, Excess, and Education

This book concentrates on the deep historical, political, and institutional relationships between art, education, and excess. Going beyond field specific discourses of art history, art criticism, philosophy, and aesthetics, it explores how the concept of excess has been important and enduring from antiquity through contemporary art, and from early film through the newer interactive media. Examples considered throughout the book focus on disgust, grandiosity, sex, violence, horror, disfigurement, endurance, shock, abundance, and emptiness, and frames them all within an educational context. Together they provide theories and classificatory systems, historical and political interpretations of art and excess, examples of popular culture, and suggestions for the future of educational practice.

“Nina Sahraoui’s wonderfully illuminating, analytically profound and sensitive study is based on interviews with migrant and minority ethnic care workers in residential homes and institutions for older people in London, Madrid and Paris. It provides a hugely significant and original contribution to our understanding of the personal, political and policy dynamics of gendered and racialised care work in post-colonial and neo-liberalised Europe. The book explores how the devaluation of their work is experienced by those at the sharp end of precarious employment, care privatisation, institutionalised racism, and restrictive migration rules. And how, in the face of this, the very acts of caring for older, vulnerable people provide the workers with a collective expression of their own dignity, affection, generosity and pride.” (Fiona Williams, Emeritus Professor of Social Policy, University of Leeds, UK)

“A much-needed contribution to the scholarship on the transnational politicaleconomy of care work, which redefines how we understand both the gendered and racialised positioning of migrant workers and the nature of care itself.” (Irene Gedalof, author of Narratives of Difference in an Age of Austerity, Research Associate, Centre for Gender Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, UK)

“This book is a remarkable analysis about racialised care workers in Europe, based on a field analysis of three countries: France, UK and Spain. The combination of gendered, racialised and precarious care jobs is one the best reflections on labour market segmentation and intersectionality, bridging care regime of deskilling with migration regimes of status and racialised inequalities, and employment regimes where ethics, political economy and social determinisms are strongly linked. A wonderful and brilliant comparative work.” (Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, Emeritus research professor at CNRS, Centre for International Studies, Sciences Po Paris, France)

“Resisting the lure of reducing the excessive to either the crass commercial logic of spectacle or the knee-jerk reaction of disgust, this book takes seriously the ethical, aesthetic, and pedagogical dimensions of excessive art. Never flinching at taboos, never resolving ambiguous tensions, never backing down from difficult encounters, and never fleeing from monstrosities, each essay embodies the courage necessary to face the excessive times we live in.” (Tyson Lewis, Associate Professor of Art Education and Program Coordinator of Visual Art Studies at the University of North Texas, USA)

“This impressive collection of essays comes together to challenge existing disciplinary boundaries on what can be perceived, created, and articulated as excess. Is it excessive? It is definitely worth the risk to find out by becoming a reader.” (Nora Sternfeld, Documenta Professor, Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany)

 

Kevin Tavin is Professor and Head of the Department of Art at Aalto University, Finland. He has taught art education since 1990. Recent books include, Angels, Ghosts, and Cannibals: Essays on Art Education and Visual Culture, Experimenting FADS: Finnish Art-Education Doctoral Studies, and Stand(ing) up, for a Change: Voices of Arts Educators.

Mira Kallio-Tavin is Associate Professor of Art-based Research and Pedagogy and the Head of Research in the Department of Art at Aalto University, Finland. Her research area focuses on critical artistic and arts-based practices and research in questions of diversity, disability studies, social justice, and critical animal studies.

Max Ryynänen is Senior Lecturer in Theory of Visual Culture at Aalto University, Finland. He is the Chair of the Finnish Society for Aesthetics and the Editor-in-Chief of Popular Inquiry: The Journal of the Aesthetics of Kitsch, Camp and Mass Culture. Heis also an ex-gallerist and art writer.