M203  

Occupation & Art

An individual is frequently classified or named within society by what one ‘does’ in everyday life (cleaner, housewife, doctor, tennis player, criminal, artist), because a person’s occupation provides a meaningful categorisation for understanding.  The activity of art is difficult to define however, because the term ‘art’ is a generalisation covering many different activities and productions.  It includes aesthetic performance or object making, conceptual revelations, or obsession; it includes the most trivial of activities and the most meaningful, and is also an occupation.  I have decided to examine the concept of art as everyday occupation, as well as explore some theories of motivation, in an attempt to explain why art is important.

Discussion on ‘Occupation’.

This discussion on occupation is grounded in the discourse of Occupational Therapy which has traditionally used ‘occupation’ for assessment purposes and therapeutically, in physiological and psychiatric settings, and in social and work related rehabilitation.  More recently an understanding has developed where occupation is not merely viewed as a therapeutic means to some other end (to increase physical fitness or re-train for employment/return home), but is viewed itself as the solution, because failure to participate in self-care, social, home or work occupations is itself a disabling and marginalising experience. ‘Occupation’ in this sense includes the maximum degree of personal independence and self actualisation possible for the individual, at whatever minimal level that might be.

In Introduction to Occupation. The Art and Science of Living [i] Christiansen and Townsend introduce a generic and commonly accepted view of the term occupation, as ‘more than activities or tasks’ which ‘are invested with a sense of purpose, meaning, vocation, cultural significance, and political power’ of which ‘some are of greater economic value to society than others.’ This definition describes a spectrum of meaning and value, from the personal through to the cultural, but also with a contextual assumption of paid work.  The term ‘occupation’ confuses concepts of employment with those of being ‘occupied’ in other ways, and human activities are frequently valued (or otherwise) in terms of paid work.

There is an additional attitude of work’s ‘necessity’ attached to occupation, which H. J. Polatajko addresses in a later chapter of the book, where she writes of a ‘general belief, supported by the media, that the basic reason for occupational engagement is survival.  In other words, we work because we have to, meaning that we do what we do because it, directly or indirectly, provides us with food and shelter’ and there is an assumption that other self-care occupations ‘support the main task of work for survival.’[ii] Polatajko comments that there are many examples of occupation that do not fit the survival expectation.  Many people who are not concerned with survival needs, such as children or retirees enthusiastically occupy themselves, and people also engage in activities that put their survival at serious risk. [iii] 

The term ‘survival’ normally indicates only a physiological survival, but writers have also discussed human drives and needs in terms of psychology. [iv] Several theories concerning the  importance of psychological needs can be found elsewhere on this site, including Sigmund Freud’s Pleasure Principle, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow.  A significant amount of research has been carried out on human motivation, usually within the discourses of anthropology, biology and psychology, and some theories suggest that satisfaction of psychological and self-fulfilment needs may be as vital to humans as food and shelter, at least once our basic physiological needs are provided for.  It was from this possibility that the concept of ‘Occupational Justice’ first arose within Occupational Therapy during the 1990’s[v] , because if one accepts that occupation is vital to human beings, it follows that a deprivation of this is an injustice that should be addressed.

To be occupied appears to be an innate need, but beyond this, particular occupations fulfil particular types of need, and it is important to pursue occupations that are meaningful and personally satisfying.  Occupational participation is even considered by some to be a determinant of health.[vi]  But ‘meaningfulness’ is not merely a personal psychological preference; it also implies cultural values, including social values, expectations and practices.   The need for occupation may be innate, but the activities chosen are culturally defined; and these culturally defined occupations create and confirm individual identity.  ‘Doing’ is ‘being’, which is why other knowledge disciplines such as psychology, philosophy and occupational therapy are so relevant to an understanding of art. 

To describe occupation/art in these terms is to adopt what Martin Heidegger might have called a ‘productionist’ attitude.[vii]  Heidegger believed productionism to be endemic to Western thought, responsible for contemporary nihilism, and dominating Western culture with its anthropocentric, exploitative attitudes, where everything is viewed as an artefact (including the resources of the natural world), and only valuable in so far as it is useful to humanity.  The productionist attitude makes it very difficult to describe anything except in terms of its use value, and I have certainly followed this course in the discussion here.  Perhaps Heidegger is correct and it is impossible even to conceptualise in any other way.

Art is one cultural area that initially appears to escape productionism at some secondary level (if, at a primary level it is ‘useful’ biologically).  If we are unclear about why we chose to do art; if we find unintentional and subliminal effects occurring in it; if it is sometimes an activity of undirected exploration with no predetermined outcome, then it becomes hard to describe the process of producing art in productionist terms. What use is it, and why would we value it?  Society at large seems to have difficulty fitting art into ordinary categories of occupation (work), in terms of economic reliability (the ‘proper job’) and usefulness of the product to society.  Art appears superfluous to survival, and therefore valueless in itself; but value is attached in many other ways.  For example as expression or therapy, as objects of exchange, investment and status, and as entertainment, aesthetics and knowledge.