What is the Goal of Art?

This morning I received an email from the San Francisco Art Institute, widely recognized as one of the leading producers of cutting edge young contempoary artists. Speaking of the work of a faculty member, Caitlin Mitchell-Dayton, the press release referenced the school as follows: "an environment in which critique is the primary teaching tool, and subversion of the status quo is a core goal".

This is something some of us think about a great deal. What does an art education do to a young artist? What values does it privilege? One value it clearly inculcates is competiton for first place: to win. As my post yesterday indicated, the problem with this is that it privileges "winners" and identifies "losers". In that sense, art as we know it today, is an academic reflection of the society at large, in which celebrities are lionized and the impoverished masses yearn for a crumb from the tables of the privileged. It encourages us to confront, trivialize, demonize and degrade the values of the "other", who is the loser.

If art is a response to our times, is this a productive response to the problems we have? I wish I could see what Caitlin Mitchell-Dayton has to say.