Amateurism

Abstract

‘The amateur’ is an unstable figure across geographic contexts that have shaped an extraordinary range of activity, from non-remunerated, self-organised, non-official, anti-ruling class, insurgent artistic efforts, to programmatic State efforts to marshal ‘folk’ production into national narratives of authentic belonging. With this special issue, the authors argue that an examination of this topic will benefit from the adoption of a global perspective from the outset, as well as a keen attention to the diverse circumstances of amateur making – in architecture, painting, music, poetry, television, video, film, photography and archiving. Amateurism can be fostered not only by the love of an art, but also by the will to survive economic and social precarity. Any attempt to periodise the amateur yields multiple chronologies built around distinct moments of significance. Yet the authors suggest that we are in a new age of amateurism, indicated by the wave of emerging scholarship on this topic, as well as an omnipresent general antipathy to the expertise of professional technocrats.