Tensions in aesthetic socialization: Negotiating competence and differentiation in Chinese art test prep schools

Abstract

This article examines how art students negotiate tensions that arise during aesthetic socialization. Drawing on ethnographic data and thirty in-depth interviews with art students and teachers preparing for the art test in China, I show the micro-processes of how students strike a balance between institutional imperatives toward competence and differentiation. I perform the analysis of such a negotiation in three areas of tension: (1) learning and unlearning, (2) present demands and long-term goals, and (3) the contrasting identities of artist and designer. First, students achieve an active control of shifting between demonstrating technical competence and deskilling, through engaging in a processual practice of learning to unlearn. In doing so, students manage to convey a natural ease in their work, enabling an ability to improvise and deliver their artistic visions within conventions. Second, students reconcile their present demand of university admissions and long-term goal of occupational socialization, by emphasizing moral values shared in both test preparation and creative work. Finally, students navigate artistic identities by weighing the contrasting images of Western artists and Chinese artists socialized within prep schools. Most students’ aspirations to be designers, rather than fine artists, are paradoxically connected to their pursuit of aesthetic qualities central to idealized Western artists. As art learning has become increasingly standardized and institutionalized, analyzing tensions in aesthetic socialization is essential for examining the ongoing processes of negotiating conflicts within artistic production and creative work generally.