| dc.description.abstract | “There’s so much more to being an artist than just making art,” voiced a professor. Being an artist, instead, is a way of life, and becoming an artist is deeply connected to learning this way of life. At arts schools around the world, art students are learning how to talk, think, and act. The students are learning what to create as art, what to value in art, and, vitally, they are learning a social way of being that diffuses out of the institutional setting and into their everyday life. Overwhelmingly, evidence today suggests that becoming a ‘professional’ artist is intimately linked to having studied art at the level of higher education. This ethnography engages with art students who are doing just that, at the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo. It is students from studies like this who will be exhibiting in the world’s most esteemed galleries in the future. And exhibiting to the vast audiences of these galleries gives artists powers far beyond their numbers to influence culture. The concept of value(s) is a core theme throughout this thesis, viewing what the art academy places explicit importance on - namely ‘fame’ -, as well as how both teachers and students are socialized into having certain values. Specifically, this project focuses on ways in which the art student differentiates themselves from the ‘normal’ worker, including notions of freedom and resistance, as well as the art students’ conceptions of money and exchange. The artist has the ability to influence society, and the educational institution has the ability to influence the artist. Therefore, formally, the aim of this thesis is to gain insight into the ways in which art students are shaped by art academies. The true aim of this thesis, however, is to highlight the struggles of artistic resistance and therefore open up to ways in which artists can use their art to incite action against ideologies of eternal economic growth at the expense of the human experience. There’s an art to becoming an artist, and this art is learned at art school. | eng |