THE CITY GATES

This year the Contemporary Fine Art course has moved from
the former Psalter Lane Campus to dwell in the city centre,
though perhaps this is more truthfully described as a return.
The Sheffield School of Art was formed in 1843 in the centre of
the city and remained there until the school amalgamated with
the College of Technology to form the Sheffield Polytechnic
in 1969. Courses in Art and Design were relocated to the then
newly developed Psalter Lane Campus, where they remained
as the institution became Sheffield Hallam University in 1992.
Thereafter plans to move the remote campus to the expansive
city centre have been developed and implemented in the hope
that multidisciplinary pedagogy would profit the students with a
balanced and rich education.
As students on this course, we find ourselves charged with the
task of integrating with our new surroundings, of claiming this
new place for ourselves. Long after our predecessors migrated
to the verdant hills of Psalter Lane, we find ourselves returning,
driven by circumstances of institutional development, to the
heart of the city.
In Book V of Platos The Republic, Socrates discusses the place
of the poet and artist in the community of Athens. He decides to
banish them as they upset his notion of truth. These imitators
provide elaborate representations of things, demonstrating an
intricate knowledge of them which may be wholly founded on
surface appearance.
Plato establishes the artist as someone who is dangerous; the
power of a work of art to move a person is seen as something
damaging to a mind that holds truth in the highest esteem. In
the text Socrates warns:

If you receive the pleasure-seasoned Muse of song and epic, pleasure and pain will be kings in your city instead of law and the principle which at all times has been decided by the community.1

As representations, mediations and imitations of that which

already exists, works of art are at best frivolous and unconnected
with the worthwhile heart of meaning, and at worst erode the
moral core of the community.
And yet Plato alludes to the possibility of the artists return to
the city through debate and repeal:
Nevertheless, let us state that if the pleasure-producing poetry and
imitation has any arguments to show that she is in her right place
in a well-governed city, we shall be very glad to receive her back
again.2

Art is allowed to defend itself, providing it can engage with this

philosophy in its own arena. It must prove its worth to the city
that venerates law, logic and truth. Or else, it may employ someone to do this for it, someone better equipped to address this
committee:
And we might also allow her champions, who are not poets, but lovers of poetry, to publish a prose defence on her behalf, showing that
she is not only pleasant but also useful for political constitutions
and for human life, and we shall listen with friendly feelings. For it
will be to our profit if she is made out to be not only pleasant, but
useful.3

Either way, art must come to the city gates bearing an entreaty
to be put before the governing body if it is to be incorporated
back into the structure of Athenian life.
This year, we come before our institution. We must prove our
worth to the university and the city and make our plea. Our entreaty is our exhibition, the culmination of three years work, and

the last thing we will leave behind. We must show what we are
and what we provide to an establishment of law, logic and truth.
However, we are not exiled Athenians. Perhaps what we promise
is exactly what Plato rejects; the mediation of matter, the changing of perspective and the questioning of presumed truths. Perhaps our plea will demonstrate the necessity of corruption and
the benefit of artistic deviation in the heart of the establishment
we inhabit.
We stand at the gates of the city, with our argument written but
as yet unread; in the coming months, it will be revealed.

NOTES:
1. Plato, The Republic, trans. A.D. Lindsay, London, J.M. Dent &
Sons Ltd., 1976, p. 310.
2. Ibid., p. 311
3. Ibid.