Artists as role models for new lifestyles?

This study is based on the hypotheses that there are characteristic analogies, that artists as well as other people in these postmodern times, have to cope with. These analogies give us a chance to reflect on this burning question concerning new lifestyles in our society. One analogy shows the search for a new relationship between society and the individual as well as for new social values and standards. Another analogy lies in the fact that hegemonic role models don`t fit anymore, a fact that is true for artists as well. Throughout the ages they had to find their own way in light of normative gender expectations. In other words, artists always had to face challenges as seismographs of the society and as a result find creative ways to cope. So, this study the conceptions of art, life and thinking of people who produce art based on narrative live-history interviews will allow inspiration for the the various lifestyle possibilities.

The topic of this study is to answer the question as to new and creative lifestyles. Whereas humans were born into traditional societies and class as well as religion determined one`s life journey, there is now a demand to design one`s own life and to develop one`s own ideas. According to the fundamental question, could there be convincing criteria or models, which could then give us clues as to how life can be happy and prosperous? If most notably status, money, power and fame in the Modern Age were socially acceptable modals for a good life, then it stands to reason that today these symbols, in view of the challenges posed by globalization and the late Modern Age, have become questionable. The assumption of parallels between dispositions of the artists` existence with dispositions of the late Modern Age, in order for artists, in dealing with their lives and work, to be on the lookout for inspirations to meet the challenges of the post-Modern life, served as a central working hypothesis. In conversations with artists, there appeared another status of worth. Self-determination, self-authority, the control over one`s own life course and simultaneously a great openness in confrontation with all unexpected events, finds its focus in the worth that they attribute to the developments in their achievements, respectively, their artistic activity as well as in their lives in general. The potential to develop oneself, in other words, a personal unfolding, becomes recognizable as a motive for artistic existence. To develop oneself means, to involve oneself in the process of becoming. It means a design within the given dispositions and it means determining one`s own worth and one`s own life paths. In this sense very few differences stand out on the institutional level in contrast to the societal general view - even artists live in partnership relationships with or without children, or as singles -, and yet they initiate new qualities on the levels of lifestyles as circumstances of thinking. It is an intensive freedom to relate and communicate that we are confronted with herein contrast to more conventional thinking about roles. And therefore a freer contact to complexity as well, which manifests itself in the permeability of normative separated spheres such as public and private, feminine and masculine. Boundaries of reasoning are crossed in order to make room for new ideas. The free areas that have been created are useful on several levels: for reconsideration of parental concepts in favor of a multidimensional view of mother`s work and father`s work and likewise for work concepts per se. They visualize what an immense potential for change lies within and we would rate every activity not according to biplor, gernder-connotated scale, but rather give them the same worth. Let us consider art as a space of possibility, respectively, symbolic rehearsal space for social models, in this way diverse moments of cultural relevance in view of the social polylog on new forms of life, are visible in the areas of experience summarized by artists. Let us take the existence of artists seriously - as a plural expression of individuality, creativity, aesthesis and authenticity - it will then become obvious that they have some fundamental challenges to reconsider. It concerns rethinking the thinking, to expose oneself to the unscientific, even to the unspoken discourse about the world and with that, the intuition, the rhythm and the dependency on process, and to bring these together with the rational view of the world. With the entire spectrum at our disposal, we will then be able to speak of new and creative lifestyles.