- Via Bake Kanyes Phd [sic] on Facebook
- YEEZY GETS HONORARY DEGREE Should it be baked in a cake?
In news that pissed off many an art student last week, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) announced that it will confer an honorary doctorate upon Kanye West during the school’s graduation ceremony this May. A handful of SAIC alums are mad about this development, and one current student has suggested that Kanye receive his degree baked into a cake to show that “the diploma is not what validates a creative individual’s success.”
But wait a minute, why are we upset about this? Sure, it’s been pointed out that SAIC doesn’t have a music program, but it definitely has a performance department, and when it comes to performance art—sorry, but is Kanye West not the greatest performance artist of his generation? For better or for worse, the lines between the world of art and the world of commerce are frequently blurred. Consider: Marina Abromovic, so-called “godmother of performance art” shilling for Adidas. Or Jeff Koons painting a car for BMW. These things happen, it would seem, with the frequency of product placements in a music video. Art and commerce and pop culture are inextricably intertwined. It’s just that we don’t always like to admit it.
So, yes, you could argue that Kanye is somehow unfit to receive an honor that isn’t real from a school that doesn’t have a music department, or you could argue that Kanye’s entire steez is performance art of the highest caliber, and that his patron just happens to be Def Jam.
In any case, as a graduate of SAIC myself (it’s where I earned my controversial MFA), I can think of some more systemic problems with art schools in general that are infinitely more disturbing than giving a goddamn fictitious degree to Kanye West. Like, I don’t know, saddling aspiring artists with debt that will follow them for the rest of their adult lives, with no promise of graduating into a stable job market, for one.
With all that being said, I really and truly hope the cake thing happens. Because it’s art, duh.