Think Today, Done Tomorrow (Heute denken, morgen fertig):
Since the end of the eighteenth century, genius (Genius), knowledge (Kenntnis), and skill (Fertigkeit) have been used to distinguish the "true artist." The first requirement of art, genius, either exists at birth (i.e., naturally) or it doesn’t, whereas the other two, knowledge and skill, can be learned and refined through practice. Aided by Goethe and Schiller, the embrace of these requirements was accompanied by a rejection of those art practitioners who, in an emphatic sense, aren’t "true artists," but nonetheless participate in artistry: the art enthusiasts, the amateurs, the so-called dilettanti. Goethe and Schiller exclude the dilettanti from the "holy realm" of art: Contrary to the true artistic genius, the dilettante views art only as a pastime. As stated in their fragments of Über den Dilettantismus (On Dilettantism), the dilettante wants only "to also pretend to be knowledgeable where effort and earnestness are required." Even worse: He eschews "thoroughness, [he] skips learning the necessary knowledge required for practice." What is this "necessary knowledge"? And how about the strict separation between true artist and dilettante in view of a situation in which—as Willi Baumeister, one of the major figures of abstract painting after 1945, notes in his essay Das Unbekannte in der Kunst (The Unknown in Art)—"the original artist has to overcome his artistic knowledge and skills" to create new art. In other words, does the true artist now also have to be a strategic dilettante? (Uwe Wirth)

Uwe Wirth has been a professor for contemporary German literature and cultural studies at the Institute for German Studies at the Julius-Liebig-Universitaet Giessen since 2007. Before that, from 2005 until 2007, he worked as a scientific coordinator at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin. In his dissertation, he addressed topics such as the theories of the comic (published by the Winter Verlag under the title Diskursive Dummheit: Abduktion und Komik als Grenzphänomen des Verstehens, 1999 [Discursive Stupidity: Abduction and Comic as Border Phenomena of Understanding, 1999] and in his "habilitation," he studied the fiction of the publisher in the literature around the year 1800 (published by the Fink Verlag under the title: Die Geburt des Autors aus dem Geist der Herausgeberfiktion. Editoriale Rahmung im Roman um 1800: Wieland, Goethe, Brentano, Jean Paul und E.T.A. Hoffmann [The Birth of the Author from the Spirit of the Fiction of the Publisher. Editorial framing in the novel around the year 1800: Wieland, Goethe, Brentano, Jean Paul and E.T.A. Hoffmann]. In 2009, together with Safia Azzouni, he edited a volume on Dilettantismus als Beruf [Professional Dilettantism].

Oswald Egger was born in Lana, South Tyrol, in 1963. He lives on the missile base Hombroich and is a professor for "Language and Design" at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel. His latest publications include:nihilum album. Lieder & Gedichte (Suhrkamp 2007), Diskrete Stetigkeit. Poesie und Mathematik (Suhrkamp 2008),Die ganze Zeit (Suhrkamp 2010), and Euer Lenz (Suhrkamp 2013). For his work he has won several prizes: Peter Huchel prize 2007, HC Artmann prize 2008, Karl-Sczuka prize 2010 and 2013, "Das schönste Deutsche Buch" 2010, and Oskar Pastior prize 2010.

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