Formal art education, again

[Lacey Lewis]

Hi Again,

I am looking to get information for my next OPAL program. My goal is to talk about the ways that the current university/college system is lacking, at least to students who are concerned with learning how to draw accurately and paint a convincing illusion on canvas. I know I have heard others here talk about what they are not or were not able to learn in college as far as the craft of art is concerned, and I know that I was personally appalled at how little I was able to learn myself.

Then, in my program I'd also like to explore alternatives to the university where students can learn to draw, paint, and/or sculpt well and where art as a craft is the main focus, such as workshops and the ateliers.

Sorry if I sound like I am already biased; admittedly I am and I already know what the main point of my program will be. I am interested, though, in all points of view.

I am especially curious as to how many skilled representational and/or traditional artists do have a degree from colleges or art schools and if so how they value them. Or were many artists turned off by what they saw at the colleges and then 'dropped out' of the system?

Also, what advise would you give to aspiring art students for their education, if their goal is to learn to draw, paint, or sculpt accurately from life?

I hope this isn't too close in scope to the other Formal art education threads! I just thought I might get more responses if I restated the question.

[Jeff Fuchs]

Apparently I'm the only one who checked "I would reccomend a university or art school path to students". That's strange.

Actually, the question wasn't properly worded, since university art degrees and art schools are very different things, and it should have been two separate items. I have a degree from a university, though I studied graphic design, and had to teach myself basic fine art skills after graduation. I checked this item more for the art school element than the university.

I don't believe that universities are the best venue for artists. Certainly you'll receive a more well rounded education there, and I credit my university for my love of literature, history, etc., but it's no place for serious artists. An aspiring artist should not be concerned about his GPA or how many foreign language credits he needs. He shouldn't be up all night cramming for an algebra exam, with no time to paint. Not to mention, I see very little evidence that universities make an effort to teach real art skills.

One thing I do believe. A formal art education is essential. It's rare that a self-taught artist excells in his field. I consider myself to be self taught, since I didn't take painting classes in college, and you see how much I struggle. Occasionally we get a new SOG member who just finished art school. He'll be young enough to be my child, and he'll have a skill level that I'll never be able to attain. That's a clear indication of the value of an art education. It's tough on your own.

I'll cut this short, since I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but I say yes to the art school, and no to the university. Of course, I haven't attended an art school, so it's based on incomplete information.

EDIT: Sorry Lacey, I posted this before reading your post, based on the poll results. I'm afraid I can't contribute much for your purposes.

[Lacey Lewis]

Hey Jeff,

Thanks for your reply! I found your response very interesting, but I do wonder how much of your ideas about art school have to do with the air of prestige they have about them. I am sure that there are some nice art schools out there, and I will freely admit that I have not done a lot of looking, but I wouldn't put my money on art schools as a general group more than I would universities.

I have the most exposure to KCAI because it is close to me and when I was a teenager living in upstate NY I thought it would be great to move here and attend this school. But then I found that I was not impressed by the work that was coming out of it, and so now I don't see the point unless I found an individual teacher to study independently with.

Also, I see that they require liberal arts studies at KCAI even through the senior year. I wonder if this is a requirement of most art schools?

Anyhow, I see your point about having them separated as options in the survey. I was thinking along my biased lines of a traditional vs modern art education.

By the way if anyone is interested in listening in, the program will be held here this Friday April 7th at noon Central Time. Unfortunately, I did not include this survey because it was such a small sample of artists, I thought it would be a little silly. I still think it's a relevant question, though!

[Richard Monro]

Lacey, i have a few degrees but none of them based on art. If you meant from colleges or universities that teach art, i would recommend rewording the first question.

What is OPAL?

My life experience is that we advance the most when we learn from the best. I'm staggered by how many inept professors I ran into in my college and graduate school days. I can just imagine what art schools are like. I learned more from my short time with Daniel Greene than I think many art students learn in four years.

[Lacey Lewis]

Hi Richard!

Yes, I suppose that I should have worded the first option better. I meant any art-related degree, but not necessarily from an art school. I wonder if I can edit the options...

OPAL is Online Programming for All Libraries. Here is a link: OPAL-Online Here is their description of OPAL: "OPAL is an international collaborative effort by libraries of all types to provide web-based programs and training for library users and library staff members. These live events are held in online rooms where participants can interact via voice-over-IP, text chatting, and synchronized browsing. Everyone is welcome to participate in OPAL programs. There is no need to register. OPAL programs are offered free of charge to participants."

It was pretty neat to do, and I may do other programs in the future. The ones that I have done are archived on the above site.

I agree that we learn the most when we are taught by the best. It is pretty hard to learn from someone who does not have the information that you are seeking, and I also agree with your statement, "I learned more from my short time with Daniel Greene than I think many art students learn in four years." If you watch/listen to my program on art education, you will see evidence of just that!

[Julie Deane]

Hi Lacey -

I see you led two discussions on OPAL programs. That's great! Was it a good experience?

[Kimber Scott]

Lacy,

I don't know how to answer your poll. I just got my degree, but I did not learn anything about HOW to paint at university. I was lucky to have found one teacher , R. K. Hillis, at the community college level who was actually interested in and worked very hard at teaching his students. He gave me a solid foundation. A foundation I hoped others at university would help me build upon, but the university art program is horribly lacking in matters of technicality. They don't do "HOW." If you ask "How do I do this?" the answer will more likely be something like, "Just do it," or "I don't know, figure it out." Another good one is, "If I tell you how to do it, then I will just be telling you how to do it." And, the all time classic, "I don't want to teach people to paint just like me. They need to learn to paint like themselves."

So, no. University art programs are not for learning about HOW to paint. A lot of the teachers don't know HOW themselves, because they went through a university art program. The value I recieved from the university was not in the studio, but in the art history classes. There I learned why people painted and what they were saying when they did it. This is where the value is, in studying the artists' work who came before you and trying to figure out where you will fit into that story. (Although, admittedly, the story is only half told. Modernist thought has had a tendency to edit history. You will be delighted, I'm sure to know, however, art historians are digging out and dusting off the Bouguereau's and the women artists who have so sadly been forgotten.) There is also value in learning the methods of these artists. They don't really go into great detail about methods, but they give you enough of a glimpse, you know where to start looking for further information.

A couple months ago, I entered two paintings in my city's "Celebration of Artists" show. Low and behold, my old teacher, Hillis, had a painting in the show as well. When I saw him at the reception I lamented the lack of training I was getting at university. He laughed. - He, himself, was brought up through the university's abstract expressionist movement. He actually went so far as to receive his doctorate, (which by the way, they don't offer anymore) and he's been teaching for over 30 years.. You' might be surprised to know he is a realist painter. He says he had to teach himself HOW to paint. (He read a lot - Bridgeman, Loomis, et.al. - and has attended workshops with Greene and Leffel, et.al., over the years.) - Anyway, he said, "You already know how to paint. Now all you need to do is paint a couple hundred paintings."

This was a very inspirational thing for him to say to me, especially considering he is not one to sugarcoat anything and can be very critical at times. I truly believe what he said. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. Here's the bottom line:

You will not learn HOW to paint in a public university setting, but you will learn a lot of valuable peripheal information. If you want to learn the technicalities, you will have to find that information on your own - through forums like this, through books, through workshops with artists you admire, ateliers and most importantly through expirementation and practice.

Would teaching the technicalites at universities improve their program? Heck, YES! A million times "yes!"

Ok. So, that's the answer to your poll. Now you see why I really couldn't pick an answer from the list!

Kimber

[Anthony Emmolo]

Hello all,

I am pro art school. I believe they get a bad rap. Here's my story. It was back in the 1980's:

I went to both the School of Visual Arts, and frequented The Art students League, both in New York City. Both were very very different experiences.

SVA was filled with a bunch of streetwise, kids who in many cases knew it all already. I remember hearing a teacher in a drawing class make a comment to a young 18 year old know it all, that her peach was not drawn well. Her angry response, "That's the way II see it!?just made the teacher walk away. Can you teacher her in that moment? Of course not. Other students would leave the 6 hour studio classes for lunch, and not return for three hours. In classes that didn't't permit music, student's would be drawing and bopping their heads to their Sony Walkman's.

I asked myself, "Are medical students doing this? Are law students doing this? Of course not. At least not the successful ones.

I, at the age of 21, was three years older than my peers. The weaknesses I described in the students, were not my weaknesses. Mine were all based on vanity. I'd spend more time looking at other easels rather than the model, and then bang my head against the wall wondering why the drawings were better than mine. I'd often whip myself into a frenzy that would just get serve in getting in the way of anything sensitive coming out of my pencil or brush, depending on which class I was in.

At 21, I was intelligent enough to look carefully at the examples of work by the instructors, and choose well. However, my vanity got in the way o f my education, the same way childishness got in the way of many of the other students.

My vanity infected my time at the Art Student's League as well. I could never enjoy it because there you really did have some talented students to compare yourself to. Wow! anyone with my vanity would get clobbered there, looking at other easel's rather than the model.

Our culture isn't the type of culture that offers a lot of academic stye lifestyles with eight year olds spending an entire day drawing from plaster casts until they get it right. Would I have been able to sit around drawing plaster casts? Would I have valued them enough at such a young age? Ask yourself those questions having grown up in the USA.

THE REMEDY FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN ART TRAINING

Go to an art school. There are good ones. Look at the instructors artwork. Choose the most talented ones, and ask about reputation. Leave the music home. It would have gotten in the way of Leonardo at the formative years as well. Especially today's music. Along with the music, eave the ego home. YOU DON'T KNOW IT ALL AT THE AGE OF 18! Do like the law students, the nursing students, the business students. Attempt to learn something, not to express yourself. Then you will. I promise. Sorry to sound like your father, but your only 18. You don't have a whole lot to express anyway. Learn, and in time you'll have a lot of depth to express.

The problem is, how many 18 year olds do you know that don't think they know it all?

Anthony
I'm doing it now, at the age of 43 in China, with plaster busts and more humility, and I really enjoy it. I don't care about what is on other poeple's easels and I'm learning more now.

[Anthony Emmolo]

Just a little more...

By the way, I'm writing about people I've met in my life, not anyone here. Please understand that clearly.

Maybe I'm down on art students, but I liked the thought by Kimber's teacher. "...now you just need to do a couple of hundred paintings." I believe a lot of people aren't willing to do that. They'd rather blame the teachers.

[Steven Sweeney]

Originally Posted by Anthony Emmolo

I remember hearing a teacher in a drawing class make a comment to a young 18 year old know it all, that her peach was not drawn well. Her angry response, "That's the way II see it!? just made the teacher walk away. Can you teacher her in that moment? Of course not.

Anthony,

Thankfully I had lots to learn when I signed up for multi-year studio training, and thankfully I knew that I knew nothing. So when an indelicate appraisal came along, and the suggestion made that my drawing wasn't even salvageable and that I had to start over, I knew what the score was. Twenty years earlier I had blundered out into freelance writing with the attitude that every self-referential filler I wrote was God's gift to Gutenberg, but I was proved to be wrong, and the lesson was not lost on me.

Your recounting this young student's attitude is instructional. In the New Conceit, now that so many are going for formal training, we have the "my guru/studio is more classically pure than yours" comparisons going on all over the place. Though one of the most iconic images of the artist is one with the arm extended, thumb gauging a proportional measurement along a vertical or horizontal pencil or brush, the business of measuring is now being regarded as a crutch of some sort, an impediment to pure "seeing."

This misinterprets the value of the tool. It confuses the wooden rocking chair with the hand planes that shaped the seat and the arms.

One of the benefits of the sight-size work that I was required to begin with was that another pair of eyes, looking through the same reference plumb lines to the subject that I had been looking through, could say with near absolute conviction, "The distance from the top of the kneecap to the ankle bone is too long," and there was almost no way to dispute it. If you said, "Well, that's the way I see it," a kindly instructor might reply, "In a couple of years, maybe you won't be making those kinds of mistakes anymore, but for now you need to re-measure," and he'd hand the thread back to you and move on to the next student. A less kindly instructor would have a different response prepared.

Point being, the instruction can range from measurable standards on one end, to "play it like you feel it" on the other. If a student wants to be able to execute work accurately, including not just drawing but deftly judging values and hues and compositional sight lines, it's useful at least in the early training to have an objective standard by which the student's effort can be measured. Then nobody gets away with peaches that look like deflated basketballs.

I wonder if art schools weren't being driven for about four or more decades there by an anything-goes generation (or two or three), students who didn't want "the man" telling them how to express themselves, rules-are-for-squares, let it all hang out, morphing in the later stages to "how can I make money off of this with the least effort?" -- and when we got to the other side of those years and looked back, we realized we couldn't draw a human face or figure with correct proportions.

But A LOT of people did learn, the ones with inquisitiveness and drive and talent and, yes, good fortune to find themselves in the right places, in spite of what was going on up on the ivy hills. Now they're teaching the rest of us. That's a pretty nice turn of events.

Still, not everyone is ready to have their peaches dissed. And still, walking away is the proper response.