The Artist's Education- Theory or Practice

[Andrew Werby]

Anonymous wrote (in an extremely cogent essay under the "Art School"
thread):

... it becomes
> increasingly difficult to support renaissance practices as the cornerstone
> of any artist's education when one looks at the reality of art and culture
> in the present.

[Perhaps these practices should be taught in the earlier grades. Then an
artist's education can recapitulate the history of art, and make it
possible
to appreciate the increasing liberty afforded the contemporary artist.
Certainly it is easier to comprehend the virtuosity of the Old Masters
when
one has attempted to do similar things, and children, even when praised
for
creating scrawls and scribbles, yearn to produce realistic-looking art.
With
a grounding in historical practice, it would then be possible to follow
the
development of more modern styles, and one would have something to
"deconstruct", instead of starting with the dead formalism of
"foundation"
drawing.]
>
> Like it or not, the western art made since, say,1850 that has most
> influenced professional "fine" artists, historians, critics, and curators
> is, very generally speaking, that which questions traditions and
> conventional assumptions surrounding art. This has led to a situation
> where "fine art" has become an arena for critical investigation of art and
> its meanings in relationship to previous art and to contemporary society.

[But the downside of this is a situation in which the art itself has
dwindled
to an illustration appended to a theory. When one's art is this lame,
who
cares any more what one thinks of the art of the past, or of
contemporary
society? The pomposity of these critical statements must be measured by
the
effectiveness of the means undertaken to make them. Is there always an
inverse
relationship between the two, or does it just appear that way?]

> Displays of craft skill are among the aspects of art that are subject to
> question; it is not a given that these are universally desirable traits in
> art.

[While it is possible to make powerful artistic statements of certain
sorts
with a minimum of craft, these seem to be the kind of thing being said
over
and over, by every new-minted product of the "uglier the better" school
of
art. If one wishes to escape this crowd of dim mediocrities, one must
develop
some skill, so that one's message is not obscured by lack of means to
make it.
Many artists eschew craftsmanship altogether, for fear of making work in
which
failure is evident. If it is impossible to tell what was being
attempted, one
can't be said to have failed. On the other hand, this style of work
seems to
have a sameness to it that dooms it to a limited range of expressive
possibilities.]
>
> Basically, the dominant model of art making has shifted from mastery of
> traditional skills, as in the french academy; to elaborating the properties
> of an established medium, the dominant mode in the first half of this
> century; to, in the past three decades or so, choosing materials and
> techniques best suited to the critical investigation of a subject or idea.
> (I'm generalizing broadly here: there are, of course, exceptions to these
> models.)

[But isn't criticism of a statement or an idea basically secondary to
its
initial expression? Can't we say that this art is in a decadent phase,
subtituting reaction for action and questioning for assertion? Is this
what
needs to be fostered? Shouldn't we be looking to the cohort of new-made
artists for bold new statements, instead of crabbed commentary on those
previously made?]
>
> There are reasons for these changes. I'll leave it to someone else to
> enumerate the arguments that render traditional media, including skillful
> easel painting, a problem for artists who want to make work that is
> persuasively modern or critical. There are other factors, too, that have
> influenced contemporary practice: the realities of getting noticed in the
> marketplace comes to mind, as does the absorbtion of art education into the
> University, where written critical discourse is the coin of the realm.

[This begs the question of whether this academization is a positive and
healthy
development for art as a whole. While it has led to a proliferation of
"written
critical discourse", this material is of interest to almost nobody
outside the
academic realm. And the art itself can hardly be said to have improved
as a
result, either of the University takeover of art education or of the
constantly
rising bar one must hurdle to be noticed by the media, and hence the
name-
recognition driven marketplace.]
>
> So, the "good" fine art academy recognizes that culture is embedded in
> discussions about what art is and what it might be, and that the educated
> artist needs to become aware of the meanings and implications of their work
> in terms of the histories and discourses that bear on them.

[Isn't it boredom with all these graduates and their densely-worded
"statements" that
has given rise to the phenomenon of "Outsider" art? Shouldn't artists
stick first
and foremost to the creation of the art itself, and leave it to the
critics to apply
their pet theories? What do we expect an artist to be, a glib debater
and elucidator
or a maker of physically compelling objects and images? My vote is for
the latter, and
theory be damned.]

This suggests
> an alternative notion of "the fundamentals." Artists also need to deal
> with the messy business of manipulating materials, of course, and to that
> end instruction in drawing and other traditional formal skills is (an ought
> to be) available at almost all art schools and university art departments.

[I'm glad this gets a little slice of the pie, although I think a
student's independent
exploration and experimentation is at least as important as formal
instruction. Ideally,
the art school should provide a student with resources, equipment, and
access to expertise
without forcing him or her into a mold. Paradoxical as it might seem in
an artworld which,
if it agrees on anything it is on the value of new ideas, the artschools
as they exist are
veritable hotbeds of conformity. There seems to be unlimited license
given to instructors
to favor the students who most cravenly internalize the currently
fashionable dicta, while
a student who pursues an independent course courts anathema.]
>

> It is no longer possible to anticipate which materials and techniques an
> artist will use in his or her work: it simply isn't the case that working
> artists necessarily base their practice in drawing, certainly not a kind of
> drawing that requires years of dedicated study. (Check this for yourself
> the next time you visit a contemporary art museum.) Some artist's do need
> a deep investment in traditional drawing and painting skills, but others
> may use audio, or build machines, or arrange found objects, or write, or
> produce videotapes, or commission others to fabricate works, or modify the
> gallery architecture. These activities are not defined or linked by a
> commitment to specific shared craft skills.

[In a field with no sure route to success, fragmentation of effort is
inevitable.
This is why students must be free to chart their own courses, and follow
whatever
seems relevant to their particular artistic bent. It is just as
ridiculous to
attempt to compel students to become little Foucaults and Derridas as to
try and
make them into Leonardos and Raphaels.]

... The notion
> isn't that craft skill corrupts, unless the student is led to confuse
> mastery of craft with quality in art. Rather the assumption is that an
> artist will be expected to answer questions--questions directed at their
> work and at them personally-- about why and how they are using the
> materials and techniques they choose. Endlessly reiterating pre-industrial
> craft skills because they were valued in the past is not an adequate
> answer. Should art students all be made to learn glass blowing, or violin
> playing, or violin building? Surely one is enriched by learning those
> crafts, but how relevant are they to artmaking practice?

[They can be extremely relevant, and should certainly be made available.
The
answer to the "questions" above should have more to do with an artist's
preferences than the fact that paper and pencils were all that was on
offer.
Pre-industrial craft skills are useful because established industries
rarely
throw their doors open to open-ended artistic experimentation. If one
wishes
to make something out of glass, for instance, he or she is not likely to
be
able to have the facilities of Anchor glassworks at hand, it will be
necessary either to figure out how to do it in a studio setting or
forget about
it. The current glut of "junk art" has less to do with a fascination for
the
esthetics of trash (though that can be a factor) than with the fact that
most
artists are relatively impoverished and must perforce make art with
whatever
they can get their hands on.]

[Bob Cantor]

Anonymous wrote:
>
> My only reservation about art instruction in
> earlier grades is my memory of public school teachers turning every subject
> into odious misery.

My memory is of studio courses where we were given tools and time to
play with them, and of being taught that impressionists painted things
the way they really saw them rather than just describing the experience.
The latter was supposed to persuade us to accept abstraction after a
lifetime of being conditioned to use classical realism as the measure of
an artist's skill. Naturally, Monet was used as the example, because
anyone will be immediately impressed with the beauty of the colors and
if you stand far enough away from the painting it starts to become
realistic after all. I can't remember how many times I've heard people
ingenuously repeating that platitude, proud of themselves for their
ability to accept art that is not completely realistic. It's no wonder
that most people who hear an artistic concept more complex than "it's a
painting of a tree" immediately accuse the source of "artspeak" and then
move on to simpler, less demanding works.

> Believe me, I have serious doubts about much that passes for advanced art
> and art education. I share many of your misgivings about the confused
> status of the artist in the current academic milieu: neither craftsperson
> nor scholar. Nor do I see the marketplace as a neutral or benign
> influence. My point, though, is that there are reasons (other than
> conspiracy and fraud) for the contradictions and problems of the present
> situation, and that these problems are best dealt with by being recognized
> and addressed head-on, as opposed to being wished away in favor of a
> nostalgic classicism, as many of the other voices in this group seem to
> want to do.
>

This is one of the best paragraphs I've seen posted to this newsgroup.
Why did you hide it so far down in the posting? I couldn't have said
this better myself and, believe me, I've been trying to for quite some
time!

[Bob Cantor]

Anonymous wrote:
> Balinofski writes to Anon.
> > [...] with their technical and mental equipment,
> > these student can wing it far past the poor student who is given a con
> > job by their instructor: do your own thing. It's easy for the
> > instructor and quite therapeudic for the student. But the results are a
> > despondant bunch of students who go nowhere.
>
> Teacher: "Do your own thing." Student: "Cool." Teacher: "Groovy."
> Student: "Dig it." Etc.
>
> If this is what goes on, of course it is a con. It is also a con if the
> teacher claims to teach skills and doesn't know what they are talking
> about. But you're setting up a straw man--this isn't anybody's idea of a
> good school (although I sadly admit that such useless teachers are tenured
> many places.) You don't seem willing to address the possibility that a
> good art program could be centered around the student developing their own
> work ("DYOT," according to Banofski), and that this might be conducted in
> such a way as to create a challenging, rigorous, and vocationally
> appropriate training.
>

Very well put. In a recent exchange with Balinofsky, we discussed the
ideas of a student having to learn the basics and of only being able to
learn about art from other artists. We had an interesting and
enlightening discussion, but B basically retreated into a position that
only artists can teach studio art courses (which, from my experience,
seems reasonable) and avoided the discussion about the importance of
theory and history in an artists education, as well as avoiding the
theoretical question of why the basics of art, which is fundamentally a
communications medium, must include and be mainly limited to the
knowledge of "color, composition, and draughtsmanship".

It is interesting that in the criticism of art Balinofsky implores us to
forget what we have read and just come forth with our own feelings
straight from our gut, but in the production of art he tells us to spend
as much time as possible acquiring the skills that others have developed
before us. Doesn't B realize that artists who appropriate skills
developed by others run the exact same risk as the critic of simply
restating the ideas which they have been taught are correct? And that a
critic who doesn't build on the ideas of others runs the same risk of
going nowhere as the artist who just tries to do their own thing without
learning the basics?

- Bob Cantor

[Anonymous]

bobc...@bigfoot.com wrote:

> It is interesting that in the criticism of art Balinofsky implores us to
> forget what we have read and just come forth with our own feelings
> straight from our gut, but in the production of art he tells us to spend
> as much time as possible acquiring the skills that others have developed
> before us. Doesn't B realize that artists who appropriate skills
> developed by others run the exact same risk as the critic of simply
> restating the ideas which they have been taught are correct? And that a
> critic who doesn't build on the ideas of others runs the same risk of
> going nowhere as the artist who just tries to do their own thing without
> learning the basics?

I'll second that. I tried to say something similar in my paragraphs that
mention Duchamp in the earlier post in this thread.

Clearly, the question "Theory or Practice?" makes a false distinction: the
two are inextricable.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the kind words, and for rescuing my paragraph from oblivion,
bobcantor.

Any thoughts on how to frame the discussion of "the present situation"?

[Bob Cantor]

Anonymous wrote:
>
> > > Believe me, I have serious doubts about much that passes for advanced art
> > > and art education. I share many of your misgivings about the confused
> > > status of the artist in the current academic milieu: neither craftsperson
> > > nor scholar. Nor do I see the marketplace as a neutral or benign
> > > influence. My point, though, is that there are reasons (other than
> > > conspiracy and fraud) for the contradictions and problems of the present
> > > situation, and that these problems are best dealt with by being recognized
> > > and addressed head-on, as opposed to being wished away in favor of a
> > > nostalgic classicism, as many of the other voices in this group seem to
> > > want to do.
>

> Any thoughts on how to frame the discussion of "the present situation"?
>

Perhaps it's time to rethink our vocabulary. The avant-garde of art has
increasingly blurred the distinction between practice and theory,
between art production and philosophy and psychology and communication.
There was always a relationship, but in modern Western art, with few
exceptions, it's only relatively recently that these concepts have been
allowed to overshadow the traditional visual function of art. It might
be more productive if we were to allow art to take on a definition which
would allow 19th century observers to recognize what is and isn't art,
and create some new name for what we are now calling art. This new thing
would include traditional art objects as well as purely conceptual ones
and everything in between. Unfortunately, to someone like me, it feels
very very right to call these things art, and to give up that
designation has negative connotations that I don't want to give validity
to. Am I being reasonable or unreasonable about this?

We tend to think highly of the Greek culture which was able to treat
their great philosophers as celebreties. Yet in today's society, we
usually limit our praise of great thinkers to those who are thinking
about technology, economy, or politics. Plato or Socrates would be
criticized as new-age BSers who just sit around and talk rather than
actually accomplishing anything. Is this true or am I now guilty myself
of waxing nostalgic? If it is true, is it somehow related to the reason
so many people reject the notion of an artist more interested in concept
than in the actual product? Might this point the way to a happier life
than one which is fueled by materialism and technology worship, or are
we just making things worse by refusing to simply enjoy things without
having to analyze them?

It almost seems a given that a piece of artwork should be capable of
demonstrating value on its own without explanation. Of course, this
assumes we have all the background necessary to be able to appreciate
the work on its own terms. Caravaggio was trashed by critics who didn't
have the background to understand how the depiction of an ordinary or
even homely looking person could be beautiful. But suppose you have all
the background that the artist has, but still require an explanation to
be able to see anything of value in their work. Does this alone say
something about the lack of value in the work? It may seem right that a
work must have value on its own, but can anyone logically explain why?
And is my wanting that explanation an art question or a philosophy one?
Maybe it doesn't really have a place in an arts newsgroup. You tell me.

I guess this has little to do with framing the discussion about art
education. Just some random thoughts collected and posted. Hope you
don't mind.

- Bob

[Gabriel L Romeu]

Bob Cantor wrote:
>
> Anonymous wrote:
> >
> > > > Believe me, I have serious doubts about much that passes for advanced art
> > > > and art education. I share many of your misgivings about the confused
> > > > status of the artist in the current academic milieu: neither craftsperson
> > > > nor scholar. Nor do I see the marketplace as a neutral or benign
> > > > influence. My point, though, is that there are reasons (other than
> > > > conspiracy and fraud) for the contradictions and problems of the present
> > > > situation, and that these problems are best dealt with by being recognized
> > > > and addressed head-on, as opposed to being wished away in favor of a
> > > > nostalgic classicism, as many of the other voices in this group seem to
> > > > want to do.
> >
> > Any thoughts on how to frame the discussion of "the present situation"?
> >
>
> Perhaps it's time to rethink our vocabulary. The avant-garde of art has
> increasingly blurred the distinction between practice and theory,
> between art production and philosophy and psychology and communication.
> There was always a relationship, but in modern Western art, with few
> exceptions, it's only relatively recently that these concepts have been
> allowed to overshadow the traditional visual function of art.

The "visual function of art" was of little importance before the
Rennaissance. The pyschology of perception, influence of the church and
the science of optics resulted in investigations of the perceptions of
perspective by artists who attempted to promote the illusion of the
image rather than content. Before that, the symbolic and referential
was far more important to the artist. The visceral was of little
importance, not spiritual enough. This seems to be similar to the
pluralistic concerns of the post-modernist in conceptual work.

.
>
> I guess this has little to do with framing the discussion about art
> education. Just some random thoughts collected and posted. Hope you
> don't mind.
>
> - Bob

Actually, I enjoyed your post, disagreed with most, but found it well
thought through and from the soul- this is important. Only wish I had
the time to continue, but to busy right now.

Best to you Bob,
gabriel
--
Gabriel L Romeu
http://users.aol.com/romeug --furniture--
http://users.aol.com/romeugp -photographs-

[zi...@interport.net]

Bob Cantor <bob...@erols.com> wrote:

>Anonymous wrote:
>>
>> My only reservation about art instruction in
>> earlier grades is my memory of public school teachers turning every subject
>> into odious misery.

>My memory is of studio courses where we were given tools and time to
>play with them, and of being taught that impressionists painted things
>the way they really saw them rather than just describing the experience.
>The latter was supposed to persuade us to accept abstraction after a
>lifetime of being conditioned to use classical realism as the measure of
>an artist's skill. Naturally, Monet was used as the example, because
>anyone will be immediately impressed with the beauty of the colors and
>if you stand far enough away from the painting it starts to become
>realistic after all. I can't remember how many times I've heard people
>ingenuously repeating that platitude, proud of themselves for their
>ability to accept art that is not completely realistic. It's no wonder
>that most people who hear an artistic concept more complex than "it's a
>painting of a tree" immediately accuse the source of "artspeak" and then
>move on to simpler, less demanding works.
>

>> Believe me, I have serious doubts about much that passes for advanced art
>> and art education. I share many of your misgivings about the confused
>> status of the artist in the current academic milieu: neither craftsperson
>> nor scholar. Nor do I see the marketplace as a neutral or benign
>> influence. My point, though, is that there are reasons (other than
>> conspiracy and fraud) for the contradictions and problems of the present
>> situation, and that these problems are best dealt with by being recognized
>> and addressed head-on, as opposed to being wished away in favor of a
>> nostalgic classicism, as many of the other voices in this group seem to
>> want to do.
>>

>This is one of the best paragraphs I've seen posted to this newsgroup.

>Why did you hide it so far down in the posting? I couldn't have said
>this better myself and, believe me, I've been trying to for quite some
>time!

This is a good paragraph only if the terms nostalgic and classicism
are defined.

Too many people think any one working figuratively is a clasicist. You
sound like you do. Clasiscism means looking back towards the art of
the Roman and Greek past, usually through the filter of artists like
Poussin as a source for models of your own work. This also means that
you feel yourself most yourself wehn you are most like them[I have
reported this earlier]. I have found nothing like that on this group.
What I have found on this group is no nothingrejection of modernism or
no nothing support for post abstract espressionist abstraction. It
isn't the only thing I have found but both of those extremes exist
here.

I have not found anyone who even knows how to discuss "classical"
painting. Nor have I found it discussed at all by anyone.

I love Poussin. Last summer [1996] I was moved as much as any time in
my life by a painting by Poussin's The exposure of Moses in the
Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. But I am a modernist artist. It is quite
possible that you would find me a "nostalgic classicist". But from
where I stand, that would be a measure of your limitations not my
actual direction. You would probably call Balthus that, too. Yet he
was the portrait painter preferred by the French avant garde in the
30s. He painted the portraits of all of Matisse's children, Miro and
his daughter, the Comtesse de Noailles[a famous french poetess of her
period who had a salon], Andre Derain and his wife and numerous art
world figures. If you see him as a classicist, that is a measure of
your limitations not his. He was a modernist and most influenced by
Bonnard. Was he a classicist too? How about Giacometti-what was he in
his later work-and was itless good than the earlier work? What about
the late Montserrat of Gonzales-was that nostalgic clasicism> I see
you as possiblky prejudiced against any relation to the past and
caught in an impossible spin ad astra.

And what the hell do you mean by nostalgia? Nostalgia means to return
to the pastg without true understanding of its meaning! Are you sure
you don;t do that for the period of 1910 to 60?

Sincerely,
Gabriel

[zi...@interport.net]

[Anonymous]

I wrote:

>> [...] My point, though, is that there are reasons (other than

>> conspiracy and fraud) for the contradictions and problems of the present
>> situation, and that these problems are best dealt with by being recognized
>> and addressed head-on, as opposed to being wished away in favor of a
>> nostalgic classicism, as many of the other voices in this group seem to
>> want to do.

zi...@interport.net wrote:

> This is a good paragraph only if the terms nostalgic and classicism
> are defined.

> Too many people think any one working figuratively is a clasicist. You
> sound like you do. Clasiscism means looking back towards the art of
> the Roman and Greek past, usually through the filter of artists like
> Poussin as a source for models of your own work. This also means that
> you feel yourself most yourself wehn you are most like them[I have
> reported this earlier]. I have found nothing like that on this group.
> What I have found on this group is no nothingrejection of modernism or
> no nothing support for post abstract espressionist abstraction. It
> isn't the only thing I have found but both of those extremes exist
> here.

I appreciate you jumping in here, Gabriel, and demanding precision in
language even in this ephemeral forum.

I wonder, though, whether you read my earlier posts--including the one that
paragraph was pulled from-- in this thread and the "Art Schools
Worthwhile?" thread that preceeded it. I think we're on the same side of
the fence when it comes to "no nothing rejection" of modernism. (I haven't
noticed too many defenders of post-50's abstraction here, maybe you can
bring them to my attention.)

I was addressing the tendency of some contributors here to treat the last
century of western art as an irrelevant or pernicious abberation ("put-on,"
"con job," etc.) that should have little bearing on the education (and
presumably, the eventual practice) of artists today. To quote Balinofsky
in the post that started this, "Is there one out there that teaches in the
great classic manner?"

I don't believe that any depiction of the figure is inherantly
classisicist. Perhaps you got that impression because the "great classic
manner" that I refuse to accept uncritically does focus on study of the
figure. I don't reject figuration or skillful drawing: I'm just trying to
suggest that acquiring these skills does not an artist make, and I would be
very surprised if you disagree.

Confusion about what "classicism" means is understandable. Your definition
is correct in one context, but it is not the only sense in which the word
"classic" is conventionally used. Wondering whether I'd been inacurrate in
my choice of words, I looked in the glossary of "Art History and It's
Methods" (Phaidon, 1995):

"CLASSIC: In its current most widely used sense classic describes
something which is the best of its kind and which has been recognized as
such over a period of time. In older usage the word is closely associated
with the term classical and and with the balanced character of what have
become the best-known types of representation of the arts of antiquity, and
hence the opposite pole to the concept of the romantic. It has overtones
of calm, balance and superiority. [The definition continues with a
discussion of Wolfflin's art historical theory of cycles of development:
early, classical, and late (or baroque).]"

By "Nostalgic Classicism," I meant classic in the first sense: I was not
referring to "classical" painting per se.

> And what the hell do you mean by nostalgia? Nostalgia means to return
> to the pastg without true understanding of its meaning!

Right. It also connotes idealization of the past.

> Nostalgia means to return
> to the pastg without true understanding of its meaning! Are you sure
> you don;t do that for the period of 1910 to 60?

You'll need to spell out this charge more specifically before I can respond
to it. We all fantasize and operate with vast areas of ignorance, but I'm
not sure what you are specifically referring to as my nostalgic
misunderstanding. Truth to tell, I'd guess I'm more vunerable to nostalgia
for a later period, say 1960 to 1990, which corresponds to my own formation
as an artist.

> I see
> you as possiblky prejudiced against any relation to the past and
> caught in an impossible spin ad astra.

Fortunately, I'm not aboard Mir.

Your conclusion again makes me wonder whether you read my posts. [I will
re-post them on request.] I'm arguing FOR a conscious relationship to the
past, including recent history, as opposed to an endless, uncritical
repetition of forms and techniques of the past. Do you take issue with
that?

I'd be very interested to know your views on the larger subjects of this
thread: what makes an educated artist? What makes a good artist? What does
a good art school look like now?

At some point, I'd like to ask a few questions about the milieu in which
you studied art. For starters, (now I'm referring to something you wrote
in another thread) who in Southern California would you cite that knows
"how to read a painting" ?

[zi...@interport.net]

>zi...@interport.net wrote:

>You'll need to spell out this charge more specifically before I can respond
>to it. We all fantasize and operate with vast areas of ignorance, but I'm
>not sure what you are specifically referring to as my nostalgic
>misunderstanding. Truth to tell, I'd guess I'm more vunerable to nostalgia
>for a later period, say 1960 to 1990, which corresponds to my own formation
>as an artist.

>>

>Your conclusion again makes me wonder whether you read my posts. [I will
>re-post them on request.] I'm arguing FOR a conscious relationship to the
>past, including recent history, as opposed to an endless, uncritical
>repetition of forms and techniques of the past. Do you take issue with
>that?

>I'd be very interested to know your views on the larger subjects of this
>thread: what makes an educated artist? What makes a good artist? What does
>a good art school look like now?

>At some point, I'd like to ask a few questions about the milieu in which
>you studied art. For starters, (now I'm referring to something you wrote
>in another thread) who in Southern California would you cite that knows
>"how to read a painting" ?

There does seem to be anareaof agreement between us. On the other
hand, my initial reaction to my art education was to reject the
character of the educattion although not its meat.

I am not sure who is teaching in Southern California now. Garabedian
tends to focus on other things -metaphor for one, but he understands
pictorial structure. It is in his work.

But I think he isn't teaching any more.

There used to be a guy I knew as a printmaker, but I never saw any of
his paintings who taught at UCLA named Eliot Elgard [I think]. I
believe he was knowledgeable.

If there are any students of Diebenkorn, Weeks, Bell, Stanley Lewis or
Lester Goldman [the lasyt two from Kansas City] they would know
something. Some of the kids from Yale who were up there when Gretna
Campbell or Louis Finkelstein were teaching would, too. Typical Yalies
think they do, but I have problems with their eyes.

Some of mine are there, don't remember names, but they came visiting
when I had my LA show some years back. They studied with several
different people all of whom had different but related takes on the
thing, always better than just one. There also are some people from
the NY Stdio School of the old days out there. They had a triple
threat exposure to it whether they know what to do with it.
Stanford had a couple-Oliveira knows stuff. Ther were a couple of
good abstract surrealists up in the SF area, married to each other for
quite a while. Can't get the names right now , but they were
interesting as artists and as teachers. He taught at Stanford.

I never had much use for USC's faculty. I met two of them on an NEA
jury-one was already elsewhere but was a buddy of the other.

I thought they were both bigoted and uninformed.

There is another ex-Bay area guy who may be teaching in the SOuthern
CA-he now paints very realistic still-lifes, but the knowledge of
forming is still there.[not that I am against painting realistic
still-lifes, but detail sometimes gets in the way].

I do know some quite realistic painters whose forming is
extraordinary. One on the east coast who retired from teach a few
years back, rather young is a guy named Stanley Friedman. I say this
so as not be accused of total prejudice.

As far as education for the 60s to 90s is concerned-that was a period
when there still were some good schools, or at least schools with good
people in them. Weeks was at BU, Bell at Parsons, Thiebaud who is no
dope was at Davis, Joab Brown and one of the othermajor Bay Area
people-a-Bischoff-were at Berkeley,

I would like to read your posts about art schools, I haven't read
them.

The sad thing is that the stuff coming out ofd the schools looks all
alike from wherever it comes. And itris looking pretty awful nowadays.
But it isn't because they can;t draw. They can't do that, but even
more important they don't have ideas or understanding about picture
making or even thebeginnings of a voice.

Technique should follow ideas, not the other way around. They don't
look too much like they have any or have the faintest idea where to
get them from.

My old school has been taken over by post modernist know nothings [got
it right that time]. But some of my old colleagues and ex-friends have
formed[under the heavyhand of a bunch of dumb neoacademic collectors]
a new school which is as bad as the moderne academies in the other
direction. Everything is based on anatomy! The kids they turn out have
lots of hand but no mind, no sould and absoilutely no more
understanding than the worst of the conceptualists.

You know the conceptual artists don't get it! Many of the best of
themodernists werel conceptual. What does it mean? It means that they
thought about the meaning of their forms and the meaning of their
activity.

Back to classic. I think that the meaning that your source gives you
is baloney. If you can put Mondrian and Raphael and Poussin into the
same category of "classic" then the word is meaningless.

I wrote a thesis [had to to get my MFA] called some disparate uses of
color as a portest against Arthur Upham Pope's "Mode of line and local
tone." Whih lumped Ukiyo'e together with Matisse, among others. And
that is really dumb!

I prefer to keep the word Classical meaning Neoclassic. All other
things I call by their right names. Mondrian is a Neoplastic artist.
His name for himself. Torres Garcia was friendly with that school but
something else closer in some ways to Klee. Kandinsky was a
Non-objective artist-his word. All the guys like this crew [including
Klee and T-G when they were such] are abstract artists. Not classic
and sure as hell not neoclassic.

I have no name for what I do. But I know it is not neoclassic nor
classic. It is also not nostaligic, but I am influenced by my notion
of various styles in the past from time to time and in the same work.
Sounds more like a mannerist to me than anything else. But I reserve
that word for the people who believed in their "maniera" the true
mannerists of the first and second generations, Michelangelo and
Raphael, Rosso Fiorentino, Polidoro Da Caravaggio, Pontormo, Rosso
Fiorentino Beccafumi, Parmigianino and a few more in the next
generation.

By theway I obviosuly agree that we all need art history. It frees us
it doesn't trap us, unless we want to be slaves.

Enough or too much for tonight.

Solong all.
Gabriel

[Anonymous]

Another repost. This was in response to Balinofsky's reply to the previous
message:

dro...@direct.ca wrote:

> Balinofski writes to Anon.
> You have spoken like a true new age art buff.

Ugh. "New Age." This is offensive. Please define. I'm not involved with
crystals.

> If you thought that I feel artists should paint like Rubens or
> Titian you didn't quite get the point. From them you get basic
> aesthetics of course. Aesthetics are pretty well universal and have a
> tendancy to travel over centuries. Think of the cave paintings.

I don't agree that aesthetics are universal, although their may be a few
visual characteristics, like symmetry, that humans always respond to.
Aesthetics in general is a social agreement: why is a painter like
Bougereau, for instance, appreciated as a glorious master in one age and a
cloying hack in another (and an irrelevant oddity from the point of view of
a different culture)? What is the common aesthetic principal between
Bougereau and the Lascaux caves, anyway? How about Rousseau, to keep
things French? Or Dubuffet?

> But from the master of the past, artists at a good academic school
> are led up to today's standards. Which means that there are many things
> we know now about tonality and design and color that were touched upon
> in the early days.

I'm not trying to minimize that which can be learned from long study of
historical works and techniques. I simply think that one ALSO has to
involve oneself in the art (and discussions surrounding art) made in the
last half-century in order to understand "today's standards." Much recent
art emphasizes other aspects of art than color, composition, and
draughtsmanship. Some of it pointedly insults those classical virtues.
Duchamp's "Fountain" has been subject of dispute here exactly because it is
one of the signal works of the urge to reconsider the function and value of
art which has been so pervasive since the sixties.

Like it or not, Duchamp's readymades are considered by many within the
"advanced art" domain to be the among most important sculpture of this
century. Artists-in-training don't need to agree with this assessment, but
I think that they do need to understand why it is commonly held. Their
work will be much better served if their skepticism rises from information
rather than ignorance. I'd guess that you would say much the same about
painting and drawing skills, and, if the students are painting and drawing,
I would agree with you.

> [...] with their technical and mental equipment,
> these student can wing it far past the poor student who is given a con
> job by their instructor: do your own thing. It's easy for the
> instructor and quite therapeudic for the student. But the results are a
> despondant bunch of students who go nowhere.

Teacher: "Do your own thing." Student: "Cool." Teacher: "Groovy."
Student: "Dig it." Etc.

If this is what goes on, of course it is a con. It is also a con if the
teacher claims to teach skills and doesn't know what they are talking
about. But you're setting up a straw man--this isn't anybody's idea of a
good school (although I sadly admit that such useless teachers are tenured
many places.) You don't seem willing to address the possibility that a
good art program could be centered around the student developing their own
work ("DYOT," according to Banofski), and that this might be conducted in
such a way as to create a challenging, rigorous, and vocationally
appropriate training.

> I have continual workshops where I have to get such students up to
> speed. You may feel cynical about this but tell that to the students
> who finally are getting elements that passed them by in unscrupulous art
> colleges.

> The fact is, the results speak for themselves.

Right. Again, I agree that knowledge of tonality, design, rendering forms,
and so forth can be really, really valuable. I just don't think that is
enough, or universal, or necessarily needs to preceed any talk about why
your are using these techniques or what the work means.

I remember a short conversation I had with a painter a few years ago, one
who attended a critically oriented art school that taught almost nothing in
the way of drawing and painting technique. He was asking me about my own
drawing skills, how I came by them, and he told me that he had been
inviting an older, classically trained, painter into his studio for
critiques in terms of color and other formal attributes. I think his words
were "I don't want to keep making the same painting over and over." He
recognized that his limited technical knowledge was limiting his work, and
he took steps to deepen his understanding of the possibilities.

But his theory-oriented education did enable him to develop his art in ways
that he never would have in a more traditional atelier environment. As a
result, he is a very successful artist by almost any measure: his influence
on other artists is considerable; he is well rewarded financially and with
institutional attention (big-museum travelling retrospectives while in his
forties; critics declaring him the best living American painter, etc.),
and--the main thing--his work is truly compelling. The results speak for
themselves.

[Anonymous]

zi...@interport.net wrote:

> Technique should follow ideas, not the other way around.

Amen, at least for the most part. You put your finger on the crux of the
argument here.

Your education and orientation is different from mine, and I'll be very
interested to hear your comments and explore areas where our ideas divurge.
(Comments from other readers are very welcome, too, of course.) I'd like
to encourage the kind of cross-regional and cross-generational discussion
of art that the internet makes possible, but which is pretty scarce as far
as I've seen so far.

> I would like to read your posts about art schools, I haven't read
> them.

Here they are. These were in response to Balinofski's posts, which are
liberally quoted:

dro...@direct.ca wrote:

> Are there any good art schools out there?
> Do any of them teach the fundamentals of art? You know, color, tone,
> drawing, design, how and where to observe. Maybe many here are above
> all that. Still, why not learn it first and then if you must: forget
> it. Kind of like learning the technique of the violin and then doing
> your own thing whatever that is.

Obviously, "good" is going to depend on your idea of what makes a good,
well educated artist.

As is clear in these newsgroup discussions, there is disagreement about
what constitutes "the fundamentals of art." Apprenticeship in Renaissance
drawing skills (linear perspective, chiaroscuro, etc.) and media (charcoal,
oils, and intaglio printing for the painters; bronze casting and marble for
the sculptors) long served as "the basics" at art academies. But it becomes

increasingly difficult to support renaissance practices as the cornerstone
of any artist's education when one looks at the reality of art and culture
in the present.

Like it or not, the western art made since, say,1850 that has most

influenced professional "fine" artists, historians, critics, and curators
is, very generally speaking, that which questions traditions and
conventional assumptions surrounding art. This has led to a situation
where "fine art" has become an arena for critical investigation of art and
its meanings in relationship to previous art and to contemporary society.

Displays of craft skill are among the aspects of art that are subject to
question; it is not a given that these are universally desirable traits in
art.

Basically, the dominant model of art making has shifted from mastery of

traditional skills, as in the french academy; to elaborating the properties
of an established medium, the dominant mode in the first half of this
century; to, in the past three decades or so, choosing materials and
techniques best suited to the critical investigation of a subject or idea.
(I'm generalizing broadly here: there are, of course, exceptions to these
models.)

There are reasons for these changes. I'll leave it to someone else to

enumerate the arguments that render traditional media, including skillful
easel painting, a problem for artists who want to make work that is
persuasively modern or critical. There are other factors, too, that have
influenced contemporary practice: the realities of getting noticed in the
marketplace comes to mind, as does the absorbtion of art education into the
University, where written critical discourse is the coin of the realm.

So, the "good" fine art academy recognizes that culture is embedded in

discussions about what art is and what it might be, and that the educated
artist needs to become aware of the meanings and implications of their work

in terms of the histories and discourses that bear on them. This suggests

an alternative notion of "the fundamentals." Artists also need to deal
with the messy business of manipulating materials, of course, and to that
end instruction in drawing and other traditional formal skills is (an ought
to be) available at almost all art schools and university art departments.

> Or learning the craft of acting.
> Or learning the craft of glass blowing.
> Or learning any of the arts. Or just learning anything.
> Back to the art schools. Is there one out there that teaches in the
> great classic manner?

There are a few schools (I think the New York Studio School is one, I
guess the Art Student's League also carries on largely unchanged) that
train more or less in the style and content of the nineteenth century
atelier, which I assume counts as "the classic manner." Most college and
University art departments offer some classes based on that model as well,
although it increasingly is moved to the margins.

It is no longer possible to anticipate which materials and techniques an
artist will use in his or her work: it simply isn't the case that working
artists necessarily base their practice in drawing, certainly not a kind of
drawing that requires years of dedicated study. (Check this for yourself
the next time you visit a contemporary art museum.) Some artist's do need
a deep investment in traditional drawing and painting skills, but others
may use audio, or build machines, or arrange found objects, or write, or
produce videotapes, or commission others to fabricate works, or modify the
gallery architecture. These activities are not defined or linked by a
commitment to specific shared craft skills.

Or do they feel that the students who arrive are
> filled with great aesthetics merely to be released at a moments
> notice? Do these schools feel that any classic training will hamper
> their natural senses? And in fact do you feel the same?
> "Doin' their own thing" has been the standard of art schools for the
> past many decades. I just want to know if they've gotten the message
> that they are delivering absolutely nothing to the students. One reason
> why there are literally hundreds of workshops springing forth throughout
> the country: teaching that which the colleges not only don't teach but
> sadly CAN'T teach.
> I'm assuming that just about everyone one out there is a NATURAL BORN
> TALENT. Instruction be damned.

As I hope I've suggested above, this isn't the attitude at all. The notion

isn't that craft skill corrupts, unless the student is led to confuse
mastery of craft with quality in art. Rather the assumption is that an
artist will be expected to answer questions--questions directed at their
work and at them personally-- about why and how they are using the
materials and techniques they choose. Endlessly reiterating pre-industrial
craft skills because they were valued in the past is not an adequate
answer. Should art students all be made to learn glass blowing, or violin
playing, or violin building? Surely one is enriched by learning those
crafts, but how relevant are they to artmaking practice?

As the student's work develops intellectual rigor alongside formal
definition, the need for technical skill appropriate to their project
becomes evident, and the artist must develop it: at school, through private
instruction, or by any other means.

I think some of the criticisms here of drawing, for example, being taught
by people who can't really draw are well founded: the qualities that make a
successful and interesting artist--one who gets hired--often have little to
do with knowledge of the traditional craft skills they are asked to teach.
This is a problem of shoehorning current practice into an outdated model of
education, an arrangement from which nobody benefits.

Students who devote their education to learning to draw a passable
Rubens-style nude or Constable-ish landscape painting will be rudely
shocked to discover that their hard-won displays of old-fashioned skill
seem naive and uninteresting to those in the professional art community,
who look for sophistication about what it means to present that sort of
work today. (Not to say that there woudn't be some market for their
work...it is just unlikely to fly as "fine art.")

At its best, an art program including critical discussion and historical
study as part of the development of a body of artwork (in any media) seems
to me a very demanding course of study that certainly involves "learning
anything." I hope it is clear that this does not mean abandoning all
standards or imagining that students arrive at school with fully developed
"great aesthetics."

There are real problems with art schools and other art institutions these
days, but I doubt they'll be solved if we--or our schools--simply curse
decades of art history and pretend that we live in Renaissance Florence.

[Anonymous]

Yet another repost:

Andrew Werby <dre...@lanminds.com> wrote:

> Anonymous wrote :

>
> ... it becomes
> > increasingly difficult to support renaissance practices as the cornerstone
> > of any artist's education when one looks at the reality of art and culture
> > in the present.
>

> [Perhaps these practices should be taught in the earlier grades. [etc...]

Oh, I'd love it if art and interpretation of visual culture were introduced
in earlier grades. I've worked with bright, privileged students at glossy
colleges and universities who are stunted at the level of nine-year-olds
when it comes to making or interpreting images. This is in sharp contrast
to their relative sophistication about literature, music, science or
politics. Very depressing... My only reservation about art instruction in

earlier grades is my memory of public school teachers turning every subject
into odious misery.

This culture-wide ignorance about visual art is at the heart of many of the
problems that you bring up below: sophisticated art seems hopelessly arcane
and esoteric to those who aren't familiar with the milieu in which it is
produced, and that turns out to be most of society, even including some
artists.

> > This has led to a situation
> > where "fine art" has become an arena for critical investigation of art and
> > its meanings in relationship to previous art and to contemporary society.
>
> [But the downside of this is a situation in which the art itself has
> dwindled

> to an illustration appended to a theory. [...]

This is a downside, but I think it is unfair to tar all recent art with the
same brush. I recall an essay that stated that the best conceptual artists
had the sense to begin with a bad idea. A good idea is already complete,
so the artist's contribution could only be a pale illustration, whereas a
bad idea is full of holes that allow room for development and play.
There's something to that, I think. (This may also help explain why humor
is so prevalent in art since the sixties.)

Art that is merely an illustration appended to a theory...seems to me that
this is the eternal problem of mediocre academic art. We've all seen
dull-as-dust academic realism, ludicrous faux-expressionism, blinkered
"push-and-pull" abstraction and inane "socially conscious" works that claim
Foucault or some other author for their justification. Regardless of the
reigning verities, a large number of aspiring artists will try to please
their teachers through flattery and superficial imitation, rather than to
abstract and apply principles in a fresh and vivid way suited to their own
situation.

The best solution that I can think of is an environment of rigorous
critique that is skeptical of its own premises, but even then you'll see
much mediocre work. Making compelling art is difficult, and
extraordinarily good art is, by definition, exceptional.

> The pomposity of these critical statements must be measured by
> the effectiveness of the means undertaken to make them. Is there always an
> inverse relationship between the two, or does it just appear that way?]

Can you clarify this with specific examples?

>
> > Displays of craft skill are among the aspects of art that are subject to
> > question; it is not a given that these are universally desirable traits in
> > art.
>
> [While it is possible to make powerful artistic statements of certain
> sorts

> with a minimum of craft [...]

> Many artists eschew craftsmanship altogether, for fear of making work in
> which failure is evident.

Actually, many contemporary artists TRY to make failure evident! N.B.
"Abject," "Pathetic," "Slacker."

>If it is impossible to tell what was being attempted, one can't be said to
have failed.

I think one CAN be said to have failed if the work (define "the work" as
broadly as you like) doesn't supply enough clues to allow the viewer to
somehow comprehend it, even for the intentionally foible-ridden work
mentioned above. But my view is also a tenet of the "theoretical" or
"critical" model of art education, which places far more emphasis on the
question of what is being attempted--and why, and what does that
imply--than does the classical technique-oriented approach.

> On the other hand, this style of work seems to
> have a sameness to it that dooms it to a limited range of expressive
> possibilities.]

Can you elaborate on what you men by "this style?" What are examples?

> >
[Here I'm omitting a good question about how art advances and what we
should expect from artists. I'm copping out on this one only because I'm
running out of time. We can return to this later if you want.]

> > [...] There are reasons for these changes. [...] the realities of

getting noticed in the
> > marketplace comes to mind, as does the absorbtion of art education into the
> > University, where written critical discourse is the coin of the realm.
>
> [This begs the question of whether this academization is a positive and
healthy

> development for art as a whole. [...] And the art itself can hardly be

said to have improved
> as a result, either of the University takeover of art education or of the
> constantly rising bar one must hurdle to be noticed by the media, and
hence the
> name-recognition driven marketplace.]

I agree that my earlier post does beg these important questions. My
purpose in that post was to describe the rationale for some current
orthodoxies in "advanced" art practice. In my occasional perusal of this
newsgroup, the critique of contemporary art (and art school) appears mostly
as ill-informed caricature: "put-on," "do your own thing," "modern crap,"
and so forth. Tellingly, this railing against the present rarely focuses
on any art made since1970. For people who might be looking here to
understand art and the debates surrounding it, or for students who are
deciding whether and how to pursue art, I thought it would be a good idea
to offer what I see as a more realistic--and certainly less
dismissive--view of the situation.

Believe me, I have serious doubts about much that passes for advanced art
and art education. I share many of your misgivings about the confused
status of the artist in the current academic milieu: neither craftsperson
nor scholar. Nor do I see the marketplace as a neutral or benign

influence. My point, though, is that there are reasons (other than

conspiracy and fraud) for the contradictions and problems of the present
situation, and that these problems are best dealt with by being recognized
and addressed head-on, as opposed to being wished away in favor of a
nostalgic classicism, as many of the other voices in this group seem to
want to do.

> >

> > So, the "good" fine art academy recognizes that culture is embedded in
> > discussions about what art is and what it might be, and that the educated
> > artist needs to become aware of the meanings and implications of their work
> > in terms of the histories and discourses that bear on them.
>
> [Isn't it boredom with all these graduates and their densely-worded
> "statements" that has given rise to the phenomenon of "Outsider" art?

In part, I suppose. I guess a version of this was involved when Dubuffet
championed "art brut" as the antidote to "asphyxiating culture." It is a
complicated issue, though, depending on which "outsider" art you mean.
Much of the appeal of "folk art" is that it nostalgically restates
traditional values. I don't know whether that reactionary tendency can be
blamed on pretentious MFA holders.

> [...] There seems to be unlimited license given to instructors

> to favor the students who most cravenly internalize the currently
> fashionable dicta, while a student who pursues an independent course
courts anathema.]

Twas ever thus, sad to say.
> >
[...] It is just as ridiculous to

> attempt to compel students to become little Foucaults and Derridas as to
> try and make them into Leonardos and Raphaels.]

Agreed. However, some focus in the program--a set of questions or problems
that the students are all expected to confront and situate themselves in
relation to--is valuable, even though some will interpret this as
indoctrination. The alternative, I'm-entitled-to-my-opinion "pluralism,"
rarely leads to good results, because the students are not challenged.
>
[Here I'm snipping more due to time constraints]

> [...] established industries

> rarely
> throw their doors open to open-ended artistic experimentation.

By the way, I believe the Kohler porcelain and plumbing company offers
artist residencies, including the run of the plant. A fine model for other
culturally-minded industrialists.

Thanks for your thoughtful response to my post, AW.

--Ano.

[sch...@lookingglass.net]

>>Like it or not, Duchamp's readymades are considered by many within the

"advanced art" domain to be the among most important sculpture of this
century. Artists-in-training don't need to agree with this assessment,
but I think that they do need to understand why it is commonly held. <<

As someone who has been through the trauma of earning two degrees
in art (BFA and MFA) from two different schools:

I just wanted to jump in here to express my appreciation for your
voluminous contributions to the discussions in this news group. I find
your articles intelligently composed and common-sense based -- something
that is sorely lacking in so many of the threads over the years I've
been participating in R.A.F. For a long time I just played the jester
to the masses who visit here sometimes, or freguently. The quote I
have zeroed in on above says so much in so few words about why so many
of the long-time contributors to this group end up sounding like
Joe or Joan Dodo who think of ART as some bicyclists still think
it's correct to ride facing traffic -- on the left side of the road
(or on the right if you're reading this from where that applies).

T'bird.

PS The same general kudos and thanks go to Gabriel Laderman.

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
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[Anonymous]

sch...@lookingglass.net wrote:

> I just wanted to jump in here to express my appreciation for your
> voluminous contributions to the discussions in this news group.

Thank you for the kind words. I'm not sure I fully subscribe to the
bicycle metaphor: I might approve of artists who pedal against the tide.
Nevertheless, I appreciate your remarks, T'bird, and I look forward to your
thoughts about the "artists education" topic.