Good art schools?
a.bucsay
I went to school for Chemical Engineering and then Pharmaceutical Science
(special emphasis on Cosmetic Science and Technology.) Art has always been
a love of mine, but my pragmatic side and dislike of poverty has kept me
from it for TOO LONG. Live is too short to ignore your loves. My passion
for art was re ignited while I worked in a gallery for three years. I
recently started painting again. If I were to venture back to school
again, where would be a good place to go? I love colors, aromas, painting,
sculpture, metals and crystals. I am good with my hands mechanically, but
do not have good tweezer dexterity. I have good skills spatially ... I
could figure out how to put the square box into a round hole. Any advise?
Thank you for taking the time to respond.
--
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Anita Bucsay
a.bu...@ix.netcom.com
1st Water Fine Art
The Original MICROGALLERY TO GO
http://www.netcom.com/~a.bucsay/1stWaterFineArt.html
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William O. Barrett
a.bucsay wrote:
> If I were to venture back to school again, where would be a good place to go?
It would help if you provided some details here, otherwise any advice
will mainly reflect the personal leanings of the people giving it. For
instance: where do you live, can you move anywhere else, what can you
afford, how much time do you have, what kind of colleges do you like
(big, small, etc.)? There is a HUGE variety of choices out there, and
what you like and whether you FIT with the school you are attending is
far more important than other people's personal opinions.
> I love colors, aromas, painting, sculpture, metals and crystals.
So does nearly everyone else in the art world. Say something more
relevant: do you like or need structure, do you love freedom and making
your own choices, do you do abstract work, do you do realistic work,
etc.?
In other words, the best place for you to go is the place that suits
your needs and personality. There is no "best" school out there, but
there are surely some best schools for you. Start thinking about
yourself, what you want, and what you need in an educational setting.
That should guide your search, not advice from the general public who
has no knowledge of you as a person/artist.
Jacob Mattison
William O. Barrett wrote:
>
> It would help if you provided some details here, otherwise any advice
> will mainly reflect the personal leanings of the people giving it. For
> instance: where do you live, can you move anywhere else, what can you
> afford, how much time do you have, what kind of colleges do you like
> (big, small, etc.)?
Also, and very important, why are you going to school? What do you plan
to do with your degree when you get out (if you even need a degree)? Do
you want to teach? Do you want to make it in the New York gallery
scene? Do you just want to improve your own work?
At a lot of schools, including mine, you pay big money for the name of
the school on your diploma. If you don't need the prestigious name,
don't pay for it!
--
Jacob Mattison matt...@dolphin.upenn.edu
Department of Fine Arts University of Pennsylvania
perhaps some chocolate chip cookies and milk
zi...@interport.net
This post is merely a little bit of comment on the following paragraph
from the last ome.
>Also, and very important, why are you going to school? What do you plan
>to do with your degree when you get out (if you even need a degree)? Do
>you want to teach? Do you want to make it in the New York gallery
>scene? Do you just want to improve your own work?
>--
>Jacob Mattison matt...@dolphin.upenn.edu
>Department of Fine Arts University of Pennsylvania
I am afraid there is a point beyond which I do not believe in cultural
relativism.
As far as I am concerned going to a good art school is going where a
student can learn how to be a good artist, and that only. I am
totally uninterested in what happens to commercial artists. That world
requires skills and an ability to get with whatever the going range of
kinds of things is to be. The art schools cross country and in other
countries seem to have done a good job at this.
They have done a poor job of training artists to even know what good
work is, let alone giving them any kind of back bone so that they
could stick with it once they are out of school. Teaching students how
to make it in the art world is something I would never do. There are
places for that but I would not care to tell any one about them.
One of the things which tends to be true about big, old, messy
professional art schools, is that somewhere in them you can often
find a few teachers who teach something truly worth while. And if you
are looking for that, you are in luck. The smaller the school, the
less likely someon like that isto be found. The newer the school the
less likely it is to be other than a hobby horse school. Such hobby
horse schools are CIA and The New York Academy. Old messy schools
with a chance are for example, Kansas City Art Institute, the Art
Institute of Chicago, Pratt, Cooper Union, California College of Arts
and Crafts, RISDI. These are all schools whose major thrust, from my
vantage point, is the production of establishment artists of no
particular quality. But within them, each has some serious and
thoughtful teachers. If you are lucky, bright and/or obstinate, you
will find them and learn something valuable. Yale is too small to work
unless the reigning ideolody of the school makes sense. CIA is
dedicated to the extreme of whatever will be the next avant garde. The
New York Academy is teaching a simplistic version of academic art.
Even M. Deli would be put off by the school. They can't stand Dali,
for example because he is a modernist and an irrational composer, and
his understanding of anatomy was not constructional enough nor fluid
enough to meet their standards. They are pushing a kind of
neo-neoclassic painting and sculpture style based on cast drawing,
anatomical drawing and invented figure composition. The guiding lights
are a group of neo-conservative collectors. Unfortunately the
collectors do not collect live artists as much as dead ones[nineteenth
century academics].
But in each of the big old art schools there are some really
knowledgable and serious people. They range from useful abstract
painters through worthwhile artists who teach perceptual drawing and
painting skills.
Then there is the New York Studio School and several variants on it
nationwide. This school bases its teaching on a close connection with
drawing and painting from the motif combining modernist with somewhat
earlier undertsandings. There are good people involved, and the
directors tend to be strong personalities very involved with art and
with their students.
Also from time to time there are summer programs which ae interesting.
At the mometn the ones I find most interesting are that at Chautauqua,
which is run by Don Kimes, chairman of the art department at American
U. in DC and includes on its faculty Stanley Lewis-one of the most
productive teachers in art schools and colleges in the last twenty
years.[he also teaches at Amer. U. duringthe year]. Another is Ox-Bow,
run by the Chicago Art Institute. One of their faculty, George
Liebert, runs the school. He is a humane administrator and a very
interesting and knowledgeable painting critic. The school has a series
of discreet seminars, so one can go there for no more than two weeks
at a time, unless one is on a work scholarship for the summer. Many
different things are offered. Their perceptual painter has lately
shared his teaching with a powerful abstract critic from the NY area.
Skowhegan no longer calls itself a school. I think they would be
delighted if someone said that they were helping young artists learn
how to make it in the art world. The Vermont Studio School has, at
least on a cosmetic level, followed Skowehegan's lead, although they
are still providing instruction. From time to time, this instruction
is excellent. But you have to know who the people are before hand and
know either their teaching reputation or what their work looks like
before you can go profitably.
The exhibitions of student work in graduate schools which have
accompanied the CAA meeting in recent years, have had work which looks
the same from every single school. The differences are not apparent.
It all looks as though it belongs in second or third rate
establishment galleries.
This is why choosing a school has to be done with great care. It is
also why I reccommend spending a summer in a good summer program
before you choose, so that you have some internal standards for what
you will see when you visit an art school and see what the students
are doing there.
By the way, I lectured at Penn. last year, and saw the student work.
Penn is a small school and the graduate students did not seem to me to
be getting a very good learning environment there. [one person's
opinion]. I think that it is not unlike most of the other schools on
the Eastern seaboard which are relatively small, and establishment
driven, including the one I recently retired from, Queens College,
CUNY. Both of these figured into one of the last exhibitions of grad.
student art I saw, described above.
Gabriel
Anonymous
zi...@interport.net wrote:
> As far as I am concerned going to a good art school is going where a
> student can learn how to be a good artist, and that only. I am
> totally uninterested in what happens to commercial artists. That world
> requires skills and an ability to get with whatever the going range of
> kinds of things is to be. The art schools cross country and in other
> countries seem to have done a good job at this.
Gabriel, while I have great respect for your seriousness and erudition, I
think your response here reveals a blinkered view of the possibilities for
art. A clear, specific focus is useful in developing your own work, and
for conveying a way of thinking about art to students and audiences. But
generalizing from that to say that yours is the only path to good art is to
offer the young art student an unhelpful tautology that discourages
thought.
Do you really believe that everybody working at the schools you
dismiss--or, for that matter, the artists who've graduated from those
schools whose exhibited work is taken seriously by museums and journals--
are utterly lacking in seriousness or intelligence about art?
More to the point, do you really believe that the best hope for an aspiring
artist is to ignore most influential art of the past several decades and
most of the discussions that surround art practice in the present in favor
of learning "under the wing" of some painter who continues to address art
as if we are living in 1950? That is hardly the vital spirit of modernism.
My characterization may be overly harsh: I don't know the particular
teachers you are recommending, and I do not doubt that some may be more
aware of recent developments than I've allowed. I also don't mean to
disparage the great value of learning from people of different generations,
from those who hold to unfashionable principals, and from those who have
studied for a lifetime. (I have no doubt I could learn many valuable
things from you.) But I think that students also need to be aware of the
generation of artists immediately prior to theirs; artists who establish
the context in which new work will be understood. Are there any teachers
who are under the age of, say, fifty, who you take seriously? If not, what
does that say to a twenty year old student?
I'll venture that the predominant model of seriously intended art making
has shifted in the past several decades; it can no longer be assumed that
an artist elaborates the properties of a traditional art medium. It is
entirely possible that an artist will not base their practice in drawing or
painting, or in a display of "mastery." Clearly, you reject this shift,
but don't you think it appropriate for a beginning artist to consider the
discussions surrounding the post-Duchampian approaches to art which have
dominated "advanced art" in museums and academies for the past four
decades?
So I think that the request to specify what you want from an art school is
a fair one. It seems reasonable to recommend different paths to different
people. Some might want to develop their ability to manipulate materials,
to mix paints, etc., with no more ambitious aim than to develop skill for
their own satisfaction. Such a person might do well with extension-program
or private studio training.
Other students may share a commitment to traditional skills and media, but
want a more advanced or concentrated study, in which case the NY Studio
School or some of the others that you metioned might be appropriate.
Others may wish to make work that challenges tradition, and they may want
to be rigorously challenged in their own beliefs and assumptions about art,
and to investigate diverse and unusual ways in which art practice can be
defined. For such people, a school along the lines of CalArts (I assume
this is what you are referring to as "CIA") would be valuable.
Still others may want training as commercial artists, i.e., to work as
publication designers, animators, medical illustrators, and so forth.
There are many programs geared specifically toward these professions: Art
Center in Pasadena, CA, comes to mind.
I'm hazy on what you mean by "commercial artists." Are you using it in the
sense that I just did, or as part of your dismissal of those "fine" artists
who deviate from your preferred model? Is Duchamp a "commercial artist"?
How about, say, Cindy Sherman or Gerhard Richter or Lari Pitman? Do you
make a distinction between "commercial art" and "avant garde"?
Respectfully,
Ano.
mdeli
Here are some suggestion to students when they try to find a school.
- Don't attend a school without first seeing the work of its students.
Ask yourself whether they can do something that you can't do. Then ask
yourself whether they can do something you want to do. Make sure you
feel that the student work is superior to yours. If you feel you can
do better work than the teacher or his students, forget it.
-Never blindly imitate a teacher to gain approval. If good grades are
dependent on this, as is often the case, get out of there fast.
Fooling the teacher amounts to fooling yourself. Good grades or
certificates from prestigious art schools will not help you in the
long run. Unless you have spectacular connections, you will be judged
solely by the quality of your work.
-If your teacher is extremely nice, utterly charming and glamorous,
always remember that this is no criterion for judgment. Never blindly
commit yourself to a teacher.
-Always keep an eye on what others are doing; other students can often
teach you more than the instructors.
-Try to get work in your field if you can, even while attending
school. Even if it is lowly work you will most likely learn much about
your profession which you can't get in school. Cash in on your
abilities as early as you can.
-Leave school as soon as you feel that you have acquired the knowledge
you needed to become professional or find that you aren't improving
any more. Remember that except for inmates, who are committed to these
institutions for life, school is a temporary state of affairs.
Remember, the more incompetent artists there are, the more work and
better living for the competent ones.
Mani DeLi
...no skill no art
Marilyn
mdeli wrote:
>
> Here are some suggestion to students when they try to find a school.
How about going to the faculty shows rather than the student shows?
Lest you forget Mani, Art Schools need money. If they only accepted
the talented students who apply, they would not balance their
budgets. Therefore, they accept students with "potential."
Marilyn
Larry Koenigsberg
In article <347b4b63...@news.interlog.com>, hug...@interlog.com says...
>
>
> Here are some suggestion to students when they try to find a school.
>
>Ask yourself whether they can do something that you can't do. Then ask
>yourself whether they can do something you want to do. Make sure you
>feel that the student work is superior to yours. If you feel you can
>do better work than the teacher or his students, forget it.
>
My wife, a weaving / dyeing instructor, recently brought back from Japan a
copy of "Tama Art University Graduation Album: Graduation Works Exhibition
1996: 1996 Textile Design Major Tama Art University" (the title as printed
across the front and back covers, colons added for clarity). Each page
shows a large color photo of the student's project and a passport-sized b/w
photo of the student. This book is a real knock-out and contributes in my
mind to the point you are making here.
When my wife first started teaching, one of her colleagues, impressed by her
students' work at the review, told her to take photos of the pieces. She
works those students pretty hard, and they respond by making interesting
work.
--
To respond by email, omit the underscore "_" from my email address,
inserted as an anti-spam tactic.
E M Richards
In article <65mnfe$553$1...@haus.efn.org>,
Larry Koenigsberg <lar...@efn.org> wrote:
>In article <347b4b63...@news.interlog.com>, hug...@interlog.com says...
>> Here are some suggestion to students when they try to find a school.
>>
>>- Don't attend a school without first seeing the work of its students.
>>Ask yourself whether they can do something that you can't do. Then ask
>
>copy of "Tama Art University Graduation Album: Graduation Works Exhibition
I think a burning question to ask yourself of any art school is what
the students are doing after they graduate.
Trust me.
If no one has found an art job or can make a living off a school,
you'd better be going there solely for the love of art.
Some schools have a very networked alumni body and have a kind of
prestige that gets jobs, appointments and exposure.
Don't forget the "business" aspect of art, even fine arts. The
folks whose paintings grace are finest museums were keenly aware
of that. (OK, except for Van Gogh, whose brother was an art dealer)
Marilyn
The art school where I worked is publishing pictures of the alumni
in the student newspaper, showing them at their work. Many of them
end up selling vegetables at the market next door, or across the
street selling art supplies to hobbyists. And yet, they don't give
up. That is the mystery, the artists who keep on creating their
work, with day jobs, families, kids, debts... There is no pat answer
and no clear definition of a "successful artist."
Marilyn
William O. Barrett
Marilyn wrote:
> The art school where I worked is publishing pictures of the alumni
> in the student newspaper, showing them at their work. Many of them
> end up selling vegetables at the market next door, or across the
> street selling art supplies to hobbyists. And yet, they don't give
> up. That is the mystery, the artists who keep on creating their
> work, with day jobs, families, kids, debts... There is no pat answer
> and no clear definition of a "successful artist."
I'm with Marilyn - there are no easy answers. I would suggest that the
art school graduate who goes off to the woods and paints by
himself/herself for 25 years can be described as a good and worthwhile
graduate of that school, even if not making a ton of money off his/her
work. If the activity is meaningful to the artist, then it's works for
me too.