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| The Decline of the Visual Education of Artists, and the Remedy, by Mark D. Gottsegen © 2003 |
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 Stephen Gjertson The Recorder Lesson Oil on canvas, 1981 28 x 22 inches Collection of David and Sharon Jasper  Stephen Gjertson Azaleas in an Original Planter Oil on canvas, 1984 30 x 27 inches Collection of Ethel Hashioka  Stephen Gjertson Rachel weeping for her Children Oil on canvas, 1991 65 x 36 inches Private collection       Allan R. Banks Story Hour Oil on canvas, 1989 26 x 24 inches Private collection [ Image courtesy of the Gandy Gallery ]  |
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In an art school there was no distinction between making a painting and making art, but there was a clear difference between being an art student and being an artist. Some independent schools began to break away from tradition, following the lead of the art world that, since the Armory Show in 1913, had been expanding the definitions of what constitutes "art." The GI Bill, instituted following World War II, brought floods of students to schools. More art departments formed in colleges and universities, and competed with traditional liberal arts for academic respect and program money. To compete with the academics, making art became increasingly an intellectual/physical process.
College and university art departments, like art schools before them, followed the lead of the art world where now artists could become celebrities. Life magazine's spread on Jackson Pollock was the first time the popular media focused on an individual living American artist, who was shown to be led by his feelings about the act and process of painting. Suddenly, artists could become stars in the popular imagination.
Art historians specialize narrowly, and therefore so do their students. This specialization is often based on philosophical, political, or literature-based "readings" of art history or art, rather than ideas couched in the visual language. Art history students do not often learn about studio practices; since their teachers did not, and do not consider studio practice important, why should they? Admittedly, some art historians have made the effort to bring their students to studio classes - especially the younger or untenured ones, who wish to be seen by their peers, for a while, as fully involved in the life of the art department. Some historians and curators are studio artists themselves. That is not to say they have the time to practice, or because of their sometimes awful teaching loads and numbers of students, have the time to regularly drag the students to the painting studios to see what's up. And being an artist/art historian does not necessarily lead one to a complete understanding of the current teaching processes in a working school studio-remember, there are artists, and then there are art students. Studio art students mostly do not learn to do research in art history, except to read and discuss, desultorily, the photocopied contemporary art criticism given them by their studio teachers. Moreover, studio students are not much encouraged to write well. Today, a painting class may likely consist of the instructor tossing out a few ideas for the students to consider, or validating an idea the student proposes. This is followed by a few days or weeks of painting, with or without instruction in class or "independently," and ending with several hours of "critiques." A "critique" typically consists of a deconstruction of meaning, intent, and philosophy - and possibly politics - but not a consideration of the visual and/or physical construction of the picture. Regarding this, a student told me, "In fact, we hardly ever talk about the visual language." Since the definition of art is entirely subjective, the meaning of any word used during the critique can be changed to mean whatever the teacher or student painter wants it to mean. A shape or a color in a painting can mean whatever the painter wants it to mean, or whatever the picture's interpreter wants it to mean regardless of what the painter intended. Because of the intimidation factor, a student lacking a strong sense of self and purpose will usually defer to the opinions of the teacher. We have French literary theorists to thank for that. A picture may be very well constructed, in both the physical and formal pictorial senses, and be bad art, or very poorly constructed, in both senses, and be good art. A picture's visual language may be unrelated to its meaning or intent, although neither the painter nor the teacher always recognizes this. There may not be any criteria for judging the merits of the student's work beyond those established by the student or the teacher. Furthermore, the criteria may change from day to day or week to week, depending on the vagaries of the contemporary gallery scene. These verbal gymnastics consequently can compensate for a lack of skill, and rhetoric - oral and written - can outstrip both picture-making skills and artisanship. Therefore, the distinction between being an art student and being an artist is lost.
Until the early 1960s, it was still possible for an artist to get a college-level teaching job merely by demonstrating sufficient competence in a painting discipline and by having accumulated a sufficiently promising exhibition record. Today, an artist must now have a "terminal degree" (M.F.A.) to get a college-level teaching job, and it is preferable for potential artist/teachers to have prepared for their M.F.A. by getting a B.F.A., rather than a B.A. The difference between a B.F.A. and a B.A. is that the former includes a concentration in a major studio area plus the usual smattering of liberal arts courses mandated by the institution, and the latter has no major studio area concentration. The concentration, in effect, is a narrowed specialization akin to that of an art historian's. There are no widespread, generally agreed-upon criteria for what constitutes a viable curriculum for teaching painting and drawing, so there are no standards in the discipline for evaluating good teaching. Student exit surveys and course evaluations given at the end of a semester are a measure of the students' satisfaction that day, not a measure of the teacher's competence. Even over the long haul, statistical summaries of "teaching effectiveness" can be, and are, interpreted to a fare-thee-well; they are, basically, lies.4 The newest measure of teaching competence is the "Outcome," that is, what is the "outcome" of a student's progress through a given course of studies? Some institutions require that their administration and faculty prove that they are doing a good job of teaching, and the success or failure of a budget request may lie in the proof that the school is doing a credible job. Accordingly, if a graduating M.F.A. student finds employment or, if an undergraduate goes to a "good" graduate school, the "outcome" is adjudged "good." And here we thought that higher learning was something other than job training (see below). Without a general idea of what good teaching is, there is no need to demonstrate teaching competence when seeking a job. If you can demonstrate that your rhetoric is good enough you will be counted among the good teachers. Worse, "inclusiveness" and "diversity" - gender, race, or painting style - are major criteria for hiring an artist/teacher, regardless of documented teaching skills or experience.
Granted, many art historians do drag their students to museums; but there are also those who do not, and there are schools so far from museums with any substantial collections that the students just cannot go. Moreover, it is difficult today to order students to go to museums on their own: they don't have the time, they have two part-time jobs to pay their tuition, and so on. Art history teachers may therefore not even bother insisting that the students go.6 The point, for an art student, is that you simply cannot learn without also doing: make the picture, make the sculpture. More's the better: if you actually make work from periods of art history - distant past, past, recent past, and maybe, if there's time, today - you will learn much more than if you sit dozing in a dimly-lit auditorium or crowded into an overheated seminar room, half-listening to the drone of someone's voice and being more worried about the grade than understanding.
The theory behind the hybrid school or department is that we can be a cliché: all things to all people. We can have some of this and some of that - but of course, we can't have everything. The restrictions, naturally, are in the limited number of hours in a day, the limited number of faculty, and the limits of the faculty's teaching abilities, "professional interests," commitment to teaching, or their own time. Is it better to do a few things very well or many things only fairly well? This is to say nothing about the ridiculously artificial environment of an institution's own limits: four years to learn to paint, including the usual mandated liberal arts requirements? That's patently impossible. While on the subject of curricula, let us consider the figure, the model, and working from observation. This is a volatile subject and the source of considerable political conflict in universities and colleges, and art schools. Contemporary art, the source of ideas in most of art academia, rather disdains the figure, although it is used frequently as a vehicle for expressing the verbal/political/literary idea of a painting. As such, it need not be well done-and that's the problem. In much of today's art, the figure is badly drawn and badly painted. Some wonder why this is, and the answer can be traced to the lack of training in drawing the figure in formal education. The conflict over figure work is simple: the figure is difficult to depict successfully. A well-drawn figure need not be anatomically perfect. However, it ought accurately to reflect the physical truth of the artist's perception of the space and form of the figure, to the extent that the drawing or painting is believable even if the figure is deliberately distorted or altered in some way. This is sometimes so hard to do that students often fail. Heaven forbid someone should actually fail a studio course! A student might exclaim, "If art is so subjective, how can you tell if I've done poorly enough to fail?" If a student did fail a course and made this objection, the Emperor's New Clothes would be revealed - and there would be an immediate and impenetrably obscure rationalization from the teacher. What faculty would want to jeopardize its budget by lowering its course enrollments through failures and dropouts? This is to say nothing of running the risk of annoying an institutional administrator who's not set foot in a working studio for years, if ever, and whose major raison d'être is to satisfy the demands of an enrollment-driven budget. Since artist/teachers today have not had figure drawing training, or, as students themselves, so hated its discipline they are generally incapable of passing it on or demanding it of their students, they substitute a couple of weeks of still-life drawing, and call that "working from observation." (See also "Art Materials Education," below.) That kind of superficial "tasting" offered with a comment like, "This isn't really that important, but it's a bow to the past and art history" - hastily glossed over by a teacher who's actually afraid of the demands of the model - strengthens the student's perception of figure drawing as a stylistic dead end. The result is a student who is only cursorily exposed to the traditional discipline of drawing. Given a plethora of courses here and there in the trendiest subject matter, in the end he or she is, effectively, poorly educated. | |
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