Preface (by Virgil Elliott)

Eminent author and educator mark gottsegen has just delivered his long-awaited critical essay on the problems with college-level art education in modern times, and has authorized its publication here on the Art Renewal Center web site. Mark is the author of The Painter's Handbook, and Chairman of the ASTM Subcommittee on Artists' Paints and Materials, among his many credentials. A tenured professor in the university system, Gottsegen gives us an in-depth account of the failures of that system, explains what led to the present situation, and offers suggestions as to how the reforms it so sorely needs might be brought about. Read what he has to say about it, without further ado.

Introduction

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You do not compete for limited program money with Philosophy and History Departments when you stress making things — because craft is not considered an intellectual pursuit (some English departments still stress the craft of writing). Studio arts students are no longer receiving a complete or useful visual education. Art is now taught as a subset of philosophy.1 Furthermore, artists are not taught about the use of materials. Professional artists do not seem to care about education or their materials, whether they are also teachers or not. Conservators of art, both those who work to preserve it and those who collect and display it, also seem confused about what to do. Each of these groups seem to disagree with one another, or are at least unmindful of the consequences of a failure to act. I have proposed an obvious solution to this quandary.

Art Education Before World War II

Prior to World War II, there were only a few art departments in colleges and universities. By and large, there were non-degree-granting art schools. At that time, most art schools followed the traditional curricula: studying from casts and live models, with strong teaching in all aspects of the craft of making objects: drawings, paintings, and sculpture. The study of art history was fully integrated with the study of studio processes. The student's knowledge of art history was presumed to be thorough and far-reaching, as its study was the source of ideas and inspiration.

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.

Art

A friend explained to me that the definition of "intellect" and "intellectual" includes everything we do as artists: craft, visual form, ideas/content, and so on. Art has always been intellectual, and what some artists and art students may be most frustrated by are literary notions and judgments on art by "literary/verbal" types who like to look down their noses at everyone else who does anything different from them. Academia includes a lot of these "literary" types. Life drawing teaching methods can be very traditional and rely little on modernism: a traditional approach to drawing is less literal, more abstract and thought-provoking-more intellectual-than modernist thinking. That may be true, but modernists will say in rebuttal that traditional teaching is not an intellectual activity because it is too much about "making" and not enough about "thinking and 'positing one's intent'." However, modernists stake their claim to intellectual activity by writing about their painting, not by painting.

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 Education Today

Because of the pseudo-intellectualization of art-making, craftsmanship has been downplayed in higher education simultaneously, the traditional fine arts curriculum has broken down. Art history is taught separately from studio pursuits, often in a different setting. Today, art history may be a separate division of the art department, or in a separate location from the studios, or a separate department altogether. Therefore, studio students, seeing this separation, do not learn to connect what they are making now with what was made in the past. Contemporary art history — an oxymoron — has become the source of pictorial ideas.

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.

Academic Credentials for Artists

No artist ever thought it necessary to have a degree. Earlier art schools merely had a course of study, with perhaps a certificate granted at the end of the course. Now, colleges and universities grant degrees - so why shouldn't artists get them, too? In other words, today's art students, and some artists, and definitely institutions hiring artists to teach, think a degree is necessary.

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. 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.

The Inclusive Curriculum

"Inclusiveness" and "diversity" sometimes do not count. When it comes to designing curricula, say, a faculty may be diverse, but its curriculum could be ... narrow-minded? Prejudiced? Intolerant? For example, there are schools, like The New York Graduate School of Figurative Art, that are exclusively devoted to teaching figure painting and sculpture. These are private stand-alone schools that, at most, offer a certificate of study, or a degree if the student takes the requisite courses at an affiliated university. Their curriculum is so focused, some would call it narrow: "What happened to everything that has occurred in art history after 1870?" one might ask. Let us leave aside discussion of the fecund proliferation of "workshops," taught by one person for a few days in a sunny location, preferably in the south of France, the Caribbean, the west coast, the Maine coast, or the Rocky Mountains. The students used to be what the artist Philip Guston called "blue-haired ladies," (c. 1973, in a letter to the author) but now they're of all ages, genders, races, sexual orientations and cultural backgrounds.

The Exclusive Curriculum

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The foregoing is a condemnation of the use of technology (slides) and books as a substitute for the visual experience with an actual object. Take a painting, for instance: even if you have a fresh, professionally prepared slide, a slide is not a painting. (Many slides in the academic collections are so old and discolored they're only vague representations of the original image anyway.) First, the slide only represents the limited range of color obtained from the set of dyes in its emulsion. Second, the slide does not represent at all the surface textures of the painting. Third, the slide is projected light bounced off a highly reflective screen, actually more like looking at a stained glass window. A painting, on the other hand, is seen as light reflected, absorbed, transmitted through partially transparent layers, and generally bounced around in a richly complex way. Finally, a projected slide image is almost never the same size as the actual painting. The same problems occur with reproductions in books, with a slightly different spin, and with digital images on a CRT or projected on a screen. Therefore, it is essential for a student to frequently visit museums and galleries. Then, there are schools whose curricula exclude, at least in the painting studios, everything that happened in art history before 1870, or even 1950, or, perhaps, 1960. That sort of curriculum is also narrow, considering the span of art history. Objections to this kind of curriculum often produce a response along the lines of, "But we take care of the missing links in our art history courses!" That would only be partly true, even if studio students did connect art history with their studio courses. But it's awfully hard to learn about painting by looking at old slides, or reading a book with partially-identified and cheaply reproduced pictures: imagine how hard it is to learn about the history of sculpture, a three-dimensional medium, by looking at two-dimensional reproductions.4 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.5 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 Hybrid Curriculum

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A further twist: an innocent student, encountering a museum for the first time, is the unsuspecting victim of a curator's choice of what to exhibit. If the curator has "an agenda," political or otherwise, the entire audience, student and non-student alike, is thereby led by the nose. This is exactly the purpose of all those Renaissance church frescoes in Italy: teach the illiterate peasantry all about the Bible, using pictures (and sermons, of course). Today's museum, whether historical or contemporary, serves in the same role — especially with introductory posters and didactic wall cards — and this strange development is probably not even conscious or intended! To follow this argument to its logical end: when you have museum, gallery, and auction house curators all involved in the education of their audiences — and many with a vested interest in a profitable outcome — you could, if you were so inclined, begin to detect the sweet scent of … corruption. Finally, consider the hybrid school, which tries vainly to satisfy everyone. This situation is probably the most widespread: Over here, we have figurative painting and drawing, plus some abstract painting and drawing. Over there, there's three-dimensional design and sculpture, but only based on contemporary theory-no figures: too hard, too time-consuming, the students can't handle it. Upstairs, there's photography, various forms of printmaking, color theory, and basic two-dimensional design. And down the hall, By Golly!, there's the greatest new treat for dazzled students and faculty alike, and the promise of a good Outcome in the bargain: computer-based art. Here's a tip: if you want to make art with a computer, and add text to the art, as is all the current rage, first learn to draw, then learn color theory. Color theory in this case, by the way, is not the ROY G BIV kind, either: you have to learn CYMK, RGB, and even, maybe, CIE-based color theory when you're working with projected light on a phosphor-laden screen. Finally, learn to spell and write. Otherwise, you will make something incomprehensible in several languages (visual, verbal, French) — though you and your teachers call it art.

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.

Employment Preparedness and Opportunities

A freshly graduated young artist and prospective teacher competes with hundreds of other applicants for one under-compensated teaching job. In more than twenty-odd years of participating on search committees in the author's own department, the average number of applicants for each opening in the painting area has been well over two hundred. In addition to having suffered through a smorgasbord of coursework, this potential teacher must also show an impressive exhibition record, preferably in the "right" galleries. Therefore, undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to pursue "exhibition opportunities" to strengthen their credentials. This diverts their attention from the uninterrupted and serious pursuit of learning activities and reinforces the idea that they are artists rather than art students. A colleague's complaint that students should do this because when we were students we were never taught how to go out and be artists in the world, flies in the face of the idea that higher learning is not job training. In addition, there are now dozens of instructional books that can help a young artist with the business and legal aspects of a career.

The caption on a cartoon from the Pratt Institute, showing a recent graduate flipping hamburgers, reads, "Remember, the only thing worth less than one of your paintings is your BFA degree". The conferring of a degree means no more than the granting of a certificate of study; either document ought to be considered a birth certificate, not a license.

Art Materials Education

In a 1982 survey of some fifty art schools, and university and college art departments (excluding those known by the author to have technical courses) only four responded that there were any courses that taught about materials and techniques. Only one school was able to provide a curriculum and reading list for the course.

Typical current faculty responses to technical questions are along the lines of, "I don't know, but it's not important anyway." Or "I don't know; ask Harriet; she knows this stuff," or "I don't know; I think there's a book on that stuff," or even, "I don't know: here's a book on that stuff," or just plain "I don't know." Referring to these suggested responses, a student said to me, "I hear this all the time!"

The post-war generation of artists who became teachers were taught by their mentors to have respect for the craft, but the pressure to conform to the demands of an academic department make it less likely that hands-on artisanry will be emphasized.

Students who studied in the 1950s and 1960s are one step further removed from any substantial materials education. Many of them have come to believe that the process of making the work, and the resulting visual (or, more likely, verbal) idea, is more important than the materials used to make the work or how the materials are used. As these students, in turn, become teachers, they no longer have any interest in the materials, except in how they can be exploited. You have heard this phrase so many times you have it memorized: "Any material can be used to make art."

Here's the long story short, and it's directly related to the observations noted in "Art Education." Since artists don't know much about their materials, and artists who teach don't either and therefore don't teach their students, and none of these groups are aware of either ASTM Standards existence or importance: there is no demand for their improvement or for better, more informative and useful labeling. The manufacturers, by the way, like it like that, since to improve labeling will cost them money and profits. Artists seem to be willing to be social and political activists, since it provides fodder for their painting ideas. However, when it comes to the very materials they use, they generally don't seem to care.

Therefore, students now have almost no formal education in the materials and techniques of their art medium. Schools and departments, with a few exceptions, have little interest in supporting materials education. Those that do, substitute one course for an integrated, curriculum-wide effort. Furthermore, the motto, "If I say it's art it's art" still pertains, no matter what kind of stuff is used to make it. Couple this with a student's diluted academic requirements and weak discipline-based training, and we have something almost worse than a poorly educated student: a dilettante.

Selling Art

Art and money is like oil and water (paraphrase of Robert Hughes in Art and Money, in The New York Review of Books, 1981). Many artists want to sell their art. Artists who profess not to want to sell their art will usually sell it if the offer is good enough. Most artists would love to be able to make their living selling their art and not have to have a "day job." Most artists also would like to exhibit their art, potentially leading to sales: romantic notions aside, art is a commodity.

Artists who sell their art are inevitably faced with the question, "will it last," whether explicitly asked by the client or posed implicitly by an implied warranty of merchantability. If you try to define "permanent" and "archival" you will find that, despite the dictionary, conservators, artists, and critics/curators/historians all have different opinions: these terms are basically meaningless. But, an object sold is assumed to be fit for its intended use, and, as an art object, is intended to be enjoyed, contemplated, debated, and interpreted for ... if not "forever," then more than a few years, certainly.

Some art objects will not be durable because of "inherent vice," caused by the artist's craftsmanship or lack of it, whether deliberate or unintended. Is the buyer aware that the work of art will change — perhaps radically, and in a short time? Is the buyer aware that perhaps the work is intended to change? Is the buyer aware that the work of art may unalterably deteriorate? How does the client become aware of these issues of longevity?

There is a great difference between a work of art sold for $25 and one sold for $25,000, regardless of arguments about esthetics. If you bought a car for $25,000, would you complain if its color faded within a year and the wheels fell off, and the dealer said, "We can't get it back to the way it was originally'? I know, a car is not a work of art (and some would quibble about even this), but if you start arguing about this analogy you've missed the point.

If the artist does not intend the work of art to be durable, does the artist have a fiduciary responsibility to the client? What is it? What is the client's role in this? Here are some possibilities:

• The client accepts the questionable durability of a contemporary work of art, and leaves it at that. "I glue them back on using Elmer's." (A collector in New York City, when asked about crockery falling off a Schnabel painting made in the 1980s.)
• The client is caught up in the glamour and glory of collecting "significant" art, with perhaps an eye on building a collection. The client has in mind giving the collection to a museum (or selling it for a profit), which gift will make an impact on the future's perception of 20th Century Art History. Therefore, the client does not even think about the longevity of the work. The dealer, the artist, or any curator involved in the transaction, will decline to squelch a sale by raising the issue.

It is painful to listen to well-known collectors talk about their responsibilities as (temporary) custodians of contemporary art. On the one hand, they appreciate, deeply, sincerely, passionately, intelligently and articulately, the esthetics of the things. On the other hand, they ignore — or at least don't mention — the financial costs of upkeep, which will eventually outstrip the initial purchase price. One day, maybe soon but probably not, some enlightened and wealthy patron will donate a $20 million collection to the Museum of Modern Art, and a $20 million endowment for the Conservation Department's upkeep of the collection. It is even possible to envision a patron building a freestanding museum that not only houses the collection but also its own fully staffed and funded conservation department. Albert Albano, Executive Director of the Inter-Museum Conservation Laboratory in Ohio, has even proposed a national center for the collection, exchange, and dissemination of information about modern art materials and the conservation of contemporary art! But ... who would want to fund that? Let's face it: there's not enough glory in paying for custodial services ("The Dick Nixon Memorial Art Maintenance Facility"? Right).

Art Conservation and the Artist

The following quotations, from artists and conservators, illustrate the current state of visual art education. Since many artists have abdicated responsibility for artisanship, a philosophical construct, however awkwardly expressed, has been formulated to substitute for it. The conservators disagree even with each other, and most of the artists, who are certainly well read and intelligent, generally are not well informed when it comes to explaining their materials, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. The quotations are all related to the issue of the longevity of artists' products, and who is responsible.

Question for Paul Himmelstein, a conservator in New York, from the author, in response to his participation in the radio program, "Science Friday," produced by National Public Radio (1998)

What do you think of ASTM standards and quality labeling under ASTM?

Answer:

Not much.

Question:

"Why?"

Answer:

They're useless.

(Paul Himmelstein, 1998)

You should just make the stuff and let us worry about fixing it.

(Conservator Robert Lodge, to the author and the audience, at a College Art Association Convention panel on artists' materials, New York, 1980s)

Conservators have always thought of contemporary artists' techniques as job security.

(Ross Merrill, Chief of Conservation, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., to the author, repeatedly, since 1997)

Time edits with a heavy hand.

(Sherman E. Lee, Director Emeritus, The Cleveland Museum of Art, on the deterioration of art objects, and art history)

"My work is deliberately transient."

(a graduate student, giving a typical excuse)

This work is about process, not product.

(a university instructor, excusing the student's use of materials and lack of craftsmanship)

If the work changes over time, then the change itself is part of the work.

(a college visiting artist, answering a question about the longevity of a piece in a show)

You're buying the talent, not the materials.

(an artist to Jack Richeson, a well-known importer and seller of art materials, who objected to the artist's use of cheap paint and canvas-the deal was called off, of course, 1998)

It's fine to say the work is going to deteriorate over time. That it's going to look different and maybe shabbier in fifty years than it does now is okay.

(Adrian Piper, Art Journal, 1995)

I just want to move on the ideas, and I think that a lot of that is in the tradition of the turnaround quality of the ideas being foremost in the late twentieth century, rather than any technique. So that whether somebody is using mayonnaise as a medium in painting or whatever you are doing, to get at the idea is the issue.

(Phoebe Adams, Art Journal, 1995)

I suppose I do think about whether or not my work lasts: the guy at the art supply store makes me think about it. [...] I suppose it's a subtle matter that gets you to think about it subconsciously, but I still make things that will probably fall apart. I just do what I want to do. Before I used to make everything out of paper, out of newspaper [...] So now I try to use brown wrapping paper instead because Willie Burch uses it. I think artists keep a much more flexible, live sense about what their work should be. I would say it is a flexible situation, sort of. [...] but I don't think artists are endlessly responsible for their work. If people own work, they have to take care of it. If somebody doesn't like the way my work is, then they can hire restorers.

(Kiki Smith, Art Journal, 1995)

I want my work to have the spirit exactly as I built it. If it starts to age and look old — I'm not sure I would want that. When I look at Eva Hesse's work, I'm horrified.

(Petah Coyne, Art Journal, 1995)

... we must accept that art, especially some contemporary art, may be something that will last only a short time.

(Kimberly Davenport, who interviewed the artists quoted above, Art Journal, 1995)

There is little doubt that most of the body of artwork created during the second half of the 20th century will not survive the first half of the 21st.

(James Druzik, Senior Scientist, Getty Conservation Institute)

Hyperbolic statements like this serve absolutely no purpose and generally come from people with little understanding of or interest in contemporary painting. There will not be anything remotely approaching a 50% attrition rate ... the situation is simply not that extreme.

(Jay Krueger, Paintings Conservator, National Gallery of Art, 1999, in response to J. Druzik's comment, above, and similar expressions by other conservators regarding contemporary artists' techniques)

Is contemporary art only for contemporary times? No, most emphatically not.

(James Coddington, Mortality Immortality? The Legacy of 20th Century Art, proceedings of a conference at the Getty Conservation Institute, 1999)

The Remedy

Anyone involved in any sort of organization, doing any sort of work, knows that complaining about the state of things is the norm. Daily, you can listen to your colleagues, whether you are digging a ditch on a construction crew, sitting around a boardroom table on the forty-fifth floor of a Wall Street law firm, or standing by the water fountain down the hall from your painting studio.

Academic whining is all the more vicious because the stakes are so small. If you whine too much down there in the ditch, the foreman might invite you to get a job elsewhere; but if you whine and moan in academe, and you have tenure, nothing will happen to you. You could, in fact, make a mountain out of a molehill, and the worst that could happen, if you have tenure, is that your department head'll reprimand you for your "inappropriate" attitude and perhaps be hauled before a dean to explain yourself. Naturally, there is a certain public embarrassment attached to such castigation, but academics are notoriously egomaniacal and so easily shrug it off. Besides, people have a tendency to forget what happened last week, especially when this week's gossip and complaints are so much more interesting.

So perhaps it is a good idea to accompany what is surely to be seen as a long and loud complaint, with a solution of sorts. Then, it might be called "constructive criticism," designed to promote discussion and provoke thought. With this in mind, The Remedy is explored.

Deborah Solomon's article in the New York Times Magazine (June 27, 1999), "How to Succeed in Art," and Peter Landesman's in the same periodical, "A 20th Century Master Scam" (July 18, 1999), each in its own way demonstrates the market-driven nature of the art world. Solomon's revelations were not surprising to anyone involved in either academe or the art world, and, curiously, provoked little reader response (at least, judging by the number of letters that were published). Landesman's article showed what suckers collectors and dealers can be, and how easily duped we are by modern art. Granted, "How to Succeed in Art" focused on a single school in Los Angeles and so can not be said to represent the entire academic scene, but you'll notice that no one from the school, neither students nor artist/teachers, raised a defensive "But wait a minute!" Could it be that there is no rational reason for the behavior of those students and faculty? Could it be that this behavior is so widespread and institutionalized that no one ventures to expose it from the inside — and can easily dismiss Ms. Solomon's probing by saying something like, "But she really doesn't understand"?

With all this in mind, it would take a fundamental revolution in thinking to change the way art students are educated and artists teach, the way museums, galleries and auction houses are operated, and the way collectors think about art. That is, The Remedy would take a cultural revolution. Are we ready? If the non-effects of Robert Hughes's "Art and Money" of 22 years ago are any indication, the answer is "Not yet." What would finally provoke this revolution?

If you remember the 1960s and 1970s, college students, seeking new experiences and political redress for the oppressed, managed to affect a cultural revolution of sorts. At least, we have them to thank for bringing such pressure to bear that an undeclared war was finally stopped. The cruelties of racism and segregation and inequality were moderated, to some extent at least, and the process of social change was advanced by the students' efforts. Students also addressed the gender inequalities of the time, and helped to bring about reforms there as well.

Possibly, students could again demand some changes. After all, they are ultimately the innocent (and not-so-innocent, as Solomon has shown) victims of our institutions. They are the ones who will grow into the world thinking the way they do because of the way they are taught. If they manage to take some responsibility for their own education today, perhaps they will not only become better educated tomorrow, but help the cultural institutions that shape them to change and grow, too. Moreover, universities and colleges now look upon students as "customers," so as such the students could demand improvement. If the demands were loud enough, reasonable enough, and made over a long enough period of time, the institutions, political and economic beasts that they are, would finally come around.

This is not too much to ask, since it has been done before. On the other hand, inertia and the status quo, to say nothing of greed and careerism, are powerful influences. It would be far easier to say, "The answer is, there is no answer" (Gertrude Stein), or "This seems like a debate that will never be resolved." Furthermore, when I told one of my colleagues I was writing this, he said, "Why do you want to waste your time on that?" In addition, Mark Golden, whose company manufactures artists' paints and who's personally very involved in the material and philosophical education of artists, said, "I don't know what will turn this state of affairs around. Usually things have to get pretty ugly before they get better. I don't see that level of concern out there in the art community." (Correspondence with the author, 1999.) So, Walt Kelly could be right after all: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank those who read this paper in its early forms and provided commentary I could use or who, wittingly or unwittingly provided ideas: Al Albano, Michael Ananian, Walter Beale, Roberto Campo, Jim Coddington, Charles Gantz Crawford III, Patricia Cosby Crawford, Keith Cushman, James Druzik, Andrew Dunnill, Virgil Elliott, Richard Feigen, Robert Gerhart III, EHG, KMHG, MCG, Peter Gottsegen, Mark Golden, Annie Leist, Jay Krueger, Nora Kuper, Robert Langenfeld, Susan Laufer, Billy Lee, Anne McClanan, Joy Turner Luke, Ross Merrill, Abigail Newton, Janet Oh, Zora Sweet Pinney, Michael Skalka, Tamara Soule, Jack Stratton, and Peter Tatischeff.

I am especially grateful to Peg Ellis for her writerly wisdom (after all, I'm a dumb painter), acute editorial guidance, and very sharp pencil, and to Richard Gantt for his gentle persuasion and sound arguments. I also wish to acknowledge the influence of K. Porter Aichele, Ruth Beesch, Bert Carpenter, Bill Collins, Carl Goldstein and Joan Gregory.