On the topic of the current state of art education, here are a few highlights from School is Out: Rethinking Art Education Today, in Modern Painters magazine.
Steven Henry Madoff:
In recent years the role of the art school has moved to a position of prominence, pushed there by the encroachments of an aggressive marketplace and the professionalization of every aspect of the artworld, from the dominance of gallery and museum brands, to the cultural tourism of art fairs and biennials, to today’s art itself now so often created precisely for the scale, spectacle, and capitalization of these events.
To whom should the academy be responsible?…Should the art school be a research center that enlightens conceptual practices while de-emphasizing skills, or a course of study in entrepreneurship, presentation, strategic thinking, and other matters to prepare young artists for the ruthlessness of the market? Or is art school in the 21st century simply the physical surrogate of MySpace and YouTube–the spawning ground as social network?
Michael Craig-Martin:
It seems to me the most important thing about art school is the creation of a sympathetic ambiance, in which people feel comfortable and free to act according to their own instincts. You have to make a place where people feel at ease to be who they are, and bring what they have naturally in themselves to bear.
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You can’t have a proper curriculum. There are no basic things. What’s basic for one artist is not basic for another. The amazing thing about young people is that they can jump in at a very sophisticated level, without actually understanding what they’re dong. Somehow that innocence also allows them access to something. And so a part of teaching is helping them to realize what it is that they’ve stumbled on.
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We used to think in terms of “radical” or “not radical.” This is an irrelevant issue now. The question is: How do you come up with something that is identifiable as yours? It’s a logo-ing. It’s branding.
But one of the things that’s interesting about art is that it doesn’t necessarily follow the obvious, endless trajectory in one straight path. Some kid finds a way o refusing that is so interesting that it undermines all of this other thing.
John Baldessari:
You can’t teach art. That’s my premise.
More on this topic to come, like the rise of DIY schools and the art/literary/philosophical/educational gatherings.
You have provided a lot to think about here, Deborah, and I am looking forward to other quotes that you are going to provide (I hope). I’m kind of in agreement with John Baldessari, the technique part one can teach, but the unfolding sensibility of the artist as it gradually manifests itself in various individuals I don’t believe can be “taught”. The purpose of education is to provide a environment in which a number of internal to students and external from “educators” (a wide range from philosophy, science, spirituality, technology, aesthetics, history) ingredients can freely combine to produce individual practitioners. I think the idea of “branding” is a bit superficial and negates the possibility of the idiosyncratic sensibility that is beyond categorization. Maybe i need to mull on this a lot longer 🙂 G
I like the image of education as feeding—not opening a skull so you can fill it with information but feeding a hungry and curious mind as it cultivates its appetites, and helping it try out new foods as it grows.
In the end I’m not really sure I believe in teaching anything, much less something as complicated and personal as artistic expression. Can you teach what a student doesn’t want to learn? In the short term, maybe, but that type of teaching doesn’t seem to create lasting change.
I believe in learning—I’m sure of that—but most of the time, the receiver seems more important than the transmitter. Art students should be inspired to learn and ought to be provided with equally inspired teachers. That appears to be the only system that works reliably.