[Republicanprofessor]

I went to see this movie yesterday and I found it incredibly depressing. It is depressing because it may be a somewhat accurate portrayal as far as art schools go, and the values in it are dismal.

There is nothing about truth or beauty in it. It is all about scams in the art world, and superficial values at best.

I went to two graduate schools in art, although only one in the fine arts. I also teach art history and painting and drawing. So was I supposed to identify wiht the John Malkovich or with the Angelica Houston characters? The fact that the teachers tolerated such nonsense out of their students' mouths was depressing.

FR poster Sam Cree has always maintained that that art schools don't teach the basics anymore. I've always resisted that belief, because we do teach the basics at my college; and then we encourage students to find their own personal form and content.

But I guess I am in the minority.

What a depressing film.

[Republicanprofessor]

Art ping.

Let Sam Cree, Woofie, or me know if you want on or off this ping list.

Or if you think this movie is as depressing as I do. Black comedy, I guess. Certainly some laughs in the beginning....but then it just fell apart.

I guess I take things far too seriously. But since art is my career and life, I do take it seriously....more seriously than those bozos in the movie.

[Darkwolf377]

My friend who went to RISD will vouch for what your friend says. Oddly enough, back when he went @20 years ago, he says they didn't teach enough about how to present your material--not the scams in your review, but how to get good work into galleries, get jobs, etc. Now he claims they've gone in the opposite direction.

I also know several selling artists. Their stuff is pure garbage. If you, like me, talk about beauty in art you will get eye-rolls and someone will say the word "Bush" within the minute.

[SteveH]

I considered seeing this movie but rented Ghost World instead. My nutshell review of Ghost World is that it's too long and unfocused for the meager content it delivers. Above that,
I found it to be a rather dark and depressing movie despite the humor and satire. It did not motivate me to see Art School Confidential.

[martin_fierro]

Wonder how ol' Bob Ross would've fared in such a place.

[TradicalRC]

The Art school I went to had a Great foundational program, unfortunately, they are now defunct.

[turbocat]

I agree with so much of what is said here... and so wish I had hopped on the art ping list sooner!

As a college art major from the early seventies, I am so impassioned by great art, new or classic. And I currently have gotten back into painting myself (as a graphic designer, as we sure couldn't major in Painting, or how could we earn a living??? [no regrets])and now finally am in a gallery.

But recently went to the Met and MOMA in NYC, and gee I have to agree that so much of the new stuff (MOMA or Internet or galleries) is not art in my book. I'm glad it's not just me.

[retrokitten]

I don't know if you are on the art ping list or not, but pinging you to an interesting discussion on the crap that's called art these days anyway. :-)

[Ditter]

I saw this movie, and while I liked it, thought it was funny and true in a lot of respects, the end was so sad. The kid wanted to be a successful artist so badly that we was willing to submit to being the strangler without a whimper. Or he felt so guilty that he had caused the fire that killed all the people that he allowed himself to be punished. I don't know which of those it could be.

I attended art school and in the beginning we certainly were taught how to draw, paint, color theory etc. As we progressed, the instruction ceased and we were expected and encouraged to 'get weird'.

I remember I decided I had been there too long when the class was taken on a field trip to a gallery to see a young artist work. Her work consisted of dead tree branches that held up rubber chickens hug by string. I did not enroll the following semester.

I have continued to paint and I try to do at least one workshop a year with an artist whose work I admire.

[woofie]

I think this film had a few good laughs and a lot of wasted potential. Art school is ripe with characters and strange situations but I dont remember a single strangler. The movie did remind me of all those years drawing naked people.

"A naked woman is like an apple" one professor told me. What the hell does that mean?

I have long thought the best art education is one part therapy and two parts benign neglect.

[Sam Cree]

The art schools that I've taken classes at, UM, and more recently, MDC (which does the best job, having a prof who is actually series about it) and FIU offer, but don't teach the basics, and I do believe that to be fairly typical, from conversations with others, including even others from foreign countries at Wetcanvas. I'm sure there are exceptions, though, after all, there are people out there who clearly have mastered them.

The schools whose names I mentioned actually do offer, and even require as prerquisites, the basic courses, they do have classes in basic drawing, basic painting, figure drawing from life, etc. It's just that not very much is taught in those courses, in part because the professors themselves don't have the skills, in part I suppose because skills are not highly valued by university art departments. I told the figure drawing prof at FIU a couple years ago that my goal was to draw accurately, to which he philosophically rather than practically replied, "What is accuracy?" The fact is that there are specific techniques for acheiving accuracy, but you weren't going to learn them there, and probably not in most university level drawing classes. And of course, learning them isn't enough in itself, you have to practice them alot to really understand them, something specifically not encouraged. I'm forgetting that many years ago I took a few art classes at UNC where I was informed that students working in realism were not normally considered.

I guess that this attitude began with the rebellion against the academy and found new life with the art world's fixation on leftist politics. But as I always say, the goal of artists ought to be to create something timeless rather than something cutting edge.

One thing that I found interesting is that regarding the classes I took at the three institutions, MDC, FIU and UM, the less prestigious that school, the better the art that was being produced. MDC, the community college, had younger kids, and they were making strikingly better art than the kids at the other 2 schools. There were some very young kids there with some real talent - something that may very well be repressed once they enroll in "real" art schools.

But in sum, it is still a strange thing that the modern "academy" has made such a point of abandoning skill, which in my mind is one of the basic qualities of art.

[Sam Cree]

I also have the idea that most of the students who sign up as art majors aren't too serious about the subject in the first place, the field probably seems to them more like something fun and interesting, a way to get through college. Not having to learn real skills is kind of a plus for them, they get to avoid the truly hard and time consuming work of actually mastering those skills.

OTOH, those students who really have a fire burning in them get screwed, there's not too much there for them, and excellence is discouraged anyway.

In the "hard" fields like engineering, pre med, chemistry, etc. students have to actually master the subject. My opinion is that while art is certainly subjective and interpretive, it too has techniques to master that are every bit as "hard" as those pertaining to the sciences. Or to music, for that matter.