BTTT.
I've been an artist my entire life, my mother was a talented artist, and she encouraged me from the moment I could hold a pencil. I suffered through endless classes in high school and college listening to no-talent hacks babble about "expression" and "individuality", all the while, they all wore the same black clothes, had the same dyed-red hair, and created the same, bland, lackluster dreck they called 'art". It's gotten steadily worse, the art field is completely inbred, incestuous, more about politics and cliques than talent, and is completeley hollow and a sham.
I decided to pursue illustration, as it still seemed to hold the things I value in art, and is lacking in "fine art": skill, technique, discipline, thought, and you could make a living at it. I still paint on my own, and maybe someday I'll exhibit it. But, after the indignities I experienced with the babbling idiots in art class, it turned me off pursuing the gallery field completely - it's all political anyway.
I remember seeing senior projects in a gallery - a prize winner was a bundle of sticks.
I remember a *required* class for art majors, where the teacher (who did'nt grade or take attendance) spent the classes I bothered going to explaining how to force landlords in warehouse districts to allow work-live arrangements, force them to install plumbing, and how to work the private, state and Federal grant systems so you would'nt have to get a job. When she was'nt ranting how unfair those greedy landlords were, she made us endure tedious, ridiculous arguements between red-headed "artists" in black debating if the public's reaction to your work had any meaning. (I literally stood up and left that class mid rant)
I took a symbolism class in college, where we were allowed to pursue our own agenda, and since I was studying illustration, I worked on a series of paintings with a common thread, with enthusiastic encouragement from my teacher. Halfway through the class, sadly, the teacher died suddenly (he was a great teacher, too, an honestly nice person, and very talented), and a woman who'd been painting for *2 years* with no formal training , degree, or even teaching experience took over, and forced us to look at her "art", which were canvases with paint piled so high, it looked like the seagull guano on an old pier. She did'nt outright demand we all work in the abstract, as all of us were half a semester into our work, and eventually stopped talking to anyone but the small group of students doing abstract work. When we submitted our projects, she failed everyone who *did'nt* do abstract work, declaring it was a class on abstract expressionism, and wrote up smarmy, snotty comments ripping our work apart. We took it to the dean, and he re-graded us - I've yet to see a teacher look that disgusted at another teacher before, or since.
I took a senior level watercolor class, where the "visiting" professor (he was a grad student, a relative of someone high up in the school, we heard) had never really used watercolors, and refuses to teach us technique, even when we as a group demanded it. We ended up taking over the class, and taught each other. After the semester, we all found our grades for the class missing, no record of it anywhere on our transcripts...the idiot had never submitted any of the paperwork all semester, and they "could'nt find him", to get our grades. This was a guy, we had been told, who was a featured gallery artist, and was very respected in the field. He was a dirty, unwashed hippy type, dumb as a bag of rocks, and we never did see his art - the one time he tried to actually teach the class, he proved he had no clue how to hold a paintrbrush or paint anything but bright, colored blobs.
I took a class that was required by illustration majors and fine art majors - and he sneered the entire semester at illustration students, because - and this is a direct quote - "They get PAID to paint".
I've spent my entire life learning technique, from charcoal and pencil, to conte and pastels, to guache and watercolor, oil and acrylic, clay, wax, bronze, you name it. I'm immersed myself in materials of the trade, spent most of my life before an easel or a drafting board...and go to shows, where the 'artists" don't have a clue about any of it, and will defend "found" materials (ie. trash) versus traditional materials. It boggles the mind. Art used to be something you dedicated your life to, these limp wristed toadies can't even tell the difference between a filbert and a round paintbrush. If they even USE brushes - most of the art students I had to endure finger painted under the loving approval of idiotic teachers.
I'll subscribe to this magazine - I've been a huge fan of artist's like l. Alma Tedama, from the moment I saw his "Spring" hanging at the Getty in Malibu, and the first time I saw the exquisite Gerome at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco - their technique is absolutely mind-boggingly perfect, and the paintings hold you spell-bound.
I also discovered another "lost" artist, who is still sneered at because he was a "commercial" artist - Maxfield Parrish.
What a joy, to see art that isn't selfishly about anger, bitterness, childish expressions of outrage at politics or social issues, or expressions of narcissistic and promiscuous sexuality. "Art" these days, pardon the expression, is just mental masterbation, and should be rejected...but then, looking at prime time TV and the current state of the world of literature and movies...I'm not holding my breath it'll change anytime soon.
I was born 100 years too late, or early, truly.