The Art Education Problem

ART Renewal Center ^ | FR Post 3-7-03 | Don Gray

[vannrox]

If we are looking today for a general level of art of serious purpose, art with profound content supported by significant aesthetics, we will not find it. Contemporary art has failed.

If we are satisfied with superficial, artificial art that manipulates aesthetics for empty abstract, decorative effects, then we truly live in a "golden" artistic age ... for this kind of art is everywhere.

The degree of present-day artistic collapse, compared to the height of past artistic achievement, can be seen in the velocity and extent of precipitous decline during the 20th Century, increasing since World War II.

In our time, artists mechanically -- and temporarily -- scribe lines on museum walls, spread debris on museum floors (perhaps it is merciful that such works are not preserved for posterity), and make metal video robots that may wonderfully tell us how dehumanized we have become, but offer no suggestions on how to reverse the process.

We lost our connection with principle and enduring greatness in art (and life), when we lost connection with nature and with our own spiritual, poetic, artistic dimension. We lost connection with each other and with ourselves when we were overwhelmed by technology and the forces of societal and personal dehumanization. Our values -- artistic, spiritual, societal -- are in disarray. One aspect of this tragedy is that many don't even realize what happened to us and our art.

We hope for better things, more understanding, insight and integrity from future generations. But, unfortunately, the future continues to be corrupted by the present and recent past.

Young, would-be artists are subjected to the stale, dead, often perverse contemporary art ideas propagated by too many teachers of the day. Too many college and art school professors have lost their own way as artists, have little idea what genuine art is, and mindlessly espouse the distorted values, the fashionable cliches of contemporary art ...

... depersonalized design without character; theoretical, esoteric color and drawing; ritual gesture and mechanical relationships; meaningless formulas devoid of significant connection to the deepest thoughts and feelings of student-artists, unrelated to the meaning of life or to the visual and emotional reality of the world.

Too many art school graduates are ill-equipped to see the "art" in everyday life as did great artists of past centuries. They don't have the knowledge, insight or drawing and painting skills to create art from reality, to significantly translate their experience of life into art.

They have not been taught to dig deeply within themselves, to ask what they really need from art to fulfill themselves as artists and human beings, then use that awareness to excavate the raw material of the world. As far as they know, art is a closed narcissistic circle that does not include other human beings or the world. Art is aesthetic masturbation without communication. Tragically, most young artists don't realize they are clones of limited teaching unless they have an instinctive reaction, a sense that something isn't right even if they can't put it into words. How can most students tell a cliche from a timeless principle? It takes time and effort to earn that understanding. Or, if finally fed up with this educational process, they may react like the outraged college student who threw a wadded drawing in the face of the instructor who, when asked for help in drawing still-life ellipses, replied, "We don't worry about ellipses around here."

How many students give up in the face of non-information, disinformation and sometimes outright hostility from their teachers? A certain college art department could not understand why they had so few students, why their numbers were declining yearly. The answer was clear. The art professors were bitingly critical. Most of us would agree that such an attitude is not teaching, anymore than the passing on of degraded and degrading art fashions. To teach is to support the students, give them solid skills, do everything possible to awaken them to timeless art principles, the miracle of art, fill them with a passion for art they can build on for a lifetime.

There are obviously good art teachers. But the general impression of the college and university art educational system, based on the art produced by both students and faculty (like contemporary art itself) is decay.

Young artists need to be taught organic, vital, biting, powerful, personal drawing and painting. They need to draw and paint rutted cabbages, twisted tree roots, muscled forearms, aged heads, rocks, onions, rotten apples, cow pelvises and a hundred other things, and do it with character and strength. They need this more than they need the slick, clever, unfelt line and shape, the commercial swish and stain of brushwork unrelated to any reality, that are hallmarks of contemporary "draughtsmanship" and painting.

They need to be taught to see, to study an object so intensely they become one with it; the forms, color and character of reality and the world revealed to them. They must be given the aesthetic means to significantly express these timeless truths, each young artist responding in their unique way.

We will remain rootless as artists and art lovers if we thoughtlessly continue trying to build upon the insubstantial aesthetic mannerisms of contemporary art.

We need to rediscover the foundational principles of great art when it was still in touch with life, not to copy past styles, but to learn from genuine artists, be inspired by their example, commit ourselves to the search for styles, forms and subjects expressive of our own time and worthy of our humanity, now and for centuries to come. This is what the great artists of the past did.

The only way to build an artistic bridge to the future is to re-construct our link with the past that was destroyed by the pain, passions and corruptions of the 20th Century. Obviously, artists should do what they feel they must do, but almost anything else will result in a continuation of the present empty aesthetic floundering.

The rediscovery of the world and foundational principles in art involves as daring and revolutionary a search for the very nature of art and life as the Renaissance discovery of the world after a thousand years of medievalism. There is nothing more innovative and difficult that any of us have ever faced. But we need to do it ... for art, for ourselves, for our self-respect, and for future generations of mankind.

[Desdemona]

ping

[u-89]

I know how to spell Duchamp but I do not type well - especially when working fast and my proof reading is not always up to snuff either. Your post to me had me go back and look to see if I actually made that kind of egregious typo and to my horror you are right.

[Goetz_von_Berlichingen]

"We need to rediscover the foundational principles of great art when it was still in touch with life . . . commit ourselves to the search for styles, forms and subjects expressive of our own time . . ."

Perhaps degenerate art is expressive of our own times.

[buffyt]

AMEN!!!!!

I have a double degree in Art and Spanish from Okla. State U. 1973. [Since then I have taken numerous courses in computers, to play catch-up with technology! But AMEN to that article, just AMEN! Most contemporary art just plain stinks. His name slips my mind, but there is that one artist who likes to wrap huge areas in bright cloth, and I think he is going to do that in NYC soon. That isn't art, that is a WASTE of money, time, and cloth!!!!!!!!!!!! Where are the Van Goghs, Gaugins, Picassos, JMW Turners, Renoirs, Pizarros, Chezannes, Degas, Monets, Manets, Seuratts, Mondrians, Mondiglinais, Klimpts... Where are the masters who did Pinky and Blue Boy. Where are the Remingtons?

[buffyt]

And Marcel Duchamps was the first one to do this, when he brought a pop bottle rack into a museum and called it art.

[buffyt]

....I agree with the author of this article that art profs seldom bother to impart real techniques, but are famous for their nastiness and criticism.

I found that to be so true in college art classes. The Art History teachers were great, but the oil painting, sculpture, water color, ceramics teachers were bullies. My ceramics teacher looked like the devil himself. MOST of them were only teaching at college until they were discovered for their great talents. I saw their work, none of it was even GOOD!!!!! IT STUNK!!! They were rude and unhelpful as teachers. You never knew if you were doing things the way they liked them or not. I did have a teacher in calligraphy and commercial poster design and he was good. My 3-D art teacher was OK. He was good friends with Paul Winter of Paul Winter Consort, that is the group who recorded the music you hear at beginning of the SURVIVOR shows. Check them out....

And on the other hand, Spanish teachers were GREAT.

[kittymyrib]

I agree with you. Art is an expression of the soul. Most post-modernist people have an empty space where the soul used to be, so their art is naturally empty and completely trivial.

[buffyt]

True, look at early Picasso, then his Blue Period, then his Cubism. His early paintings were done in detail, like portraits. But his abstracts were excellent, too. Matisse was great too. The new stuff today just STINKS.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

there is that one artist who likes to wrap huge areas in bright cloth

Christo

[ijcr]

"Thus the successful Artist .... He or she is able to see and depict social ills, injustices and other assorted important things which the rest of the population cannot see or feel without the help of the Artist. The art critic, of course, translates to the baffled public just what it is the Artist is trying to say with a passionate stroke of the brush or sensitive line of the pencil."


" Shock is always a great source of publicity, and "they" sometimes believe that John Q. Public must be shocked in order to be educated. Never mind that John Q. Public is footing the bill, but Mr. Public will be required to see Mapplethorpe photographs of men urinating in each other's mouths and ordered in school to admire random paint drippings on huge canvasses. If anyone dares to question the artistic value or point of the shock, then the word "philistine" and "barbarian" or "Republican" is brought out. Again, John Q. Public is usually not part of the outcry against this perceived outrage, although John Q. Public's news media is not only invited to the lynching but expected to join in and amplify the outrage."

F. Lennox Campello

[justshutupandtakeit]

I have never seen any Nazi-approved art that was Art Deco.
What I have seen is just lifeless traditionalism. Neo-classicism, heroic Realism and pseudo-Romanticism made up the core of Nazi art. If you can post examples of Art Deco acceptable to the Nazis I would like to see it. But it is more a style of decoration than true art.

[u-89]

You can't blame the collapse of art on the commies

Yes I can. There is a very big difference with what the Soviets tolerated at home for domestic consumption and what their agents and useful idiots promoted in the west. The politicization of the art world was part of the culture war and is very well documented.

Abstract painting is not in and of itself political and the artists I know, though they are liberals do not attempt to politicize their art but professors do interpret everything politically and it is amazing what they can read into a simple canvas. However abstract work is not the real problem, it is the representational work and installation pieces that convey the messages. All one has to do is go to any downtown gallery or the Whitney to see the pro- homosexual, feminist, environmentalist, anti-christian, anti-republican, etc. message loud and clear. Very frequently bad drawing and bad painting are used to illustrate the harshness of modern life as we suffer under traditional oppression. Furthermore artistic standards of the academy have been compromised in the name of egalitarianism like standards in other disciplines have so not all bad drawing is intentional, it just is natural to successful but untalented "artists".

[u-89]

the Nazis had quite an appreciation for Art Deco, which was pretty definitely modern

After some more time has passed and the personal and emotional sentiments have faded into history it will not be damnable to say that the nazis had some very cool designs. Now it is an outrage to suggest there was any merit in the period because it is seen as political endorsement but one can objectively see in the designs of German insignia, uniforms, architecture, etc. some very good design elements and great examples of art deco. And their painting and sculpture though not profound was fairly pleasing.

[justshutupandtakeit]

You can try to blame all evils on the commies but that just won't fly with anyone who knows something of those evils. Just stick to blaming the real problems they have caused on them. That is enough.

They are not to blame for bad modern art, atonalism, Maya Angleau or neuritis and neuralgia.

[Darksheare]

I kinda beg to differ...
"Art" now adays is used as an excuse to shock and offend.
It is no longer about form and beauty, it's about crassness, crudity, and vitriol.
Those, such as myself, that CAN draw -and draw well- have had the NEA and those in power in the "Art World" thumb their noses at us and tell us that what we do isn't art.
Because it isn't shocking and discordant.
That's all it's about today.
To be shocking and discordant.

Me, I'll take form, beauty, and substance over offensiveness any day.

[Ditto]

There is a body of 20th Century Art that will be long remembered and admired. That of the Commercial Illustrators.

From Parish to Rockwell, the Dons of the High Art world have damned and demeaned their work while the High Art world has itself degraded into a small circle of meaningless no-talent frauds whose reputations extend no further than their circle. History will balance the scales.

[Sam Cree]

Looking around Google convinces me that you are right in that Nazis did not much approve of moderne art. I had in my memory, I think from an old art history class, a Nazi Art Deco eagle, but don't find it right away.

However, here is another one.

As far as I can find out with Google, the eagle was the main Nazi example of Art Deco, certainly it is "decorative."

[mr.pink]

I agree with the author of this article that art profs seldom bother to impart real techniques, ...

I was very lucky when I went to art school as there were still many profs who taught technique, and I made a real effort to find the ones who would teach, (as opposed to merely talk or spend the class trying to hit on the co-eds), and get in their classes. A lot of what they tried to teach me didn't sink in until I was working for a restorer in NYC, and it all came together. The discipline of the restoration process combined with magnifying glass interaction with the old masters made me appreciate the importance of a sound process.

Astonishing what can be done with this inexpensive media.

You betcha'....the current series of paintings I'm working on are based on a set drawings I did armed with a PaperMate Flexigrip Ultra™ ( universally acknowledged as the most sensual of the economy class ballpoints).

[u-89]

You can try to blame all evils on the commies but that just won't fly with anyone who knows something of those evils

Your statement makes me ask what you know of the evils of communism and how they operated over the years. If you know of the Soviet plans for world revolution once they realized armed revolution was not going to happen on a global scale and how they went about undermining the west you would not even begin to question the soviet efforts in the culture was,which art is a part of. Are you familiar with Gramsci? with the Frankfurt school? you can go to the archives and look up speeches in the House of Representatives from 1949 by Rep. George Donero of Michigan who documented much about communism in the heart of modern art. Do you think the counter culture of the sixties had no connection to the political manueverings of the left? have you ever read David Horowitz or heard him speak? The commies politicized every aspect of life from sex to art to school admissions and curriculum in their efforts to undermine western tradition and values. It is very well documented and quite honestly I have never heard anyone, not even a leftist argue the point before let alone a conservative.

[woofie]

What Rothko did, was paint an entire rectangular canvas Plum colored. Then, he painted a slightly smaller square which was Brown colored. This was sold for $3.5M. I only which I had the skill to make art that was so fabulously beautiful (and profitable).

Rothko had to be dead to make the big money