Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Sun, 25 Jul 1999 11:25:08 -0400 (EDT)
On Sun, 25 Jul 1999 Kalimompro@aol.com wrote:
> I, for one, went to grad school in the early '90s when conceptual, post
> modern, art ruled. Process often took precident over product. I love this
> kind of method. However, some of my professors sacrificed the teaching of
> formal technique for the teaching of content/politics/polemics. Often,
> professors expected us to be able to write about our work and explain it to
> death, instead of allowing the work to speak for itself -- as a visual means
> of communication. Some of my collegues ended up making work that might as
> well have been advertising, because it practically bludgeoned one with its
> message.
But "art school" has always been an imperfect instrument. When I went to
art school in the 1950s all we learned in painting was the
abstract-expressionist circular wrist motion. Drawing was omitted entirely
("passe"). There was one course in "materials," but we were *poets* and
resisted with might & main. A year after I graduated, when I decided I
wanted to PAINT, I pored over my one page of scribbled notes from that
class like the Rosetta Stone. Useless. I had to turn to Doerner, not quite
translated from the German, and Mayer, better than nothing.
Some years later (1978), responding to a panel titled "Art Education: Is
It Either?", I wrote,
".... As for Art Education... once an art mode has become so thorougly
formulated as to be transmittable through the devices of academe, it is
more or less finished as art currency.... [What is taught] won't in
*itself* be much use to the next generation, although it brings the
salary, perquisites and satisfactions of teaching to *this* generation.
But the benefit of art school... is not so much educational as social.
Art Education is the initiation into a looseknit, far-flung mystical
coterie, or family, of artists. Even those who reject the milieu tend to
make it the screen against which they play their future development...."
Etc. etc. [Panel report & commentary in anthology, "Mutiny & The
Mainstream: Talk That Changed Art, 1975-1990".]
Apparently (no surprise), these comments still apply....
Judy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Judy Seigel, Editor >
| World Journal of Post-Factory Photography > "HOW-TO and WHY"
| info@post-factory.org >
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