Problems with modern art programs.

#21

I dont know I have found learning on my own rather slow compared to a GOOD teacher. But I have had teachers that did not know much trying to teach from a book and most of those were worthless.

#22

Originally posted by P’clip: Were you talkin’ to me, huh? were you talkin’ to me?

:smiley: :stuck_out_tongue: :wip:

Yes, yes, rebecca…we’ve ALL noticed your postcount. I was talking to Leigh about returning you to 0 After all, you like a challenge, don’t you?

gasp! :eek: Surely…you’re not that evil? :cry:

I know it’s all ‘for the paper’, but shouldn’t you at least have something to focus on/occupy your mind during the 4 years??

Nah. That’s crazy talk! :scream:

Originally posted by Donald: Hehe, thanks Rebecca :stuck_out_tongue: If nothing else, complaining about school is an amusing way of passing the time

Hehe! Don’t you have a Senior Project to work on? :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh, and your postcount frightens me. Truly.

Thank you! :wip:

#23

Don’t you know me AT ALL, rebecca? :twisted:

#24

Bah… post counts. What do they mean? :smiley:

#25

I have to agree, I come from a very analytical computer geek background with only photo/video experience before beginning work on my BFA and seriously think most of the fine art classes I’ve taken so far are next to worthless. The exception being in the art history classes where we are actually forced to think and learn something. The worse offenders have been 2D Design and Color Theory. Instead of learning much at all about composition or color we spent almost all our time trying to cut out perfect edges and draw straight lines. While practice is important, I could have learned everything in those classes in three weeks using Illustrator. To be honest, I learned far more about color theory from reading through the whole textbook that we had to read a chapter out of. Why would I go to art school if I can get much more out of a short book than a semester long class?

I’m sure I’m going to get flamed for this, but I don’t think we have strong art education anymore because there is no longer and objective substance to art itself. How can a professor teach composition if they philosophically disagree with rules and guidelines, or more tellingly, when they set out to break all of them in practice. I’ve been told that not only is there no objective standard for beauty but that ideas like beauty, sublime and similar shouldn’t exist, nevertheless be present in our vocabularies. Certainly this is an exaggerated to the normal views, but it’s this attitude that strips art of foundation and purpose. How can a school educate without a foundation? If there are no objective rules then a professor is left without any more mature of criteria then whether your edges are cut nicely and your corners straight.

#26

I’m surprised the basics of art are not being pushed in highschool education. Firm foundation should start there.

#27

Don’t you know me AT ALL, rebecca?

Oh…right. :argh: :scream: :cry:

Bah… post counts. What do they mean?

Watch your back Mr. Tea Monkey! I’m gaining on ya! :stuck_out_tongue:

How can a school educate without a foundation?

Exactly. It can’t.

#28

Strangely, I learned a hell of a lot in college. I did teach myself a lot, and hung out in the library a lot absorbing a lot from magazines, periodicals, and stuff, but also learned a lot from being in classes, learning from professors that were practicing artists and from being around other students that were in school to learn too… Art Theory is pretty damn important. There’s a lot to it too. Studying the philosophical trends in history as seen in art can teach you tons about yourself, your society, where you are, where you want to be and a lot of other things. You can teach yourself to be a craftsman, doing the same thing forever or you can teach yourself to be an artist. I think a lot of people think they are artists when in fact they are really just craftsman… this includes in painting, sculpting, and yes, game design, 3d modelling, and animation. How many games have we seen that are clones of doom?, etc. How many freaking scupltures have we seen that are clones? How many Rothko or Pollock imitation painters can the world hold? Be an artist. Do you own think. Think about why the hell you need to do what you need to do. Why? Dig in and think about what you are doing and what you are and have the potential to be in what you do, what your work does, and how all of that pieces together with this worldwide society that we now live in.

Happy Thanksgiving.

#29

I’ll say this and you can take it any way you like…

I went to a public high school back when art music and physical education weren’t chopped out of school districts budgets. So from the get go I had good solid instructors and even AP art history. A total tangent is the US doesn’t seem to value public education these days enough to actually fund it…in my city I voted for an education bond that would’ve cost me 150 bucks tops a year if even…and it got voted down. back on topic…

once in university I did notice a few things …a lot of students transferred in or out ofthe university and or program (some switched to architecture some from architecture to art etc).

A lot of the transfers had to do with the discipline (sculpture… the dept didn’t have any glass or welding etc…) so each dept in and of itself had strengths and weaknesses and a lot of people moved on to where they could do what they wanted to do at another place.

   So on top of that you have the actual [b]professors[/b]

and like here on CGtalk they are people …people with some level of skill and some level of being able to teach that to you. This can tip the balance of your whole education…

… I had some profs who lived in the intellectual ether… and I had some real great professors that regardless of their personal style or belief in arts they taught solid fundamentals and they knew how to teach it well…and you could carry it forward to whatever direction your heart desired.

Now the first two years were painful because I didn’t have a strong grasp of which instructors were actually good. But once I realized this I focused on getting classes with them, getting independent studies with them ( had I not done that I wouldn’t have graduated on time!)…and for better or worse i dropped some areas because they were only taught by certain instructors who I got nothing from.

So I have to say find out what you can before you get into a program/school if you can…and once you are there just like a job …keep your options open …assess if it’s really going where you want it to go… search out those who can point you to the profs that are worthy.

I don’t think my BFA was worthless, it may not have been directly career driven curriculum at all but those fundamentals are still relevant… (composition, anatomy, you know the drill)
and I noticed when I used to have to review demo reels/portfolios it was obvious who did and didn’t have a strong foundation.

#30

Man ,

are you really going to start trying to say who is and isn’t an artist?

Come on man, no one needs to hear that bs
I’m not even going to go into depth on this.

#31 
Ooooo... the pain...the torture. * Shudder *

So it’s still like that in art schools today? It’s not new. I attended the Gerrit Rietveld academy (ya know Bauhaus) in 1982 and left it in my second year. My friend and I called the teachers the Art Gestapo. We were given no instruction and then were told our work was wrong, all wrong. Go figure.

I agree with Rebecca. The internet has been my salvation. There’s such a wealth of practical information and communities offer help and support that it allows me to learn EXACTLY what I want to learn. And it’s all free!

#32

Yup, pretty much like that now still…it sucks… yay for human genetics in trinity college dublin instead!

#33

I think my primary school art education was pretty good. Even though we didn’t study things like drawing from life (actually that might’ve been difficult since kids are very restless all the time), I appreciate that our art teacher (who was great, always making these amazing dragons and lizards out of junk and hanging them up from the roof) gave us many opportunities to experiment with new materials and use our imagination.

I think it’s good that generally in high-school I see that this kind of innovation is regarded as important. At the same time, though, less importance is given to the actual execution since the idea is taking precedence, to the point where my art teacher tells me that idea is the entirety of art. Obviously there needs to be a balance.

#34

interesting discussion here

My thought on this issue viewing both sides is quite simple.

I don’t think it is the issue of what is modern art (if it doesn’t talk to you, no problem) is doing to a “solid” art education I personally think it is more the brand “artist” that is bothering you guys really.

You talk about what they earn, how much they spend, what schools offer what blablabla. You feel mocked of how the terms art and artist are used because you are solid in your beliefs or think you are choosing a path that is “true” in reflecting the progress in the field over centurys.

The easyest thing to do is to do your thing, everything else is not even worth a discussion because it is meaningless when ideas clash you can always see wich one is brighter (if you have to think is these categorys)

#35

This is precisely why if you’re serious about learning how to draw/paint, you take illustration courses, not fine art, and you go to a school like Art Center, where they turn you into a lean, mean, professional artist that can actually make a living drawing/painting. :smiley:

I too have a buddy who graduated with a degree in fine art that can’t draw/paint at all. His entire art education was based on touchy feely stuff where each student stood in front of the class and explained “artworks” they did that only they themselves understood, or their own mothers could appreciate. :smiley: I find the fact that someone with a degree in fine art who can’t even do a decent still life, portrait, landscape, or any other representational art in any medium, from life or from references, to be ironic. It’s kind of like a composer with a degree in music composition who can’t even compose a tune that demonstrated the most basic use of melody, harmony, arrangement…etc that conveyed a solid understanding of music theory, or a writer with a degree in creative writing/literature who can’t even write anything that made any sense to anyone except himself.

For all the crap that illustrators took from fine artists–it was the illustrators who kept the knowledge of how to draw and paint alive in the decades where modern art ruled art schools, galleries, museums…etc with an iron fist. We owe SO much to illustration and illustrators of past and present.

#36

Years ago, when I majored in Fine Art, I found myself often frustrated with the professor’s attitudes towards form and narrative. Accordingly, the modern artist’s ideal should either be the pursuit of mundane flatness or something politically/morally repulsive. I really felt lost and confused amongst the crucified Barbie dolls and thoughtlessly splattered canvases, until one day I came across a book titled, “The Painted Word” by Tom Wolf. It’s a great satirical commentary on the sham of modern art. It’s a quick read and I recommend it to anyone with a little time on their hands.

#37

Well, I’m in the priviledged position of not having seen much modern art besides ye ole mondriaan/picasso stuff. I actually thought the topic was art classes nowadays lol.

Well, to be honest, modern art is trying to find it’s place besides ultra real cg stuff. To discuss it here is a weird thing to do. SHould be fun.

#38

I agree with your post completly Lunatique.

danielh68 I will have to look for that book (“The Painted Word” by Tom Wolf)
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#39

Why do you think they stopped teaching students how to draw/paint in art schools? Learn about art history and you’ll find out it was because of modern art.

#40

well I usually do my own interpretting. But I can see the truth of what you say, at smoe point there needs to be a change if a medium no longer serves the purpose it was initially intended for.

All things considered, it’s very logical for illustrators to have kept knowledge of better representation of the real world. On the other hand modern art has an intent to explore the various aspects of expression, I’ve seen in a short amount of googlign just now, theatrical photography, paintings in a wholely unrealistic method and intent depicting just easthetics of some idea, representative still lifes (also encompassing weird sculptures intended to immerse, NOT to be understood). etc etc. Modern art isn’t about painting, it’s a culmination of modern philosophies on arts and what the term art is in a bigger sense of the word.
Good drawing skills aren’t of much girth to a photographer. And on the larger scope I’d say modern art encompasses far more than visuals only, as I’d see Fantasia as a prime example of modern art, a culmination of modern media and their inherent implications into a new way of expressing oneself through arts. imho it’s all bound to the technological advancements that have shaped our modernday world.

I read a quote on here a while back stating something like “you cannot be a painter without being a philosopher”. In most countries art educations require an above average level of intelligence, which leads me to believe they need you to go understand the finer points on your own. The personal beliefs and endeavours of your teachers obviously aren’t the prime truth to graphic representation, they just posses a good amount of knowledge that is usable more than substantial. If you ever plan on controlling your hands well enough to paint the way you envision, you are going to have to learn tto draw a straight line on your own without computers, even more so considering the delicate curves needed for a beautiful painting.This may be a rudely put statement but it’s how the slate’s been whiped.

PS: sprry for any typo’s or fallable statements… just typing as I go. Not gunna edit either :stuck_out_tongue: