"How to do" (technique) is the easiest thing to teach, from my experience. "How to see" what IS the painted object- "model", one of the most important part of visual art education. Untrained eye can't see all the colors or shapes etc. on the surface of the model(apple, figure,flower etc.). It has nothing to do with taste. It is ability not to think apple or flower, but the form, color, value etc. when we learn to draw or paint, or sculpt. Taste like creativity we can't teach, but help to develop potential by pointing out to the student when we think he/she is on something good. Of course in order to do that teacher has to have 'it'. Boris Shoshensky
-- "Chris Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "Rather, the (good) teacher says, "When you do it this way [pointing to a drawing or painting], the viewer will (usually) perceive [or react to] it in such and such a way." Which viewer? That's the question which this style of critique is begging -- especially if the student is still not sharing that perception or reaction. That's why the teacher, here, is being a bit dishonest/deceptive -- because the "viewer" is primarily the teacher herself -- and what she's teaching is not just "how to do" but also "how to see" -- i.e., the teacher is teaching taste -- without being upfront about it. Has this little deception always been necessary for good teaching ? I would claim that its peculiar to our world - where the ideology of self expression trumps any specific set of values or beliefs. Of course -- if self expression were the only concern -- no art education would be necessary at all --and this was a claim made by several modernist painters of the 1920's -- as well as the title of a little book recently published by James Elkins "Why Art cannot be taught: a handbook for Art Students" But curiously, Elkins has not yet resigned from the art school faculty -- so there must be other concerns -- and that's where the art theorists step in -- the ones who, as William puts it "dispose of what artists propose" --- which is also a relationship peculiar to our world. (BTW -- the world to which I refer is post-war America -- A.A.'s recent quote from Flannery O'Connor -- admonishing the teachers of literature to teach their students good taste -- is from an earlier era.) ********************************************************************* Michael wrote: You don't know much about teaching, do you? Or learning, for that matter. A good teacher doesn't say, "I want you to do it my way" or even, "I want you to do it your way." Rather, the teacher says, "When you do it this way [pointing to a drawing or painting], the viewer will (usually) perceive [or react to] it in such and such a way." There is a world of difference in those approaches... and they don't involve ideologies or structuralistical theorems or such. Perhaps at a higher level of study--you know, like, fourth year apprentice or indentured grad student--the teacher or aesthetic guide might get tough with the student: "For God's sake, Mueller, that's shit! I thought you could do better. The hands you painted look like flippers. Where are the fingers? And the idea? What idea? What kind of picture is this? It's fatuous. It's tendentious. It's too easy. It's so retro: you've painted a man talking to a dead hare sitting on a stool next to a naked woman all smeared with blue ink (and flippers for hands), and a big white fence runs through it. Come on! Think. Do better." _____________________________________________________________ Save hundreds on getting a Web Design Degree. Click here. http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2211/fc/REAK6ZqYFqxSZm5KRe3Ix8YyN68nWa Mkr3Pmc6xq7Z9zYneLsTESLi/ _____________________________________________________________ Click for a credit repair consultation, raise your FICO score. http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2221/fc/REAK6aBebANG9QZR0yPuqs881klFjx Hu4Hb5CvbwqEwv8MGaTaRYX6/
