So pretend you are starting an art school. What are the core competencies to be taught? Those general conventions and general wisdom? What are they? If, as you suggest (contradicting yourself) it's up to the student then how can you predict what the student will want learn and provide for it in your curricula? And if students want more than you can provide, why not tell them to go to a different school, and even study a different field because they can still be artists without your school? wc
----- Original Message ---- From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, March 12, 2010 8:40:46 PM Subject: Re: Physician, heal thyself William wrote: > Why should an aspiring artist seek art training when it's not always true that there's a causal connection between training in art and being an artist? Well, school is always a good place to get a concentrated exposure to the general knowledge and conventional wisdom of the field. Lots of stuff in a hurry, picked by others who have already been down that road, so you don't have to waste a lot o time finding the stuff that they have already laid on the table for you. Learn the stuff, if you find it useful and to your liking, and then do as you please with it. > Is it true that training in any field at all might be appropriate for becoming an artist even though a specific field may limit what sort of artist is possible? "Appropriate"? Who's to say? Helpful? Useful? That's up to the artist--it might have been the only way, or one that appealed to him or her. > Or, is there any field or training that would clearly block one from being an artist? Same answer. > If art training is valid for becoming some sort of artist, what is the most fundamental art skill, knowledge or concept to be learned? That's way too reductionist, William. When you ask that question, you set yourself on the road to defining (and maybe even prescribing) "core competencies," basic skills, etc., and that leads you back to the Academy, canons, etc. If you approach the issue from your other claim that post-Bauhaus Modernism has opened practically all the gates and doors to other disciplines and areas of interest, then I see that it becomes a question of when the particular art activity leaves the realm of art and enters the realm of philosophy or cultural studies or some other field. Must there exist some artifact (whether tangible and material or some immaterial but nonetheless immutable thing) that is as paramount as the philosophical inquiry or the sociological hypothesis? If you believe that the artifact can claim at least equal status with the idea or notion being propounded, then that suggests that there is a finite limit to the work, that it is limited by its means and materials. Otherwise, it's little more than a convenient sign pointing us to the thought or study or musings behind it.
