As former chair of the department of art theory and practice at Northwestern, before Ryan was a student there, I can say that no student would be ridiculed for choosing to paint in a representational mode during my administration. Two of the senior faculty during my period as head of the MFA program were internationally recognized figurative painters, Ed Paschke and James Valerio. Further, the most significant feature of contemporary art is pluralism and the end of a linear artistic canon. Nothing is obsolete in art because everything is made anew when it is made. I think it is downright wrong for an art theory professor to tell a student that his or her ideas are contemporary but his practice is obsolete. How can there be an idea in the absence of a means (as practice) to express it? How can any mode of human expression, such as representational painting, be obsolete if it is a product of the human mind, the expressive creation of an idea? The problem with many art school programs is the lack of fundamental philosophical rigor and the lazy favoring of "theory" that is really nothing but thinly disguised fascination for linear art-market trends. Too many MFA programs are like an Elizabethan Court, full of dandies and dancing dolls ever watchful for the next fashion or inexplicable riddle from on high. The students are not the prostitutes; they are too often the unwitting, infatuated clientele. wc
----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, November 3, 2010 2:43:09 AM Subject: b People think youbre cool just because you were on a television show, even if you did a bunch of stupid stuff on it.b Isn't WORK OF ART... turning participants into prostitution whores?: http://www.northbynorthwestern.com/2010/10/91662/northwestern-alum-ryan-shult z-on-his-break-into-bravo/
