Art & Perception

Now on Follow the Painting.

Hanneke van Oosterhout started making imaginary still-life in an accidental way, but now she is beginning to focus on it purposefully. Here is one example she drew in about half an hour.

“It’s great to be able to work so freely,” she said while drawing. “I don’t feel stiff. It’s wonderful because you don’t need to look up [at a real still-life], you just keep on drawing . . .”

Hanneke added, “It’s handy, because you don’t have to buy all that stuff!” meaning the objects. But in fact, the objects she draws are ones that she has in her studio (and her memory, of course). This raises the possibility of combining the imaginary image with real-life detail in an oil painting.

Simple: to learn how to make a living as an artist. Art school education, no matter how stimulating, cannot be considered complete if the graduates need to seek other employment in order to support part-time, non-profitable art making.

Of course, the question of “how to make a living as an artist?” is not trivial. It brings together two things: 1) being an artist, with all the personal expression and integrity implied; and 2) how to live from this. Combining 1) and 2) is a serious topic for research. This should be one of the functions of an art education — to do research into how to sell art.

If how to sell art? is a mystery, then finding the answer will be as exciting as solving any other important problem. Advanced education is not only about learning, but also discovering what is not known.

The only problem is, if art schools could really fulfill their mission, they might loose their faculty — the professors would likely go off and do art full time.

…

This post was inspired by Bob Martin, who is on the board of an art school and commented “I would be very interested in learning what artists want from a school and an instructor.”

What do you want from an art school and instructor?

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[Thanks to those of you writing the great comments, David Palmer in particular, for giving me insight into the art school education, where it succeeds and where it fails.]

The is art school worthless? question brought in some amazing comments. Here are two that make it even harder for me to make up my mind on the issue:

Art dealer Dan Fox said “nearly every fine artist of any repute either went to art school or studied with a master for years, or both.”

Artist Rex Crockett replied, “I know a lot of artists who make good livings at art. About half of them went to art school, and half of those, like me, dropped out in disgust. (I lasted one day.)”

Now, how do we reconcile these views?

. . .

When I am feeling adventurous, I cross-post my blog entries on the unmoderated news group rec.arts.fine. If a blog is cosy like a living room (to paraphrase Arthur), rec.arts.fine is like a New York city street at night. You never know who might attack you, but they are bound to be someone interesting. [I add emphasis to quotes below]

Dan Fox asked if I went to art school, and when I replied in the negative, he wrote:

The foundation courses you get in art school, drawing in particular, are crucial to becoming a competent artist. This means regular classes, lots of drawing, lots of teaching, over a period of time. Learning to draw is like learning to play the piano. Books and workshops contribute very little.This is the reason nearly every fine artist of any repute either went to art school or studied with a master for years, or both. The exception is the genius like Francis Bacon, but these people are rare.

Before I could reply, Rex Crockett dropped this bombshell:

Nonsense. What is rare are people who are willing to repudiate a failed education.Good repute? With whom? Galleries, museums, the press, and the buying public do not care at all, not at all, whether you have a degree in art. It simply does not matter. It never did. It never will. I know a lot of artists who make good livings at art. About half of them went to art school, and half of those, like me, dropped out in disgust. (I lasted one day.) This idea that “It is really hard to survive as an artist” is one of the biggest lies ever told. The reason it is so hard for so many is because their work is crap.

Rex doesn’t have much sympathy for artists who don’t sell, does he?

I think that Dan Fox is making a strong statement without providing any evidence. Rex brings in the weight of personal experience, but I think he misses a key point: some artists find it difficult to make money because they continually push themselves to do things that are extremely challenging. It doesn’t mean their work is crap, but it might mean they are not being practical.

There is more to this debate to be read on the complete rec.arts.fine thread.

Thanks to Courtney, Bob, Tracy, David, and Angela for your insightful comments on the original post at my [our] blog.

One lack of comment I found interesting is that no one disputed my statement: “In art, professors and students do not generally collaborate in the process of creation and discovery in the same meaningful sense as they do in science.”

One lesson we can draw from the 20th C. is that total freedom for the artist is not the path to happiness. Never have there been fewer constraints on what an artist can do, and never has the life of the artist (relative to other professions at least) been so wretched.

. . .

The drawbacks of total freedom should not surprise a physicist or an athlete. Certain mathematical problems are difficult or impossible to solve without a sufficient number of constraints. Without the constraints of rules, sports would be chaos.

We can see evidence for the longing for constraints in the most important painting movement of our time: the Painting a Day phenomenon. What is the explicit purpose of this movement? It is a pure statement of constraint. There must be one painting per day. This constraint severely limits what an artist can produce on a canvas. The enthusiasm with which artists are joining this movement demonstrates the hunger for constraints, for simplicity, for order. After all, you can’t rebel against nothing, can you?

But you don’t need to become a Painting a Day painter to have constraints. All you need to do is think about your own situation as an artist and examine what constraints you already have. And then, of course, to appreciate them and make the most of them.

One year I had no studio for a few months. I needed to work at home, so I drew in my sketchbook each day instead of painting. The work that I designed then I later painted and sold for a lot of money. The constraint of having no studio, temporarily, in fact helped me a great deal.

In order to make the most of your constraints, you need to be aware of what they are. Everyone has limitations of time, space, and talent. The particular mix that you have will influence what you do — much as will the mix of your painting medium or selection of your palette. The practical acceptance of constraints is the key to using the constraints in a positive way. It helps to remember that more opportunity and freedom would not necessarily help you.

So, let’s get to work . . .

If you want to be a scientist, you really should study at a university and get a Ph.D. If you want to be a doctor, you should go to medical school. But if you want to be an artist, will art school help you? Only about half of the successful artists I know went to art school; furthermore, of those who did go to art school, their formal education seems only incidental to their success. What do you think? Is art school a good investment?

. . .

In the Renaissance, an artist apprentice received training from a master by working on the master’s projects. In the most important art how-to book of all time, Cennino Cennini wrote “submit yourself to the direction of a master for instruction as early as you can; and do not leave the master until you have to.” The master had a strong incentive to teach, because good assistants were essential for fulfilling a major commission. Teaching was thus not separate from the master’s own creative work. Instead, it was critical to the productive success of the studio. The result was that apprentice and master collaborated in the process of artistic discovery.

A related method is used for teaching at the highest levels of education today. For example, a graduate student in biology will do research in a specific laboratory, under guidance of a recognized scientist. Only a small part of the student’s education comes through classroom teaching. The scientist has a strong incentive to teach the craft of working in the laboratory to a select group of students, because a group effort is necessary for major research projects. When scientists complain about the burdens of teaching, they are referring to teaching in the classroom. Good scientists know that teaching in the laboratory is essential to success in research. Graduate students thus learn to be scientists in the laboratory, collaborating in the process of discovery.

Art education today is a different story. Artists get paid to do “classroom” teaching at art school. But teaching in this mode does not contribute directly to the artist’s own work. Instead, it becomes an impediment. In art, professors and students do not generally collaborate in the process of creation and discovery in the same meaningful sense as they do in science. The reason probably has to do with our modern notions of artist: the artist (and therefore, the art professor) is supposed to be a loner in the process of creation. Scientists are not burdened with this notion, any more than were artists of the past (which is to say, of course the issue of credit is important, but it is not debilitating to the field).

I did not go to art school, but I had a valuable art education in my high school with one of the most remarkable art teachers in America — Walter Bartman. In his classroom, and on frequent painting excursions, there was an exhilarating sense of collaborating in a process of discovery. An interview with “Mr. Bartman” will appear soon [is here] on Art & Perception.

The typical Painting a Day picture will be a still life. If it is, you can be more or less certain that it will be painted “from life,” as opposed to from the mind. Are the members of the Painting a Day movement inherently unimaginative, or is working from the real objects a fundamental aspect of the genre of still-life painting?

. . .

A successful contemporary Dutch still-life painter once told me, “I have no imagination, I’m only a pair of eyeballs.” Indeed, still-life and painting “from life” are so closely linked, it is reasonable to ask, why would you even want to make a still-life from your mind?

Hanneke van Oosterhout recently drew this imaginary still-life while in a smoky cafe. She was dreaming of her studio. Later she tried to construct a real still-life like it (see Follow the Painting.) Hanneke found that her imaginary still-life had aspects that were difficult to recreate with a real still-life. I find this not at all surprising.

Drawing from imagination is a great way to study your feelings about a topic. It makes sense that the still-life of the mind would be something special, something difficult to recreate in the world. Have you ever made an imaginary still-life? Did you find it had something that made it different from any real-world still-life?