Now Playing: The Art Education Problem
Topic: YOU CAN'T MARK ART
Contemporary art has failed if itspractitioners can not stand up for its cause!
If we are still satisfied with material superficial aestetic empty abstract decoration and formalist figuration, installations of metal robots that inform us of how dehumanized we have become and offer no suggestion of how to change or reverse the process, then we have truly failed. I have failed.
Many do not even understand what has happend to us nd our art.
The route of the problem begins at home in the galleries and the art schools, it is the arts education problem...
Iam going to explain a little in this essy about why mice eat cheese? Why do a degree in art?
We enter into our studies with the greatest of expectations only by the final year to discover what a horrific monster the institution really is,
a Capitalistic conveyer belt taking us through a degree that we pay out through the nose for, only to be thrown off the other side once its done stealling as much money off as it can do of course, and I do mean theft, when you consider how little tutor time you have received. What have we been paying for exactly?
Increasingly, how many students give up in the face of non-information, miscommunication and outright hostility from their tutors when trying to develop and explain their ideas and find themselves met with a kind of criticism that is in the least bit constructive or even empathetic, I feel that sometimes the tutors do not even have time for their students, why is this, is it true? O do they really have no interest, their main aim seems to quash and belittle the attempts of the next generation of creators! Students should learn from the heart, and a tutor should gve them a knife that they cut,file and sharpen to weild a tool for the future.
On entering the studios and pondering 'how long is that neon tube going to be, seven or eight foot? what colour is that square, red?' can I get into chainsaw art, or is that pushing the arrogance bout out a bit far?
'THE EXAMINERS ARE NOT QUALIFIED TO MARK MY IMAGINATION'
We enter our degree knowing there will be an end and that will inevitably finalize withthe grading system, but this is intrinsically the problem now-
YOU CAN'T MARK ART! it is free to interpretation which boils down to critcal judgements and above all constructions- Taste. This is not some competition where one wins first class honors one comes last and ll the rest get mediocre, I'm not a fucking Turner Prize nominee, I want a deeper interaction from the tutors and examiners with my work, otherwise what are they really teaching us? If their teaching from their own experiences and practices then they've been pretty secretive with the sharing of their knowledge, I wonder what they really know?
The supposition to knowledged so professed by the institution is pretty much as far as I can see is a great sham. To rub salt to the wound, last year the tutors went on strike for a pay rise, as if its not rich enough, that they want more money for a job they don't even do sufficiently, its not as though they work in a donut factory, and the work they have to endure is so laborious that they should be entitled to a pay raise. In my opinion, tutors should feel lucky to work in a proffession with young creatives, this sort of work should be stimulating to them. If not, then perhapse its down right time they left by the back door and gave someone else a job who'll will appreciate it!
To summerize so far, art education is on the rocks and its not all down to the tutors, it's the disgusting beurucratic forces behind the walls that keep pulling the wool over everyones eyes that keep us that way. Its time we had some respect,
WE ARE THE REASON WHY THE INSTITUTION EXISTS, without our money, they do not exist, its high time they started to pay attention to their student body Otherwise that's quite a height to topple from!
'Mark art, indeed'
To the 1st and 2nd years who have it all to come.