That was the problem I faced in the mid-1970s when I went to University to take art classes. The Hippies/Anarchists/Nihilists/Marxist/Socialists had just completed overruning it.
At first, as a Catholic that was told to respect my elders and instructors, and after spending so much time in Catholic school, I was totally unprepared to believe what was happening. In a nutshell, I was taught:
Self-expression was everything. The old was, well, old.
Self-expression meant you had no limits - defame, blaspheme, celebrate the bizarre and immoral. Any criticism meant nothing because you were given blanket freedom by calling yourself an artist and your work Art. Art meant you were instantly absolved of all by all.
The incomprehensible was filled with meaning.
In my advanced painting class, my instructor came up to me and asked what I was doing, and I said, I was trying to paint the non-live model. He grabbed my brush, slammed down a bunch of lines, and handed it back to me.
In my art appreciation class, we sat in a theater style setting with a stage and large screen at the far end. Our instructor put up a slide showing a clear, rectangular block of plexiglass with short metal rods sticking out of it at intervals. Then, with great emotion in his voice, he gestured with his arm and said, “This is a man’s life!!”
My life drawing instructor took our class to the local art museum back when the city I lived in was still somewhat livable. As I viewed the exhibits, I came across a spiral of duct tape on the floor that was about 30 feet across. Ah, but lucky for me, there was a small white card on the floor that read: “Please do not remove. This is art.” Wow. At that moment I realized that what I was receiving was not art instruction but brainwashing. As if I was attending a Communist reeducation school, I realized that only those who accepted what was taught could “see” this was art. The cleaning lady, on the other hand, might scrape it up off the floor, The sheer fact that the card was there confirmed that “they” knew this, but continued teaching what they wanted us to believe anyway.
And by the way, when I asked my life drawing instructor what that spiral of duct tape meant. I was told, “That’s a man’s life!”
So, after spending a lot of time in my advanced painting class, and watching most of my classmates painting the incomprehensible, I learned something else. Our instructor would select a random student to sit down and review their latest finished canvas during class. We were all invited to attend. In one case, a young lady placed her latest piece on an easel as instructor and student took their seats about 8 feet away.
The painting was mostly black with random colored lines, some triangles in various spots and what looked like small stars in various random spots. The instructor asked her what she was trying to accomplish and about her vision. Well, she stumbled to find the right words, made a little sense for a while and then veered off to explain the non-obvious.
The instructor, much like a psychologist, said things like: “I don’t think you’ve found your focus yet. You need to refine your vision and gain confidence with it…”
The next time around, another student with his own incomprehensible art, told an interesting and amusing story about. So, if the story was well told, even though the average human being could not make heads or tails of what he was looking at, the instructor would say: “You are realizing your vision. I can see cubist and post-modernist elements in your work but with your own unique touches. I encourage you to continue to refine your vision.”
OK.
Now, after trying for so long to paint something realistic, it was time for my final exam. It was a significant fraction of my grade. So I decided to try my theory. Instead of spending hours trying to draw something real, I took a piece of canvas board, applied some gesso (a white undercoat), and proceeded to draw curving and circular shapes wherever I wanted and I mixed no paint. All of it was straight out of the tube. 15 minutes later, I was done.
The next day, my instructor came up to my piece and said, “Hmm. Hmm. Why haven’t you been doing this sort of work all along?” I promptly quit school after that. But a few days later, when I came back to retrieve my paintings from my part of the rack, all of it was there except for the little abstract piece.
Peace,
Ed
