Why art cannot be taught
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An analysis of James Elkins' significant text that contributes to contemporary discussions about art education
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Why art cannot be taught
- 1. How Art Works: Why Art Cannot Be Taught Dr Deborah Jackson
- 2. James Elkins Why Art Cannot Be Taught
- 3. A Handbook for Art Students An acknowledgement of our lack of knowledge and lack of our control of the situation
- 4. Bologna Process The Bologna Process caused a wave of discussions about the different models of art education, which are notably also based on different understandings of art.
- 5. Is it no longer clear what an artist needs to know, or needs to know how to do? In any event, there is no guarantee how it is learned.
- 6. The historical and critical issues around the development of Art Schools A clearly defined hierarchy
- 9. Bauhaus
- 10. Post-war Art Schools Art as social critique, art as investigation of identity, and as expression and investigation of gender, which are fundamentally non-aesthetic forms of art. Ultimately they are bound to politics, not
- 11. Critiques While there may be both history and method in teaching someone how to draw, there is little of either involved in teaching them how to be
- 12. Critiques Elkins describes them as the most irrational form of educational evaluation that exists in any field. By irrational he means that he doesn’t think anybody knows much about them because they are so far from being clear, logical, ordered, purposeful, or controlled speaking
- 14. What it means to teach art There is a lack of control there, so no one can take direct credit for the outcome
Notas do Editor
- James Elkins is a prominent Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, and a prolific author. And todays lecture will focus on one of his books, with the provocative title Why Art Cannot Be Taught. This is a significant text that contributes to contemporary discussions about art education and that is actually in line with what many philosophers and practitioners of art education state, that is, that art cannot be taught.
- The subtitle of Why Art Cannot be Taught is A Handbook for Art Students, which suggest that the book provides the information that is needed for art students to begin to demystify what is going on in Art Schools. Or at the very least it can be taken as an acknowledgement of our lack of knowledge and lack of our control of the situation.
- Elkins book was timely in asking disrupting questions about art education, given that it was published in 2001, 2 years after the Bologna Process had been implemented. The Bologna Process was launched in 1999 by the Ministers of Education and university leaders of 29 countries and was a reform of European Higher Education. The objective was to create a system for the recognition of degrees and academic qualifications, mobility, and exchanges between institutions across Europe. The reforms aimed to create a system of parity, or set of standards and stages within higher education, what it did do was highlight the possibility or impossibility to analyze, understand, and define what degrees in art education are, and the issues that come to the fore when trying to define certain criteria within Art School education. Fundamentally, the Bologna Process caused a wave of discussions about the different models of art education across Europe and beyond, which are notably also based on different understandings of art.
- This is dealt with in Elkins text as he explores the idea that it is no longer clear what an artist needs to know, or needs to know how to do. From the art institutions position its not so much that they have nothing to teach, but rather that, in relation to the art of the recent past, there is no particular thing that needs to be learned. And in any event, there is no guarantee how it is learned. Dean Hughes, who has recently been appointed the Head of the School of Art, taking over from Stuart Bennett. The Head of the School of Art at eca is a rotating role with the position being held for 3 years. You may have watched this short clip where Dean outlines the philosophy of the School of Art, but I want you to watch it framed within the debates raised by Elkins’ text.
- Why Art Cannot be Taught has a history of art schools, discussions of common problems in teaching art, and a section about whether or not art can be taught It begins by providing a historical overview over art education through the centuries, and Elkins tries to develop a theory and systematization of contemporary models to teach art. He begins by discussing the historical and critical issues around the development of Art Schools, which is useful for students to know. He writes that the first year of art school education used to be the first step in a number of determined steps in the French academy and the other Baroque academies: there were set curricula. So that you would know that you would start out with drawing from drawings, and then you would do drawing from casts, then drawing from the live model; and you would have additional subjects like drapery studies, physiognomics (the art of determining character or personal qualities from the features or form of the body, especially the face), and things like that. That means the first year programs used to be the beginning of a clearly defined hierarchy. With the debates now about the first year program, two things are in doubt: what the nature of that year is; and whether that first year prepares you in any way for what might follow in the next several years. And both of these questions usually are inadequately answered. In relation to what happens in the first year program, he divides the possibilities into four different possibilities of schools of thought:
- The first model used in first year instruction follows the French academy, and in conservative academies, that means you learn live drawing and naturalistic rendering. “Skill,” in that context, means ability to render in proper proportions, with some degree of representation of chiaroscuro, optical effects, and related subjects.
- The second model is the Romantic model, which means German Romantic art academies. Therefore it means the institution of one-on-one teaching; the idea that the artist has a voice; the idea that the inner life of the artist is what matters rather than the depiction of the exterior world.
- The third model he identifies with the Bauhaus, which means in this scheme that you intend to go back to a tabula rasa. The modernist enterprise depends on erasing the heritage of irrelevant skills and starting again from basic forms and shapes and a fundamental understanding of the world as composed of abstraction. That includes all kind of familiar exercises like picking textures, finding colors, using motion, and all the rest.
- The forth model does not have a name, but it would be something like the post-war Art Schools, which means to Elkins, art as social critique, art as investigation of identity, and as expression and investigation of gender, which are fundamentally non-aesthetic forms of art. Ultimately they are bound to politics, not aesthetics. Of course there is no contemporary Art School that assigns itself exclusively to one of these models and Elkins considers that this is a problem. Almost every large art academy does all four of these things, all at once. And especially the second model is still the principal model for higher levels of art education, including the MFA. There you are supposed to have a tutor, a supervisor. In regard to the third model, the Bauhaus, that is still very much present in the first couple of months of art instruction all around the world. Elkins considers these four models to be fundamentally incompatible. And the only—even partial—solution that he puts forward is to teach historical awareness along with the methods. He argues that if historiography were taught along with the exercises of the first year program, students could gradually become aware of the fact that they were getting a disharmonious education. And that would at least make them historically reflective. At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where Elkins teaches, they have opted for the fourth model, the Post-war Academy. Elkins explains that at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago they have people who believe in aesthetics in different ways, but they have a large number of people for whom the very idea of making an aesthetic object is misguided, and who think that the purpose of educating an artist is principally to make a good citizen, or an ethically responsible inhabitant of the earth. He posits the idea that it would make sense for each Art School to adopt a specific model, so that the students can just pick the model which is right for them—if they know what they want.
- INSERT ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL CLIP Of course knowing what you want might be a problem at an early stage. what’s really being taught is individuality by example. You do not become the same person as your teacher is— it is the fashioning of individuality. Instead of working on a practice, it is the artist him- or herself who is worked on, pushed to internalize the art world, to take it seriously and to produce an identity in its image. In other words, while there may be both history and method in teaching someone how to draw, there is little of either involved in teaching them how to be artists.
- Whilst Why Art Cannot be Taught argues about whether you can teach art or not, but the heart of that book is about critiques. It actually should have been called A Handbook of Critiques. That is what it really is. Critiques are given a lot of attention and Elkins describes them as the most irrational form of educational evaluation that exists in any field. By irrational he means that he doesn’t think anybody knows much about them because they are so far from being clear, logical, ordered, purposeful, or controlled speaking. According to Elkins, art critiques are very often therapy. He makes the point that occasionally the student is seriously disturbed or there is some medical issue, and those critiques are literally therapy. The conversation about art stops, and some other conversation starts. On the other hand, there are almost no critiques that have no psychotherapy in them. Most critiques tend to go back and forth because of the nature of art. And this is another source of confusion: Critiques are always already partly psychotherapy, but, Elkins points out, they are performed, usually, by people who have no knowledge of therapy and don’t even think of themselves as performing therapy. How much more illogical can you get? A critique is an opportunity to see how your work looks to other people. The ingredients are you, your work, and people. Some of those people have authority, and some don’t. Some make sense, and some don’t. Some are helpful, and others have their own agendas. They aren’t just everyday conversations: They are very academic: they aren’t at all like what happens in the rest of the artworld. After you graduate, if you pursue your art into the world of galleries, residencies, group shows, juried exhibitions, and art fairs, you’ll see that there’s nothing out there like critiques.
- Art critiques are very different from the exams, quizzes, and tests in most other subjects. Critiques are more free form, more conversational. Critiques are some- times one-on-one, but more often they involve a number of people. Sometimes there’s an audience. Sometimes the audience participates. In the end, critiques don’t always result in a grade: usually they’re pass / fail, and sometimes they are just to encourage the student and there’s no way to fail. An exam is on one subject, which everyone agrees on in advance. Critiques are an entirely different matter. They are unbelievably difficult to understand, and rich with possibilities. Critiques are public conversations. Critiques can come perilously close to total nonsense. Sometimes they just barely make sense. In the book he presents two possibilities: one is to try to clarify and control critiques. The other is to say: Here are the different things you could say to clarify and control critiques, but most of them can’t be controlled.
- INSERT ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL CLIP In the book Elkins has a couple of theories that he gathered from talking to people when he asked them how they teach art. One of the theories is, that you can’t actually teach art itself, but you can teach up to it, right to the limit. In other words, you cannot make a great artist, but you can push people in the direction of art. Ask the right questions, in the right direction. I doubt that anybody knows how to ask the right questions. I doubt that anybody knows what direction a student should take. How should we know what that proper direction is? For example, somebody who has been doing performance art: how do you know that person might make better art when you push him/her in the direction of photography? Everyone has hunches, and these are based on many complicated experiences, but in fact there is no way to know for sure whether or not you are hurting a student, or hampering a student, or just slowing her up. The second theory: is what he calls the “incubator theory,” that Art School help art to grow; they have an atmosphere, a richness of discourse that it’s inspiring to be around and to learn. Yes, Art Schools provide a wonderful atmosphere when they are good, they immerse you in the discourse of art, and they do definitely help you to talk to gallerists. You can definitely learn “art speak”; you can definitely learn new ways of articulating your practice. In that sense Art Schools help students learn a new language. The problem is that learning is an automatic, almost biological consequence of a rich environment; in the same way that a mother who is pregnant does the right things, eats the right food, sees her doctor regularly, but does not direct the formation of the child. Because the child is in the environment of the womb, it grows. You cannot prevent learning about art if you have the right “atmosphere.” There is a lack of control there, so no one can take direct credit for the outcome, and therefore art is not directed in the way that teaching physics and chemistry, biology, or economics are. At the end Elkins says that it does not make any sense to try to understand how art is taught, and teaching art simply means to live a contradiction.