MEMORANDUM

[kyrasantae]

TO: Readers of this LJ
FROM: Kyrasantae
DATE: September 18, 2006
SUBJECT: Pretentiousness amongst college Fine Arts students

A breed of irritating pretentiousness and cockiness is propagating throughout the ranks of Fine Arts majors, exhibited by the following symptoms:

• Claims of superiority over artists in their field who do not have a college degree in that field;
  
• Flaunts one's skills, often before those without similar educational background;
  
• Takes 'live for or study what one loves' for granted; and
  
• Reluctant to acknowledge independent talent and development, instead recommends college education for further development.

The cause of this Fine Arts pretentiousness is unknown, but evidence suggests that the following factors may be involved:

• The belief that Fine Art is only fully appreciated by a minority 'cultured' segment of the general public;
  
• The belief that Fine Art can only be properly developed through post-secondary education;
  
• The requirement of immense time commitment to the development and practice of the person's chosen craft at the collegiate level of study; and
  
• The reality that (especially in the performing arts) younger artists are more likely to be successful, leading to the belief that time cannot be wasted studying something else if one's goal is to become an artist.

This is a disturbing trend, because self-taught artists, in search of advice concerning their own development, often approach Fine Arts majors for said advice. The characteristics of the attitude described above can cause significant discouragement to the amateur, and thus action needs to be taken to prevent 'Fine Arts pretentiousness' from further spreading its malice and demoralizing talented people everywhere.






Oops. Right assignment, wrong topic. I'm supposed to write about fluid mechanics :P

Edit: By fine arts I'm referring to both Fine Arts (BFA) and Music (BMus) programs ;)

Comments

Sadly (?) this is nothing new

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

Pretentiousness in both Fine Arts students and faculty was well established in the Late Pleistocene (when I was at college) as well. Sometimes, I suspect it was envy -- they were jealous of those of us who were getting degrees in something that would allow us to eat food other than ramen noodles and live in something resembling a house or apartment and not, say, a cardboard box.

I also think it has to do with what school one is attending. The students at the local "Art College" were much more down-to-earth than the art majors at my (pretentious) University - and, my friend, who graduated with a BFA from the Art College has made at least as much as I have over the course of our respective careers (OK, she had to "sell out" for a number of years, working for various commercial enterprises, and eventually the art director for a newspaper, but I think she's managed to retire early by now or very soon, and do whatever she dammed well pleases now).

If you desire instruction in the (visual) arts, a much better place to get advice is from the teachers of the "adult education" classes in the area where you live - most (if not all) of them are very nice people, and they are just glad to find others interested in art for art's sake, and who want to learn something. (my watercolor teacher is one such gentleman).

And remember, the students HAVE to cultivate some pretentiousness in themselves to justify the investment in time and money in their MFA degrees. Forget that 90% of the art hanging in the Big Museums(TM) was created by people without Fine Arts degrees. What matters is that parchment on the wall. (and, seeing what some of these "artists" produce, I'm not convinced that talent has anything to do with getting a MFA. Just talent at sucking up to professors.)

Re: Sadly (?) this is nothing new

[kyrasantae.livejournal.com]

Certainly I was writing with musical education (http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20060918&tid=2202524) in mind and I'm well aware it's been around since the Stone Age, but what you've said is definitely true.

My high school art teachers certainly weren't very pretentious about what they were doing, except for maybe putting a little too much emphasis on the modern and avant-garde:

e.g. I'm sorry, I'm not buying into your "glue cotton-balls to your painting" idea...'mixed media' doesn't necessarily mean gluing stuff to your canvas.
e.g. I may like Rothko, but I'm not buying into your "let's make a painting in the 'Pop art' style of Andy Warhol" thing.

The 'modern and avant-garde' thing probably extends into college too, seeing as my friend in music composition was never allowed to compose using traditional tonal structures. I can see how instructors wish to see the art form moving forward so it doesn't get stagnant, but some people simply like to be conservative about it, like me!

Re: Sadly (?) this is nothing new

[kyrasantae.livejournal.com]

Oh, and to add - I may not have a BFA in visual art, but LeoHyuuga is envious of my work... and *he's* in animation design :P

...it's not like there was such a thing as a BFA back in the time of Mozart or anything :D

Re: Sadly (?) this is nothing new

[(Anonymous)]

About your friend in music composition, he would appreciate if you could point him somewhere where he could get translations of basic Finnish so that he can navigate your blog with some relative ease.

That being said, it's not that I havn't been allowed to composer using traditional tonal structures, it's that foregoing that in the first few compositional experiences serves to learn to better appreciate the construction of avant garde music as well as forces the student to develop musical structures based on actual compositional principles as opposed to "what sounds good"; of course, the two aren't mutually exclusive, but the "this sounds good, I like it" is a tired argument that more often than not reduces the cohesiveness of the work, and I speak from first hand experience. If you will, it's kinda like choosing between something that is right and that is easy.

Now, secondly, about your original post, I will admit to seeing some of myself in there. I think a lot of the superiority issues you raise come as a result of two things: 1. insecurity of ones own skills versus that of an 'untrained' ear 2. greater knowledge of the connected, usually theoretical branches. While you may play Schubert very musically, someone who has studied the relations between Schubert and Beethoven in detail might disagree over your interpretative choices because of historically- and theoretically-accurate knowledge about how the music was performed in 1820; then again, we get it pounded into our head to always always respect the composer's intentions, so artistic choices are bound to flow from this indoctrination, whereas non-collegiate artists usually don't have such doctrine cemented onto their forehead (not to say they don't respect at all, but in my experience they tend to be more liberal with performance indications).

Now the one thing that really grinds my gears in what you said was that we "take live for or study what one loves for granted". I don't know about others, but every morning I wake up to go class I feel extremely lucky that I can do this. Of course, I can see how this trend would develop, given that Fine Arts majors tend to naturally be among the better developing artists, but a lot of the fact of being "better" is that we've been working at it every day for a significant segment of our lives. Hence, we've been studying what we love for years and years already and see no reason why we should give it up. You know just as well as I do that I could have studied engineering or biochem or political science and done just as well, but at some point a choice is made to pursue such a path, and most of us are very very aware that the positions in our fields are extremely limited. But the one thing you'll find in common throughout all that is that we simply don't care, not because we're naive (fine, yes, some of us are), but because we're doing something we enjoy, and everyday some new petrochemical engineer/pre-med/pre-law rants about how they hate everything they do. I know it's not as black and white as I suppose it to be, but if we're perfectly happy and content studying something we love, we don't see why people should suffer through things they themselves admit they are not cut out for.

Now, also, I wouldn't quite say that Fine Arts can only be developed through colleges and conservatoires, but you do have to realize that those who don't go through the system know just as much about connected branches (theory, history, etc.) that assist them in making artistic choices. Amadeus Mozart might not have gone to a music school, but Leopold instructed him in counterpoint, harmony and analysis whenever he could. Beethoven took counterpoint from Haydn. Jazz musicians of all walks of life played records of their predecessors over and over again to be able to emulated and understand the music. Somewhere, you have to admit that the college system is only a formalization of the education that was once otherwise generally taken informally.

(see next post)

Re: Sadly (?) this is nothing new

[(Anonymous)]

(start again here)

Final point I'm going to make, vis-a-vis "The reality that (especially in the performing arts) younger artists are more likely to be successful, leading to the belief that time cannot be wasted studying something else if one's goal is to become an artist." I think this is more true for sociological rather than artistic reasons. Once you start making a salary, it's a lot harder to go off of it to learn music (or otherwise dead-end degrees) rather than going to music never having made one to begin with. It's also a lot easier to dedicate a few hours to practise every day if you don't have kids or major work commitments. In that sense, in the formative years, it's a lot easier to make fine arts educations fit your schedule.

Finally, I like this font and these colours you've chosen for me to stare at while I'm typing. I might come back for more.

-Guillaume

Re: Sadly (?) this is nothing new

[kyrasantae.livejournal.com]

The crux of the memory behind this particular rant is described in some detail at a post more recently dubbed "Bitchfight II: More Bitchfighting!" (http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20060728&tid=2148843).

My rant regards primarily those who have a diverse spread of interests, rather than those who have a singular interest in an art of their choice but choose to study something else so they can make money.

Personally, I could never say that I'd want to completely give up my interest in science, and I can say definitively that I would never subject myself to formal music training again, given my past experiences in that area. It doesn't mean that I think college is the only way to become an Artist™, and after all, I've got that theoretical background myself (so it's not like I'm complaining about that aspect), but there seems to be people out there who believe that the 'formalized' version of the process is the only legitimate way to go.

From the 'bitchfight': "If you love music so much, why don't you switch majors? Since your parents don't want you to do it, move out and be independent so you can study music and pay for your own education in it." These were the statements that hurt me so much. My comment regarding "taking loves for granted" refers to that - the 'drop everything and run' attitude.

I suffer because I love it so much. I love so much a thing that does not have a codified formal sort of education for it (rock music), but only informal experience.

My experience in the (semi?)formal musical education sphere broke me, and I don't want to go near it again until I can have something to fall back and 'unbreak' myself on. I cannot simply choose one side or the other, I must somehow have both...

In any case, I've come too far to change my mind now. I wish this for my life. It's not something I want just to enjoy myself. Whatever must come in preparation for the ultimate pursuit of my artistic endeavors must come after this.

Goodnight. (Off to do thermodynamics homework.)

[krikkert.livejournal.com]

Yep. I have to listen to that every day (literally -- I go through the Centre of the Arts building every day on my way from Philosophy/Logic to LibEd/History), and it usually goes something along the lines of..

Me: "Yeah, I dabble a bit in fantasy, I've come up with a few worlds"
BFA student: "Oh? Why aren't you in Fine Arts?"

I really detest the implication that just because you do something FA-related, you automatically want to develop it and therefore should be taking a BFA.

[nt-confidential.livejournal.com]

This is a fascinating topic and one well worth discussing. A few comments, some ancillary, some anecdotal.

1. Not too long ago, my present roommate (who is a Eurocentric romanticist, even by my standards, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing) lamented that as a result of the persistent emphasis on progressivism and the avant garde in fine arts academia, hardly anyone teaches classical stone and marble sculpture anymore. In fact, the practice has been reduced to three or four schools in Italy. Along the Garneau houses (or is it East Campus Village now?) there is a bronze slab defaced with an elegant stroke of graffiti that reads, "Art is dead." So we're stuck with this dilemma: if we never explore outside our present aesthetic boundaries, art gets stale and dies anyway. But if all we do is explore, artistic paradigms are never truly developed.

The idea, I suppose, is that learning how to create in the avant garde will provide you with the skills necessary to create in any mode you wish. That's not wholly true: bronzeworkers aren't about to take up marble sculpting and master it right away, and poets who write free verse aren't about to compete with the likes of Coleridge when it comes to rhyme and metre. But the bronzeworkers do learn how to visualize, and you can bet your bottom dollar that avant garde composers learn how to listen.

2. On music: What's really interesting to me is that in jazz music, a college education has almost become a liability. You will often hear serious jazz aficionados complain that a major cause of stagnation in the genre is how it has been appropriated by community colleges that produce clones with a lot of technical know-how (you know, which scales fit over which chords) but very little to express musically. Then again, this is a genre built on a joie de vivre that says, "Screw the composer's intent - he created a loose harmonic/melodic framework and it is your first duty to invent something new on top of it." As you can see, it's worlds apart from... whatever the heck it is Guillaume does. I actually think it's analogous to political ideology, but that's a discussion for a blog post I haven't finished yet.

3. On the other hand, formal education has some clear benefits that one would be remiss to overlook - benefits that fine arts students have every reason to be proud of. I'm not saying this has to take place in an academic institution: I'm just saying that there comes a point at which being self-taught just isn't good enough. Since I completed my ARCT I've been teaching myself jazz piano, but I soon realized I'd hit a glass ceiling. I found a professional musician this summer who was willing to instruct me, and after only two months of lessons, I can already hear a tremendous improvement in my playing.

In a fine arts education, you get deadlines, goals, directions, and outside feedback from people who know what they're talking about. As a singer, you develop your tone (and a deeper analytic understanding of how music works on a theoretical or compositional level), and afterwards you have the luxury of applying that to anything. The experience is invaluable. That's why the typical recommendation for those who aren't pursuing a formal education in their creative pursuit is, create a portfolio. Join a band. Prove that you have what it takes - or at least give yourself some practice. Singing in a residence practice room with a rickety piano isn't going to teach you how to work in an ensemble.

(cont'd)

[nt-confidential.livejournal.com]

4. On youth: All other things being equal, no matter what you do, you will be compared to your age. Why? Because that's a metric of not only your present talent, but how much time you have left to develop it. It's never too late to start, but for heaven's sake, get a move on it while you can. If you tell yourself that you want to get settled with a professional degree and a professional career, and then pursue deeper self-study - well, that's a promise, and you'd better keep it when the time comes.

5. I used to excuse myself the same way: that with so many interests, developing any of them fully would require an unacceptable sacrifice of all the others. But take some initiative and you'll see that it isn't true. Back when I told myself that I couldn't be bothered transcribing solos from recordings because I should be unscrambling all the seven-letter words in the dictionary instead, but I couldn't be bothered doing that either because I felt like I should be reading current events or writing about film, which I didn't do anyway because I was losing sleep over computing projects and ungrateful women... Nothing Got Done. Committing to doing one actually taught me how to do many.

Do Something. It's better than doing Nothing. Some people need a formal education to whip them into this. Others don't. You picked one: now do it.

6. Finally, the existentialist argument would be that untapped potential is no potential at all. If you think you have talent, prove it. Until then, of course it sounds like whining. Of course it sounds like a deflection of personal responsibility.