Philosophy: does classical study harm or stunt the artist?

pellicle · Apr 9, 2008

Hi

I was just speaking with a friend of mine who (not a photographer) who argued that he didn't want to study art as that would only interfere with his talent and his expression.

Personally I don't feel this way and seem to recall having had discussions with artistically inclined skeptics who had (after doing their BA) found that they benefited not only personally but interpersonally with the ability to communicate in a newly understood 'language' of description of styles and influences which had previously been unconsciously perceived but not consciously understood or articulateable.

Anyone feel that study kills the art in the artist?

JBrunner · Apr 9, 2008

pellicle said:
Hi

I was just speaking with a friend of mine who (not a photographer) who argued that he didn't want to study art as that would only interfere with his talent and his expression.

Personally I don't feel this way and seem to recall having had discussions with artistically inclined skeptics who had (after doing their BA) found that they benefited not only personally but interpersonally with the ability to communicate in a newly understood 'language' of description of styles and influences which had previously been unconsciously perceived but not consciously understood or articulateable.

Anyone feel that study kills the art in the artist?

Your friend will most likely create a string of cliche's, and have no understanding of the techniques he has at his disposal. You can't depart without knowing where to leave from.

Talent and expression are the ingredients and results of art, not the means by which it is accomplished. I have experience with a couple of people with this attitude. It is usually a cover for laziness or fear. JMO

Ed Sukach · Apr 9, 2008

Not by itself - but a great deal depends on the attitude of the student. Freedom and originality of vision are, IMHO **INDESPENSIBLE** in art, and maintaining that freedom is the most difficult task of all.

mmcclellan · Apr 9, 2008

That's like a being a writer who refuses to read! Anyone working in any creative medium should consume/study other creative works in his own and other media. A photographer should study painting, music, literature, sculpture, etc., as all of these forms will spark the creative urge and nurture one's creative capacities. Likewise, musicians usually enjoy reading good literature, studying good paintings and photographs, etc. All the creative impulses feed on each other and to deny one's creative capacity the chance to "feed" is like starving a living creature of food.

Anyone who wants to be a better photographer will enhance their work by studying great paintings, listening to great music, reading great literature, and so on. And I mean GREAT products of creativity, the things that have stood the tests of time and survivied and be considered great by successive generations of creative thinkers.

JBrunner is absolutely right -- such attitudes, IMHO, are usually a cover for fear or laziness.

bjorke · Apr 9, 2008

Your friend has saved you time. You need no longer listen to any of his opinions.

vet173 · Apr 9, 2008

Kinda like " I leave the camera in P mode so it doesn't interfere with the creative juices".

athanasius80 · Apr 9, 2008

Does this person think he or she is such a giant that they cannot get higher by standing on the shoulders of the great artists of the last couple thousand years?

DanielOB · Apr 9, 2008

"I was just speaking with a friend of mine who (not a photographer) who argued that he didn't want to study art as that would only interfere with his talent and his expression."

What is going on in today education on art Academies, your friend is right. Artistically you will get missleaded. Technically you will get a lot from good school. I would sugest: go and be carefull. Study art after the school.

If it is several weeks "school", skip.

Daniel OB
www.Leica-R.com

DanielOB · Apr 9, 2008

athanastasius
Does this person think he or she is such a giant that they cannot get higher by standing on the shoulders of the great artists of the last couple thousand years?

It is over. No Academy has in program such things anymore. They got in head it is not considered art by today standard. It is why we have children like drawings in art galleries.
Enjoy Picasso...
Take any book on art history, look at last pages, it is you will learn about.
Daniel OB
www.Leica-R.com

arigram · Apr 9, 2008

There is no formula, no specific guidelines on how an artist grows and learns.
How one approaches their art and how the world affects them is completely up them.
Everyone's brain works in different ways and cannot predict how an artist will
be influenced.
Some like to study extensively and become experts in others' art before they create their own.
Others, like to shut themselves in a bubble to protect their virginity.
Most though, I imagine, are somewhere in between.

My parents were afraid that going to art classes would corrupt and box me, so when I was growing
up, they refused to let me attend. Later, an art teacher from the School of Fine Arts in Athens warned
me against the same school for the same reasons.
I ended up in a crazy art school (Museum School in Boston), really confused and lost, trying different
art media, techniques and personal styles. I studied everything from ancient and medieval greek art
to chinese and japanese painting and calligraphy. And I can say that they helped liberate my mind.

There is no Virgin, no Pure human.
Everybody has their own world of perceptions and those are create directly and indirectly by the outside.
They are influenced by their parents, their friends, their school, their neighborhood, their government,
the shows they watch on TV, the movies, the music, the books they read, the visual environment they live in,
they emotions, their ideas, their politics, and so on and so forth.
Claiming to be untouched and pure is naive, false and dangerous.

My belief is that artists are not influenced and energized by nature or ideas,
but by other artists. We artists are vampires: we feed of each other.
We drink the auras of other artists and we steal from their art.
Art is one. There is no "my art" and "your art".
We have different expressions and different approaches, but we dip in the same waters.
Art is like a huge sea where we bathe. Alone or in company, we all swim in the same place.

Dan Fromm · Apr 9, 2008

Interesting topic, but the question as posted has nothing to do with what I was taught to think of as classical studies, viz., reading the classics in their original languages (Latin, ancient Greek).

Two issues: seeing and technique. Can't do anything as you want it to be without good command of technique. People aren't born knowing how to draw or paint in any medium or operate a camera, have to learn. Learning by trial and failure is expensive, leads to incomplete command of technique. Schooling or at least reading (books, as I keep suggesting, not short comments on bulletin boards) seem essential for learning photography.

Seeing is much harder, but looking at other peoples' work in all media can help a lot. Looking in a systematic way (schooling) is more effective than random browsing in museum(s). Explanations of what/why/how don't always leap out of the works themselves, especially when the viewer is ignorant, so, again, schooling helps.

Ed Sukach · Apr 9, 2008

Dan Fromm said:
Two issues: seeing and technique. Can't do anything as you want it to be without good command of technique.

Arguable. Some of my best work, in all honesty, have been "mistakes". Who was it that said, "Thirty percent of the worlds best photographs are the result of fortunate mistakes." - Oh, yeh ... I remember now - Ansel Adams.

People aren't born knowing how to draw or paint in any medium or operate a camera, have to learn.

Inarguable. What can be argued is "To what degree?" Clearly, a DEEP knowledge of ALL aspects of photography, or art, is not absolutely necessary.
Case in point: How many - what fraction of the world's most significant artists were either self-taught, or engaged on a complete unknown "path"? Did anyone teach Jackson Pollack to .. uh ... SLOP paint onto a canvas? Or teach Dali to record the imagery of his dreams? Technique CAN be taught. Vision, originality - that elusive spark that allows us to create? - No, I don't think so. We can be taught to copy what has been done before, but breaking through to new levels?

The hard part is not learning or finding originality and creativity. That is in all of us human beings. It is in opening OUR channels for its use.

Learning by trial and failure is expensive, leads to incomplete command of technique.

I won't - cannot argue that it is expensive. One could add time-consuming, frustrating ... But I cannot see the "lead to an incomplete command". Essentially, there is trail and error in everything we learn, anyway - if we are to prove/ disprove what is taught.

Seeing is much harder, but looking at other peoples' work in all media can help a lot.

I prefer "experiencing."

Looking in a systematic way (schooling) is more effective than random browsing in museum(s). Explanations of what/why/how don't always leap out of the works themselves, especially when the viewer is ignorant, so, again, schooling helps.

I disagree. I think it is far more effective to start any "experiencing" with one's preconception slate wiped clean, and with our emotions available for new impressions.

Pinholemaster · Apr 9, 2008

"I was just speaking with a friend of mine who (not a photographer) who argued that he didn't want to study art as that would only interfere with his talent and his expression."

What a crock of horse manure. Sounds like you friend has a very closed mind if he thinks it "would only interfere." Perhaps some artists have been successful with a 'closed mind', but the world is full of examples that contradict this view point.

Does this person ever read a book? Writing is an art form.

Does this person ever watch a movie? Motion pictures is an art form.

Art does not exist in a vacuum, it is an expression of the 'human universal' experience of living.

Sounds like this person is not an artist I'd enjoy having a discussion with because I come from the school of thought that we live in a community that nurtures each other through the sharing and discussion of ideas. I feel sorry for this person because they are shut off from the world.

Soeren · Apr 9, 2008

Aint most new art some kind of riot against the old regime of/in art?
How will you distance yourself from the dominating style, the visions of the etc. if you know nothing about it? How will you avoid drowning in the masses if you don't know from what to be different. How will you renew Art if.........................
Kind regards

Ed Sukach · Apr 9, 2008

arigram said:
My belief is that artists are not influenced and energized by nature or ideas,
but by other artists. We artists are vampires: we feed of each other.
We drink the auras of other artists and we steal from their art.
Art is one. There is no "my art" and "your art".
We have different expressions and different approaches, but we dip in the same waters.
Art is like a huge sea where we bathe. Alone or in company, we all swim in the same place.

I'm not quite sure about "stealing" from one another. If that is true - where did it all start? Why - how - can it - change over the years?

Possibly we "sublimate" from each other. Sublimation sounds better than - and it is a lot more flexible than - "stealing".

arigram · Apr 9, 2008

Ed Sukach said:
I'm not quite sure about "stealing" from one another. If that is true - where did it all start? Why - how - can it - change over the years?

Possibly we "sublimate" from each other. Sublimation sounds better than - and it is a lot more flexible than - "stealing".

Well, one can use whatever word finds more tasteful!
I like "stealing" because its shameless and direct.
Where did it all start? Want to go back as far as the cave paintings? It really doesn't matter, what matters is to accept that no man is a lone island and we all influence and affect each other.

jovo · Apr 9, 2008

I think it's naive to believe that being self-taught will lead to as good or better an outcome than being more formally schooled as long as the schooling is competent. It is belittling of the knowledge, experience, and skill of a fully developed artist to equate that body of expertise with what one can achieve purely on one's own. True, there is a great deal of technical lore that can be learned by trial and error and reading, but that's by no means all there is to be learned. A good teacher is a guide through the vast store of what's been done up to now and has learned to discern wheat from chaff. A good teacher will also acknowledge that his choices are not the only ones possible, but allow that it is at least a starting point on the path to one's own choices. Such a teacher will also be able to bring a mature perspective to what you're doing when you're blind to it by proximity, and enthusiasm for each new discovery you've made.

Yes, AA may have been largely self-taught in photography, but he was deeply schooled in music and the discipline of rigorous practice by being formally taught (I do believe such habits are transferable from one discipline to another.). He also spent a lot of time with artists of some stature with whom he no doubt learned a great deal.

Ed Sukach · Apr 9, 2008

jovo said:
I think it's naive to believe that being self-taught will lead to as good or better an outcome than being more formally schooled as long as the schooling is competent.

Good point. I can only wonder how much of that "schooling" is done by competent teachers.

It is belittling of the knowledge, experience, and skill of a fully developed artist to equate that body of expertise with what one can achieve purely on one's own.

Oh?
Why is it "belittling"? I am not trying to make sweeping, all-inclusive declarations of fact .. but certainly formal education is not the ONLY and EXCLUSIVE method of becoming proficient in Art. Are you saying that self-learning is counterproductive - or in some way, even harmful?

The only resolution possible here is to make an unbiased "score sheet" listing those photographers/ artists who were self-taught and those who gained fame thorough formal education - and correlate them to their successes.
You would have to find someone unbiased - I can only think of a number of great photograhers who were devoid of EXTENSIVE formal education at the moment.

Might be an interesting exercise - but I have better, and a few other not-so-enjoyable things to do at the moment.
,

haris · Apr 18, 2008

Things with schools is that there you will learn technics or particular art form, get informations, etc. And you will get guides to "creative thinking and liberating your creativity". But only what teachers consider as "creative freedom". Try to disagree with teacher about what is creative or not

This reminds me abour simillar situations happened in sport, in particular gymnastics and atristic art skateing. Every now and then there is new generation of gymnasticians or ice skaters which discover and develop new figures, technics, art forms, ec... And on official competitions there are (and actually were in real life, not only in theory) big problem. Judges whu need to give points for perfoming of particular athlete don't know what to do. Judges simply never saw before those figures and they don't know how to judje. In those situation judges most likely give higher ratings for performing "classical" figures, judges knows about and knows how to rate, and those "new" figures get lower ratings, simply because judges don't knw what to do, not because it is bad performance.

So, I don't know. I would like to go to art school to learn in first place techiques, next to be among people and get more informations, and at the end to learn rules which I will brak and to know why, when and how to break them.

So, my conclusion is there are benefits from art schools, and there is danger to get lost into teachers rules. But, if one is careful, benefits are greater than dangers. After all, everything has its cost

Alex Bishop-Thorpe · Apr 18, 2008

This is actually something I was worried about before I began at my school. It's three years, four with honors, and it has been two years working towards getting in, so it's a place I'm devoting a reasonable portion of my life to - or at least it seems a large portion when you're 18.
I already have a way of working that I like, an idea of what I think is art, so who are these people to tell me otherwise?

What I found is quite different. No one tells you what art is, no one tells you this is what you need to do to be an artist, and you've done this and this wrong. They present you the history and techniques so you can learn from them, they open it up for debate and discussion, to know the technical aspects of art so you can work with more understanding of what you're doing, and to experiment.
It just helps you develop your personal understanding of art, it doesn't constrict you. This is my experience, and I doubt it's universal, but I think art school provides you with a better understanding of the world you're trying to work within. To be surrounded by other art students is arguably half of the benefit.

I've seen some things I don't consider art personally, but I can now respect it. I think that alone is a great lesson to learn.
I've also seen people get so caught up in the technical aspects of what can be considered art that they make quite ridiculous things. I think this is the other extreme - just talking loudly to other artists.

So go to art school, and learn from it. If your creativity is stifled by people who know more than you, you have a long journey ahead of you.
As an aside, many of my classmates are quite accomplished artists already - self taught.

Ed Sukach · Apr 18, 2008

haris said:
... Try to disagree with teacher about what is creative or not

This reminds me abour simillar situations happened in sport, in particular gymnastics and atristic art skateing. Every now and then there is new generation of gymnasticians or ice skaters which discover and develop new figures, technics, art forms, ec... And on official competitions there are (and actually were in real life, not only in theory) big problem. Judges whu need to give points for perfoming of particular athlete don't know what to do. Judges simply never saw before those figures and they don't know how to judje. In those situation judges most likely give higher ratings for performing "classical" figures, judges knows about and knows how to rate, and those "new" figures get lower ratings, simply because judges don't knw what to do, not because it is bad performance.

You have just described 85% of the Art Critiques I have read. Add archaic, obsolete, ARCANIC words and phrases, and you will have included another 14%.

So, I don't know. I would like to go to art school to learn in first place techiques, next to be among people and get more informations, and at the end to learn rules which I will brak and to know why, when and how to break them.

"WHAT the rules are?" ... Interesting, but IMHO (Note H) not vitally necessary. How to "break them?" ... Easy, but I wouldn't advise "rule breaking" as a primary motivation. I don't resist "the rules" - but thyey are not part of my conscious thought as I work. This is something I've learned to do on my own - from a mountain of trail and error, cause and effect (read: scar tissue).

So, my conclusion is there are benefits from art schools, and there is danger to get lost into teachers rules. But, if one is careful, benefits are greater than dangers. After all, everything has its cost

Exactly! Well put, Haris!

jovo · Apr 18, 2008

Ed Sukach said:
Are you saying that self-learning is counterproductive - or in some way, even harmful?
,

I'd lost track of this thread for a while.

Of course, self-learning isn't counterproductive. In fact, ALL learning is self-learning. Until you've made it your own, information and direction from any source has little meaning.

One important ingredient in the process of becoming an artist that's easy to overlook when you're young is the crucible of time. My experience (and I'm 61) has repeatedly suggested that only the rare and extraordinary "genius" takes fewer than ten years to develop a fair degree of facility and personal style, and even that's about the minimum. To be in one's early 20s and be impatient to become accomplished is probably pretty typical. But it's not likely to happen until all one has been taught in one way or another has had years to percolate and be transformed into true artistry, and even that requires very hard work and willingness to be critiqued and assisted in the process. I know several virtuoso musicians with significant careers who continue to take the occasional "lesson".

BobbyR · Apr 18, 2008

pellicle said:
Hi

I was just speaking with a friend of mine who (not a photographer) who argued that he didn't want to study art as that would only interfere with his talent and his expression.

Personally I don't feel this way and seem to recall having had discussions with artistically inclined skeptics who had (after doing their BA) found that they benefited not only personally but interpersonally with the ability to communicate in a newly understood 'language' of description of styles and influences which had previously been unconsciously perceived but not consciously understood or articulateable.
Anyone feel that study kills the art in the artist?

Such attitudes which are becoming too close to the rule rather than exception, are one reason far too much art is close to being a synonym for feces.

bjorke · Apr 18, 2008

Making YOURSELF Happy is All That Matters

Ed Sukach · Apr 18, 2008

bjorke said:
Making YOURSELF Happy is All That Matters

YES!! Exactly! Precisely!!

He's GOT IT!! By George!! He's GOT IT! He has discovered the Rosetta stone!!

... And the occasional nude doesn't hurt, either.

Philosophy: does classical study harm or stunt the artist?

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