Subject: Re: the late ironic academic clamour for artistic "certification"
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 12:31:30 -0400


hey dick for brains!
-----Original Message-----
From: { brad brace } <bbrace-AT-netcom.com>
To: avant-garde-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
<avant-garde-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Date: Tuesday, October 20, 1998 1:48 AM
Subject: the late ironic academic clamour for artistic "certification"


>
>[originally posted on artlist]
>
>Many of the postings on this list stubbornly assume, accept and promote
>the singular validity of the staid collegial academia-art "arena." I have
>an undoubtedly, unpalatable explanation: Having been sold an increasingly
>irrelevant and anemic course of study that only restricts their options
>(usually to the college-circuit-itself), these academia-victims actually
>have no other option but to continue to accept and perpetuate this
>officious, lumpen chicanery... ensnaring new generations of acolytes so as
>to "succeed" (wade even further into the irrelevant, petty muck of
>stagnate collegial cesspools.) Say it ain't so.
>
>Here's a scary question: Are there _any_ artists on this list who have
>_not_ attended art-school? (Reply off-list; I wouldn't blame you.)
>
>Of course, by even making these observations, by even daring to criticize
>this bloated cash-cow, by even questioning the contemporary
>validity/relevance of these institution's wooden certifications and pallid
>pronouncements... the trite panels and clique conferences.... this makes
>things even worse for the acolytes/victims... This is the howling,
>self-righteous denial that you hear on this and a few other lists.
>
>Let's Generalize:
>
>Just have a look around your local faculty lounges and collegial
>studios... Tell me what you see. Can you honestly conclude that this
>heavily subsidized (in more ways than one), art is on-whole vital...
>worthy... significant... innovative? (By all means, do point me in the
>direction of any exceptions, there are some... but nowhere near enough to
>warrant this wasteful, international, ponderous, megalithic
>art-diploma-mill.) And you nearly-never see this stuff except in
>collegial-journals or campus galleries and their in-town coquettish
>affiliations; but of course, what really matters there is collegial
>cachet, crusty credentials, citation-as-currency... The expense is very
>dear.
>
>Ivy Bohemia:
>
>Sneaking-in on the skirts of early upper-class womens' finishing schools,
>and following suit, the recent academia-artist was a good in-joke a few
>decades back... I mean, no one seriously thought that a student could
>become an artist by taking art-courses at status-quo savories... It all
>was meant to be a temporary, harmless diversion, a p-c indication of
>liberal values, a cheap meal-ticket paid by a few impressionable, usually
>bourgeois, youngsters on their way to law-school or some-such. It seemed
>like a fair trade-off.
>
>Academia: the Magic Kingdom, and the Disney-fication of Art and Artists:
>
>Good Joke Gone Bad: Now we have thousands of entrenched, one-trick
>"art-professors" churning out hundreds of thousands of middle-class
>"certified career artists," who can usually only graduate to become
>art-professors themselves. This epidemic benefits no one.
>
>How is it possible that they can only make a living by essentially failing
>to teach others to do this very thing? Artists learn best from other
>real-world working-artists. Academia-art is a bubble -- let's pop-it and
>see what falls-out. More importantly, let's make big room, on their own
>terms for the innovative, the insightful, the non-collegial art -- the Net
>is a good starting voice. Significant art has always blossomed from
>relatively marginal junctured-outposts; very very rarely from the
>simulated offerings of art-institutions.
>
>(This in turn raises the very real and unsettling probability that all
>this "art critical specialty discourse" is really not so necessary, and
>that "contemporary art" may now not exist as such.)
>
>A good solution would be to methodically replace academy fine-art with
>pragmatic, up-to-date, real-world training in media applications. The time
>is surely ripe, and some institutions have finally begun to move, with
>great zeal, in this direction. There are some ulterior motives and minor
>potential hazards ahead in this, but they look trivial compared with the
>current disaster.
>
>By isolating aspects of net interface/development, hiding behind
>second-hand technological theory, attempting to re-establish their same
>exclusive collegial hierarchy on the net, then suddenly proclaiming this
>to be museum-grade "net-art," the avant-garde fine-art academy attempts to
>appropriate and capitalize on an wider evolution which will likely not
>include them.
>
>A somewhat similar course of events may be seen in the early days of video
>art, but by contrast, it would seem unlikely that students today would pay
>for video-art courses (or "net-art" courses), that offer little likelihood
>of advanced technological training nor the ability to actually make
>broadcast (as opposed to selectively closeted, art-museum video-art)
>television. Not to mention a decent living wage. In fact, the Net-itself
>likely provides the best means for most to learn what they need to know
>about this inclusive medium -- the physical academy classroom is also made
>redundant.
>
>Real art continues to be the proverbial rhizome, the apparently random
>seedling by the wayside, or vital bacteria... it's not seen to flourish in
>force-fed, centrist, inbred institutional art-farms. Why pretend?
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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