Sharing My Story

As I look back on my college art experience I felt a certain degree
of disquiet and dissatisfaction with my college art career. About
half way through my sophomore year I changed my major from
Biology to Art (Biology became my minor). The reason for that
was that I wasn’t doing well in chemistry which was vital to any
biology major. As I looked at my college art education I see mostly
wasted time and effort with a few bright spots.

First the positives. Perhaps the most engaging art courses I took
were those in art history. The instructors who taught art history,
by and large, had a passion and a clear understanding of how different
trends or schools of thought in art influenced and impacted each
other and how these art trends reflected what was happening in
society and culture as a whole. So much of my experience in art
before the time was through cartooning and comics. These courses
and instructors opened up whole new worlds and types of thinking
about art. It didn’t diminish my interest in comics or cartooning
but it did provide an overview and structure of what was happening
or had happened in the larger world of art and gave a perspective
on how cartooning fit into a much larger whole. Comics, at that time,
were looked down on as a very poor step sister of the arts—a notion
that is changing over the decades since then. I learned about the great
classic art of Greece and Rome, the medieval period, the Renaissance
with Leonardo and Michelangelo, the Baroque period, Rembrandt,
the Neoclassic, Romantic movements, Impressionism, Post-impressionism,
cubism, surrealism. and so much more. It was a fascinating learning
experience which enriched my intellectual life.

However, the studio section of my art education was severely lacking.
I d0n’t feel that the basic foundations of art was taught with any rigor.
The 1960s was a time of rebellion (the hippie/drug movement,
Vietnam War protects, etc.). The art instructors I had were mostly
in their forties or fifties and were artists who matured during the heyday
of abstract expressionism and their art styles were heavily influenced
by that movement. Even at that time abstract expressionism was
on the wane and these men were struggling in their art on how to move
beyond abstract expressionism. Abstract expressionism was the ultimate
revolt against representationalism in art. Abstract expressionism broke
or ignored all the rules of classical drawing and painting. Rules of composition
and perspective, use of color and light, real form were all looked down on
as hopelessly old fashioned and out-dated. Within a few years pop art and
super realism would create a rebellion against abstract expressionism and
the tradition rules of art would return. However I was caught in this period
where the forms of abstract expressionism were still dominant with my
instructors. It seems as if they weren’t interested in teaching classical art
basics and why should they if all these things were hopelessly passe.

Perhaps I am being to hard on my former instructors. Perhaps I should
have chosen my college with greater care. Perhaps I should have thought
through what I wanted to do much more carefully than I did. Perhaps I
was expecting more out of these instructors than they had the capacity to give.

However having wrote that I still believe and feel that these instructors
should have taught the basic foundational principles of classic art. I believe
that when these rules are broken that should come from a thorough knowledge
or them not an ignorance of them. For example, I learned about perspective
in a junior high mechanical drawing class. However, I didn’t carry these
perspective principles over into my art. I never made the connection or
was it pointed out to me when I was taking my college courses. Perspective
in art is something I had to learn or relearn long after college. I really don’t
remember any of my college instructors talking about let alone teaching
perspective as an artistic discipline.

Cartoonist Mike Manley recently wrote, “It was all the “draw as you feel”
school of creative,,,You know, “I’m am an artist. You can’t label me and make
me have to learn things like perspective. That’s holding down my creativity!”
(From Draw #15, 2008, p. 63). I agree with Manley even though his
experience is a few years later than my own. However it does seem as
if a more traditional way of teaching art is returning at least in some
schools of higher education.