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‘The best way for students to develop would be to appreciate old masters such as Titian and Rembrandt.’
‘The best way for students to develop would be to appreciate old masters such as Titian and Rembrandt.’ Photograph: Alamy
‘The best way for students to develop would be to appreciate old masters such as Titian and Rembrandt.’ Photograph: Alamy

Should all art students learn to paint and draw?

This article is more than 5 years old

We’re losing traditional artistic techniques, one critic laments – but others say this view is outdated

In a new paper, What Happened to the Art Schools?, the painter and art critic Jacob Willer claims that today’s fine art degrees do not offer the necessary teaching to produce exceptional artists. Painting and drawing have come to be seen as “no more than art’s old ceremonial vestments”, he writes.

Willer, who visited art schools around the country, says that while the odd talented student stood out for him, the general standard was “depressingly low”. “I would encourage you to look back through the UCL collections to see the quality of paintings that students at the Slade were routinely making in the first half of the last century and you will see for yourself how things have changed,” he says.

Willer goes on to suggest that in order to restore standards, higher art education ought to focus once again on craft and life drawing. But, he says, since current teachers would mostly not be capable of teaching painting and drawing – “because most of them know nothing about it” – the best way for students to develop would be to spend time appreciating old masters such as Titian and Rembrandt. “If you look at the best artists everyone has always looked at and wondered why they’ve always looked at them, eventually you’ll discover a standard for yourself. I think that’s the best we can do now.”

Teaching practices at art schools have indeed changed over the past few decades. The foundations of today’s schools were laid in the 60s, when local colleges merged to create tertiary-level art schools and polytechnics, where students could receive a diploma in art and design and were increasingly treated more like artists than pupils. But there have been significant political and cultural shifts since. The 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, which saw polytechnics and independent colleges become universities, left formerly independent art schools to grapple with the same issues universities do – most notably the rise in tuition fees. Variety became necessary in a crowded market.

Unlike Willer, many believe that these changes have not been for the worse. For Michael Archer, professor of art at Goldsmiths University, art schools’ approaches have become less prescriptive, drawing on a growing range of traditions and cultures. A return to a technical focus on painting and drawing would be restrictive, he says – and “completely misguided”.

Alex Schady, programme director at Central Saint Martins, agrees. “Art and artists have always responded to new techniques and materials. If we’re being plural, it’s much less exclusive than insisting on very expensive oil paints or high quality paper that might be really excluding to some students.” Schady says that if the course only legitimised a very particular tradition of representational drawing and painting, the approach would become too “dogmatic and big daddy”. And many CSM students still do draw, he adds.

Richard Talbot, head of fine art and professor of contemporary drawing at Newcastle, says weekly life drawing classes are held for any student who wishes to go, “but it’s important to expose students to a wide range of staff and practices”. Talbot models the course on his experience at Goldsmiths during the “70s heyday”, when he and his contemporaries were free to explore their interests without any restrictions. He follows this open-ended approach while offering his students a variety of practical workshops on specific skills such as developing your colour palette, priming a canvas and applying paint. “We’re not saying ‘you have to know this’ but instead, ‘this could be really useful for some of you’.”

Tutors point out that an exposure to various media and traditions shouldn’t come at the expense of a technical education. “I’m for the ‘anything goes’ model, but drawing from observation and nature and commonly from the life model has been actively discouraged,” says Andy Pankhurst, an artist who teaches at various institutions including the Royal Drawing School, which offers a “skills-based” foundation course (life drawing is compulsory in the first two terms). While teaching at Slade during the early 00s, students told him they were no longer coming to his life drawing class because other tutors had told them if they did, they would turn into vegetables. “They were being told that working from observation meant you had no concept or ideas, when nothing could be further from the truth.”

Pankhurst says that many postgraduate students arrive at RDS wishing they had been taught “certain fundamentals or language” on their undergraduate courses. “I am loath to use the word ‘skills’ – it implies that art school is a facility,” says Pankhurst. “But imagine if you were given a piano and you were told to express yourself and you were just banging away at the keys.”

For many artists, a foundation course is the place to learn technical skills. Johnny O’Flynn, a graduate of the RDS foundation course, enjoyed the many exercises and workshops on offer, but now, as a fine art student at Newcastle, he is happy to be given a looser structure. “I had an idea that most art schools were more independent and most people aren’t interested in observation – so it makes sense for it to be more open.”

At the crux of this debate, of course, is the question of what art is for. How relevant is an artist’s technical accomplishment? For Archer, freer teaching structures help accommodate the new diversity of their students, who come from a myriad of countries, backgrounds and cultures. As such, adhering to methods taught in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries would be pointless. “Whichever art school did it, their applications would plummet,” he adds.

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