Art Schooled: A Year among Prodigies, Rebels, and Visionaries at a World-Class Art College

337 Pages·3.909 MB·English

by  Larry Witham

[ Art Schooled ]

Art
Schooled
[ ]
A Year among

Prodigies, Rebels,
and Visionaries
at a World-Class
Art College
larry witham
university press of new england
lebanon, new hampshire
University Press of New England
www.upne.com
Text and illustrations © 2012 Larry Witham
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Eric M. Brooks
Typeset in Fresco Plus Pro by Passumpsic Publishing

The illustrations in this book are representative of the events
described, and do not represent actual individuals.
University Press of New England is a member of the
Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their
minimum requirement for recycled paper.
For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book,
contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court
Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Witham, Larry, 1952–
Art schooled: a year among prodigies, rebels, and visionaries
at a world-class art college / Larry Witham.—1st.
isbn 978-1-61168-007-2 (cloth: alk. paper)—
isbn 978-1-61168-188-8 (ebook)
1. Maryland Institute, College of Art. 2. Art—Study and teaching
(Higher)—Maryland—Baltimore—History—21st century. I. Title.
n330.b32m379 2012
707.1'17526—dc23 2011037224
5 4 3 2 1
[ contentS ]
introduction Portfolio Day 1
[ part i ] foundations
1 “Very Gifted People” 13
2 Visiting Artist 31
3 Tattoos and the Foundation Year 49
4 Seeing Red 63

5 Lines and Marks 74
6 Dead Authors Can’t Define Art 91
[ part ii ] art worlds
7 Urban Legends 111
8 Exhibitmania 126
9 Digital Tsunami 140
10 Art Market Monster 156
11 The End of Sculpture (as We Know It) 170
[ part iii ] art and soul
12 Snowmageddon 189
13 Paint-Spattered Wretch 206
14 Climbing the Glass Cube 223
15 Being in Film 241
16 Education of an Artist 251
17 Art Walk 277
Map of the Maryland Institute College
of Art and Its Neighborhood 291
Author’s Note 293
Notes 295
Index 323

[ introduction ]
portfolio day
O
n a chilly December afternoon, an annual ritual shared by Amer-
ican art schools begins at the Maryland Institute College of Art,
better known as mica. It is Portfolio Day. Students arrive with
artwork—drawings, paintings, and photographs—to impress faculty at
an art school where they seek admission. On this Sunday in Baltimore,
the morning fog, gusts of wind, and wispy snow offer a gray contrast to
the brightness of the “art kids.” Whether scruffy or groomed, all are armed

to the teeth with proof of their skill and creativity. After morning campus
tours of mica, the parents and students head inside for the main attrac-
tion: portfolio reviews.
Portfolio “day” is not really a day, but a season, September to Janu-
ary, when art schools across the country transform themselves, each for a
day, into shared recruiting stations. More than sixty other art schools have
sent representatives to mica today to set up tables around the campus,
as mica representatives will do at many of the other schools throughout
the season.
To get reviewed by mica, students form two long lines in the interior
courtyard of the Main Building, a century-old edifice of Renaissance reviv-
alism, a great marble landmark in this part of Baltimore, a neighborhood
of brick row houses. Standing in the two lines, the students jostle folders
and even big paintings. They inch across the inlaid floors, gazing up at
classical statuary, replicas of works from Greece and Rome.
They are standing in two lines because of the way art schools are orga-
nized. This is the distinction between “fine art” and “applied art,” the lat-
ter also called “design.” Those who file into the first room (fine arts) are
interested in drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, or sculpture.
Faculty members crowd around the tables and gently move the students
along, giving fifteen minutes of friendly advice to each. They tell students
how to organize an effective portfolio. They also take notes: They are look-
ing for top students, the crème de la crème (French is a preferred language
[2] Introduction

The Main Building from the campus green.
in the fine arts). The crème are likely to be recruited heavily, especially with
merit scholarships.
In another room off the Main Building’s courtyard, the wood-paneled
President’s Board Room, students meet faculty in the graphic design, il-
lustration, animation, and architectural arts departments—the realm of
applied arts, not the world of “art for art’s sake,” but rather art for clients.
Some say, “Art for money’s sake.”
The students come at different levels of preparation, thanks to a feeder
system for art colleges. The United States now has more than five hun-
dred high schools for the arts (mostly magnet-type schools), an increase
from twenty in the 1980s. In addition, most ordinary high schools offer ap
(advanced placement) studio art.1 Their teachers have gone to art college.
They help art kids develop portfolios, as one exaggerated saying goes,
“before they reach puberty.” Whatever the preparation, mica has an eye
for students with “a good fit” for the school.
And so it is across Portfolio Day, a seasonal curtain-raising for each
new year of art college. The nation’s art schools—about fifty that are in-
dependent and hundreds more that exist as departments at colleges—are
Introduction [3]
friendly cooperators during Portfolio Day season. Their common cause:
Fill the art schools, even as costs increase, high school graduation rates
decline, and the racial and ethnic mix of the American student popula-
tion is changing.2 After a season of Portfolio Day cooperation, the schools
invariably begin a behind-the-scenes contest, especially among the top
independent schools, such as mica. They compete over top students, ne-
gotiating benefits up to the eleventh hour. As private nonprofit colleges,
the independent art schools also compete with the nation’s public col-
leges and universities, many of which have large art departments, but
charge less for tuition.3
The Portfolio Day season ends seven months before students begin
their life at an art school. Students’ Portfolio Day experiences are an omen.

At every step of the way—to enter art school, graduate, win a competition,
show at a gallery, get an art job—the portfolio, whatever diverse forms it
can take, will be a key to their careers.4 If they become artists, they typi-
cally also must decide whether to do it for art’s sake, or for the money.
The emphasis on the portfolio suggests that the traditional goal of art
schools remains intact—the goal of finding natural talent and teaching
artistic skills. When mica was founded in 1826, during an age of roman-
tic landscape painting and monumental sculpture, the idea of talent in the
art world reigned supreme. The “Maryland Institute,” as it was originally
called, was founded to promote the “useful arts,” such as drafting, that
would support America’s booming industry, especially the railroads that
were being born in Baltimore. As to skill, the art world most admired the
beaux arts: classic drawing, painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was a
world of talent honed by formal training.
In the twentieth century, many art school educators decided that a more
democratic, less elite, approach was necessary. Suddenly, every person
was a fountain of creativity, a spigot only to be turned on by art education.
After the world wars, this was a fitting response to stifling conformity, and
it was abetted by the new psychologies that said repression is bad, expres-
sion is good. With this, expressive art education joined skill-training. If
skill got in the way of creative expression, the definition of skill was re-
vised—or it fell by the wayside.
After the 1960s, something else entered the art world, going beyond
mere skill or creativity. The art revolution of the 1960s announced that the