Product Description
In this smart survival guide for students and teachers – the only book of its kind – James Elkins examines the “curious endeavor to teach the unteachable” that is generally known as college-level art instruction. This singular project is organized around a series of conflicting claims about art: Art can be taught, but nobody knows quite how; Art can be taught, but it seems as if it can’t be since so few students become outstanding artists; Art cannot be taught, but … More >>
Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A HANDBOOK FOR ART STUDENTS
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#1 by Anonymous on February 3, 2010 - 12:24 pm
The author details art instruction through the ages and discusses the question asked in the title. Art and artists would be so much better thought of by society, and art istself would improve, if the ideas in this book were taken seriously. It is a DEEP book, not for casual reading.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by Luscher on February 3, 2010 - 1:45 pm
this book is not for current art students, or graduates (it’s simply too late for you to read this)
considering the expensive and time consuming path of art training at the University level ? then i recommend reading (or even just skimming) “Why Art Cannot Be Taught : A HANDBOOK FOR ART STUDENTS” not only because it gives a clear overview of the evolution of the methods of passing craftsmanship in the fine arts through (European) history, but because you’ll see that picking a few art classes is probably going to serve you far better than undertaking a full course of study (and the stories of “classroom psychodrama”, and students having to explain and defend their work was easily worth the price of the book, IMHO)
Rating: 4 / 5
#3 by OhYeah on February 3, 2010 - 4:01 pm
James Elkins is not an artist… he is an art theorist. The book should be titled “Why Art Theory Fails in the Studio”… or “Why James Elkin’s Generally Fails to Educate”. If you are interested in the 1001 and one ways that Critique and Art Theory confound themselves in inherent contradictions, then by all means. If you are down with the Elkin’s self-proclaimed skepticism and cynicism… with his claim that his art teaching experience is typically irrational and useless (and a dozen other negatives)… but that he doesn’t want to see it changed… then by all means.
As for the question “Why Art Cannot Be Taught”… that is easy. It’s not true. Art can be taught in any environment that can articulate and commit to a coherent idea of what art is. The problem is, that the typical postmodern art institution cannot articulate a meaningful conception of art. Elkins states that the issue doesn’t matter… that he is fine with any number of contradictory conceptions of art. What matters to Elkins is not what art is… but how to talk about it. How you can talk about a subject that you can’t or won’t conceive of clearly, is absurd… and is also the specialty of post-modern art talk.
Let’s be honest here… You can’t teach what you can’t state clearly. Imagine you want to teach something like “plumbing”. You want to teach people to do plumbing work. The first thing you have to do is state clearly what plumbing is… something like… “Plumbing is the systematic use of pipes to route fluids around the house”. Given that conception, you can build a body of knowledge and techniques, and teach it to someone.
Now imagine if you let the conception of plumbing fall prey to a series of re-definitions that are incommensurate with the original idea of plumbing. Someone might say that plumbing also deals with electrical wiring, or blood vessels, or mashed potatoes, or tap dancing. While traditional plumbers would reject such re-definitions… the avant gard plumbers would welcome such new ideas, as it would spice up the boring world of plumbing school. But a strange thing happens on the way to this open-ended nirvana.. the things now included in plumbing are INCOMMENSURATE… they have no conceptual common denominator. As such, they cannot be included in the same class of thing.. they can’t be conceived of.. they can’t be thought of. The Concept Formerly Known As Plumbing no longer exists, because the items included in this redefining are incommensurate.. they can’t be conceived of together. Plumbing would lose it’s meaning.
This is the problem with art. So much is included, that art has lost identity. The only way to glue together all the incommensurate claims to art is… is to just refer to them as “human action”… or “things people make”. But this category is so large as to provide no meaningful guidance on how to “make art”. If art can be anything, then all you can say to someone who wants to learn how to make it is to tell them… “Do whatever you want”.
Some teachers might actually say this.. but they are dishonest.. because at the end of the day someone’s art has to get selected for awards and prizes.. and scholarships are handed out… and favorites have to be annointed. And these actions require standards. If there are not standards for art, then where do the standards come from for these judgments.
Why of course, they come from intellectuals.. who decide NOT what things are… but what they mean. Elkins and his type come forward. They are the overseers of the institutions of post modern art. They have no useful conception of art, and therefore cannot teach art. What they offer instead is to interpret the meanings of the things people make. But as Elkins himself confesses, this is a failure too. This fails because you the root issue has failed.. the issue of a useful conception of art. It always goes back to fundamentals.
You can’t teach a subject if you can’t state the identity of that subject, and commit to that identity. You can’t be a skeptic who floats on the breeze of any “interesting” idea, and at the same time deliver a lesson that makes sense. In Elkin’s view, it isn’t ART that matters, but TEACHING that matters. In Elkins view, art teaching is equivalent to the art critique as it goes down in art schools. Most of the book is taken up talking about issues that come up in critiques. Critiques are talk… critiques are theory… critiques are products of intellect… AND this is what Elkins equates with learning art. But what can you expect from an intellectual… except the intellectualization of everything related to art.
His observations about critique, and the attitudes of the participants, and the rationality of this form of discourse… it is all interesting enough. He clearly has spent his career doing this sort of thing, and his analysis comes across as insightful. I wouldn’t know… because I’m not an art theorist at a post modern art school.
My art school experience was draped in the frustration of wondering if and when I was learning anything. The real failure of art instruction isn’t about how high-minded critiques go wrong… but in much simpler things.. such as the failure of art instruction to teach the basics of visual representation, and then the systematic development of basics into intermediate and advanced skills and ideas. These approach is marginalized by Elkins, who characterizes it as a remnant of some historical system of academic art instruction that no longer matters. Of course, he can do this because he has no commitment to any conception of art. He not only marginalizes academic training… he marginalizes everything… except (of course) the act of marginalizing itself.
The skeptic says you can’t know anything… and he knows it. If you can squeeze that, and a million other pieces of nonsense in your brain.. then you can’t learn art.. but you can be a great artist. Just ask Elkins.
Rating: 3 / 5
#4 by John K. Derby on February 3, 2010 - 4:17 pm
As a critique of how studio art has traditionally been taught at the university level, Elkins is dead on (pun intended). His portrayal of B.F.A./M.F.A. programs is vividly familiar to anyone who has gone that route. The book is also hilarious and a great read. But since we (studio folk) are the chief audience, we already know all of this, right?
The critique of Elkins’ book is not that he misrepresents anything, but that he misses things: namely the field that addresses teaching art, known as “art education.” He does not pretend to consider it, but that doesn’t excuse the neglect. If that sounds funny to you, meaning you assume Art Education is a joke-field, I urge you to delve into the research published in its premier journal, “Studies in Art Education,” and, then, compare this research to that which has recently emerged from Art History and Art–that is, if “Art” (studio professors) produces any research at all. Well, it does here and there, and Art History produces some interesting research, as does Art Education, whose primary agenda is to address issues of critical theory, postmodernism, and visual/material culture. In fact, I understand that the Art department at Elkins’ institution is in the process of making this pedagogical shift as well as some other leading Art schools here and abroad, like Yale.
The point I’m making is that Elkin’s portrait–that postmodern art is at odds with the outdated mode that exists in art schools–is partly untrue. Cutting-edge Art programs, and certainly Art Education, are exploring interesting post-disciplinary projects that resonate nicely with the sublime mantra of the postmodernist discourse that informs them. In a general sense, the schools that Elkins describes are those whose tenured faculty have rested on their boring Modernist laurels, which died quicker than their 4th-tier universities could pass them through the nominal tenure process, a tragedy that I think is slowly but surely evaporating.
Understanding that Elkins is probably aware of all of this and expecting academic readers to draw this out of the book, it’s not so bad. But for those who do not know the inner workings of academic art programs, the book could do a better job of explaining where the pedagogical answer lies. I like to think that for some reason, Elkins had those answers and kept them reserved for another book, rather than that he, like the oldie-moldy prof’s he ribs, is a living anachronism.
Rating: 3 / 5
#5 by Nancy Charak on February 3, 2010 - 5:15 pm
As a recovering survivor of an MFA program I can wholly relate to Elkins’ criticisms about the failure of critiques to shape art and artists. It is poignant that Elkins is unable to offer up a solution.
Rating: 4 / 5