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I graduated from art school. I didn't go to art school to pursue a career in art. The art school I went to basically said, "don't" - it's a lottery anyways. Th

I graduated from art school. I didn't go to art school to pursue a career in art. The art school I went to basically said, "don't" - it's a lottery anyways. The people who can make a living as an artist are a few dozen worldwide. I went to art school to think laterally and critically. I went to have my own ideas of what creativity is exhaustively challenged. You can also go to art school to make those social connections to the larger art world - the art world is nothing but a huge web of social ties. I found that part of it pretty dark and disgusting, really. I just wasn't willing to stab so many people in the back to get ahead. My curriculum was not centered around skills and technique - you were to learn that yourself. It was centered around your ideas - get your ideas out of your head and onto a stage basically. The school and my program were influenced by the Black Mountain school in N. Carolina where individuals like B. Fuller, Merce Cunningham, and John Cage taught. Interdisciplinary. It was all a living experiment, and all my higher level courses had, "Experimental" in their name. I don't regret one second of art school. You get out what you get in. I still would never, ever pursue a career as an artist. I've done lots of creatively amazing projects, but it wasn't for the money - this country I live in (USA) at least really doesn't find monetary value in the arts.

qntty 10y ago
Can I ask where you went? I've always been fascinated with Black Mountain College.
nether 10y ago
Have you paid off your loans?
k_sh 10y ago
> "The people who can make a living as an artist are a few dozen worldwide" There are tens of thousands of musicians, photographers, actors, singers, and dancers that live off of their art.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Sure, but if you're interested in JUST painting, your professors would be well advised to give you the above advice. You don't learn to paint to feed yourself.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  The people who make a living as a name artist with "important" gallery exposure probably number a few hundred in the West. There are more in China and Russia, both of which have big art scenes, and plenty of very rich people willing to splash the cash on prestige canvases. The number of people making a living as visual artists is somewhere between a hundred and a thousand times that. There are a lot of people selling decorative, mass-appeal art, with varying levels of skill, but no serious pretensions to cultural significance. Earnings follow the usual power law. Most get by, some are more comfortable, a handful do very well indeed. I don't think any of them would seriously consider taking on $400k of debt. I think we're getting to the point where universities are basically just running scams in these creative areas. You'll get some value from a degree program, especially on the networking side. But - as OP says - it's just not worth saddling yourself with a lifetime of debt to pay for that access. This kind of education used to be free/cheap, and that worked better for everyone - except the loan sharks.
  - jib 10y ago
    It still is in most countries that aren't the US. My wife went back to complete a graphic design degree as a career change / work break. The opportunity cost of 4 years of not working is obviously huge, but the absolute cost was about 10k euro in Ireland, and that is on the high side for Europe as a whole I think.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
smonff 10y ago
100% agree with that. I graduated an art school in France. You don't have to pay for that, the fees are extremely low (you can pay it by working 3h a week as a waiter). So the problem is surely elsewhere than around the financial problem. The social part is the trickier one. The art school gives you access to a wonderful networking playground, and you discover very quickly that attending vernissages and parties are mostly as importing as "working" on your art. If you come from a rich family, it will help, not because you will be able to pay the school fees, but because you will be able to play with the social codes for this. Check Pierre Bourdieu for more about this and the social construction around "distinction" and "reproduction". Even with all this you are still not sure of anything. Most of the artists didn't even attend an art school.
rayalez 10y ago
My experience is completely opposite. I have never went to the art school, learned art(painting, computer graphics, animation) myself, and then have worked as a 3D artist for several years. It is definitely not a lottery, but a matter of competence. There's plenty of jobs available for digital artists, and when vr comes around there will only be more. I agree with the author of the article though, art schools have very little practical value. When it comes to painting, 3D graphics, and animation, you can learn everything online, for free. Or for a few thousand $, if you're not willing to use torrents.
- duaneb 10y ago
  I'd imagine that the useful things art school could give you would be art history, aesthetics, color theory, and criticism. Being proficient in graphics doesn't mean you are an artist. Commercial work is certainly far removed from the art world.
  - WhitneyLand 10y ago
    I'm honestly curious - through your best effort were you unable to tell this comment comes off as pompous and condescending? If that is the case, consider this a polite and gentle suggestion that it may be interpreted the wrong way by some.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - matt4077 10y ago
      It's a legitimate idea hard to express without sounding condescending. Artists get annoyed by "I never needed to go to art school because I taught myself photoshop" as much as others are annoyed by "oh, you're a computer scientist? Can you fix my windows?"
      - hayd 10y ago
        To which the answer is "yes. my rate $200 an hour"...
WhitneyLand 10y ago
I think your advice sounds great for people living in a Star Trek utopia where people only work to better themselves. However in our present time, how many people can seriously consider going to college without careful thought to how it will relate to their career? I'd love to go to art school but not be an artist. While I'm at it, I'd also like to earn graduate degrees in history, literature, and philosophy (might help my lateral thinking).
- matt4077 10y ago
  If I understand it correctly, the US is actually the perfect system to go to an art school and still make a career in a traditional field: You can still go to law school or HBS. Many people suffer from "premature optimization", trying to do business-related stuff because they see McKinsey in their future. I've met quite a few people from those global consultancies, and they actively encourage people to study theology or modern french literature. And don't get me started on parents asking for their children's middle schools to "focus on accounting, not these useless languages"...
  - gtaylor 10y ago
    If you go that route, you'd better not fail. The debt would be crushing.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - orbifold 10y ago
      Easy solution: Your parents are well off. Then a lot of those choices are less dramatic.
      - zachrose 10y ago
        Easier solution for most: go to a not-insanely-priced in-state public university.
  - 10y ago
dmpk2k 10y ago
I went to art school to think laterally and critically What evidence is there that art school is superior at that, compared with more practical disciplines?
- smonff 10y ago
  You can spend 100℅ off you time to think critically at art school. So some people will really manage to become some good thinkers or critics. But it is not a scientific field. Even scientists (sociology for what I know) working on these fields are attacked for the lack of scientific methodology.
echlebek 10y ago
A few dozen world-wide? Come on. :)
et-al 10y ago
You're an exception to the the majority. I went to a private art school, but dropped out after a semester. I agree with you that there's a lot to be learned there: if you can handle a tough critique after you've sweated over a piece for a few weeks, public speaking feels like a breeze. And yes, you get out what you put in--like school and life in general. Perhaps it's because your school was different from mine, but I found art school to be unproductive for a good number of my peers who graduated. Very few are going to flat out admit "yeah, that was a bad decision," but I think that money and time could've been better spent elsewhere and put them on a more comfortable path (but artists are supposed to suffer..). Art school in America is a luxury good, but many would-be art students fail to accept that.
- rabbitz 10y ago
  You said it right - art school is a luxury. Most of the comments FOR art school focus on the non-monetary benefits of going to art school which some people - who I assume are the main target of the article - simply don't have the luxury to pursue. For those that attend art school with the hope that it will improve future compensation / job opportunities, the article is spot on. Personally art school sounds like a great resource but unfortunately the reality is that I'm probably going to spend most of my life barely getting by as it is. I guess that's the problem with capitalism that people seem to forget about sometimes: you're going to have people (a whole bunch) at the very bottom of the pyramid / ladder / whatever who will never be able to rise above basic sustenance.
smallnamespace 10y ago
> The people who can make a living as an artist are a few dozen worldwide That's really hyperbolic and inaccurate. There are full-time artists in my family. They personally know dozens of artists who make a living doing it, and that's only a tiny segment of the art world. The art world isn't enormous, but its certainly more than 10^-8 of the world's population, as you claim.
overcast 10y ago
The entire world is a huge web of social ties. It's ALWAYS about who you know. Always.
mathattack 10y ago
Seems like you got the right things out of it. Do you mind my asking how much it cost? The article cites RISD at 245K. That seems crazy. But 80K may not be too awful.
xupybd 10y ago
You might not regret one second but did you pay every dollar? If you can afford it an education like this might seem worth the money but for most an education must have a good return on the investment or you're broke for life. Lateral and critical thinking are great but you still have to find a way to put food on the table.
verroq 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPlQUfj84sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPlQUfj84sg
sjg007 10y ago
I think that's a great perspective. We should go to school to learn and then apply that learning to a job.
blackkettle 10y ago
> You can also go to art school to make those social connections to the larger art world - the art world is nothing but a huge web of social ties. I found that part of it pretty dark and disgusting, really. I just wasn't willing to stab so many people in the back to get ahead. This is true of every profession. Politics is a part of human life. Academia is absolutely rife with this, business obviously; and you can argue that engineering and certain other professions are 'more' merit driven, but in the end this is only true at the bottom of the pile. Once you hit the threshold where you have sufficiently competitive domain knowledge, then the value of your position is determined by a balance of factors which begin to have more and more equal weight: Can you get along with anyone? Do you have a strong network which can help drive business? Can you sometimes make hard decisions? Can you formulate a larger view of the landscape? Of course these things count to a varying degree at all stages of a career, but there is either no such thing as a 'pure' meritocracy - because this is a fundamentally one-dimensional, naive view of the world; or it is a meritocracy by definition, and 'merit' is measure of outcomes.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
aq3cn 10y ago
I don't why there is a perception that Art Schools have monopoly over creativity. Are mathematicians or scientist not creative?
vivekd 10y ago
That sounds great and all, but I wonder if there were alternative ways of learning to "think laterally and critcally and have your ideas of creativity exhaustively challenged" without going into massive debt and dedicating several years of your life to an institution of higher learning. I'm certain there must be less costly and less time consuming way of obtaining these skills. In fact higher education would seem to me to be the least efficient means of obtaining these skills.

qntty 10y ago

Can I ask where you went? I've always been fascinated with Black Mountain College.

nether 10y ago

Have you paid off your loans?

k_sh 10y ago

> "The people who can make a living as an artist are a few dozen worldwide" There are tens of thousands of musicians, photographers, actors, singers, and dancers that live off of their art.

duaneb 10y ago
Sure, but if you're interested in JUST painting, your professors would be well advised to give you the above advice. You don't learn to paint to feed yourself.
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
The people who make a living as a name artist with "important" gallery exposure probably number a few hundred in the West. There are more in China and Russia, both of which have big art scenes, and plenty of very rich people willing to splash the cash on prestige canvases. The number of people making a living as visual artists is somewhere between a hundred and a thousand times that. There are a lot of people selling decorative, mass-appeal art, with varying levels of skill, but no serious pretensions to cultural significance. Earnings follow the usual power law. Most get by, some are more comfortable, a handful do very well indeed. I don't think any of them would seriously consider taking on $400k of debt. I think we're getting to the point where universities are basically just running scams in these creative areas. You'll get some value from a degree program, especially on the networking side. But - as OP says - it's just not worth saddling yourself with a lifetime of debt to pay for that access. This kind of education used to be free/cheap, and that worked better for everyone - except the loan sharks.
- jib 10y ago
  It still is in most countries that aren't the US. My wife went back to complete a graphic design degree as a career change / work break. The opportunity cost of 4 years of not working is obviously huge, but the absolute cost was about 10k euro in Ireland, and that is on the high side for Europe as a whole I think.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

smonff 10y ago

100% agree with that. I graduated an art school in France. You don't have to pay for that, the fees are extremely low (you can pay it by working 3h a week as a waiter). So the problem is surely elsewhere than around the financial problem. The social part is the trickier one. The art school gives you access to a wonderful networking playground, and you discover very quickly that attending vernissages and parties are mostly as importing as "working" on your art. If you come from a rich family, it will help, not because you will be able to pay the school fees, but because you will be able to play with the social codes for this. Check Pierre Bourdieu for more about this and the social construction around "distinction" and "reproduction". Even with all this you are still not sure of anything. Most of the artists didn't even attend an art school.

rayalez 10y ago

My experience is completely opposite. I have never went to the art school, learned art(painting, computer graphics, animation) myself, and then have worked as a 3D artist for several years. It is definitely not a lottery, but a matter of competence. There's plenty of jobs available for digital artists, and when vr comes around there will only be more. I agree with the author of the article though, art schools have very little practical value. When it comes to painting, 3D graphics, and animation, you can learn everything online, for free. Or for a few thousand $, if you're not willing to use torrents.

duaneb 10y ago
I'd imagine that the useful things art school could give you would be art history, aesthetics, color theory, and criticism. Being proficient in graphics doesn't mean you are an artist. Commercial work is certainly far removed from the art world.
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  I'm honestly curious - through your best effort were you unable to tell this comment comes off as pompous and condescending? If that is the case, consider this a polite and gentle suggestion that it may be interpreted the wrong way by some.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - matt4077 10y ago
    It's a legitimate idea hard to express without sounding condescending. Artists get annoyed by "I never needed to go to art school because I taught myself photoshop" as much as others are annoyed by "oh, you're a computer scientist? Can you fix my windows?"
    - hayd 10y ago
      To which the answer is "yes. my rate $200 an hour"...

WhitneyLand 10y ago

I think your advice sounds great for people living in a Star Trek utopia where people only work to better themselves. However in our present time, how many people can seriously consider going to college without careful thought to how it will relate to their career? I'd love to go to art school but not be an artist. While I'm at it, I'd also like to earn graduate degrees in history, literature, and philosophy (might help my lateral thinking).

matt4077 10y ago
If I understand it correctly, the US is actually the perfect system to go to an art school and still make a career in a traditional field: You can still go to law school or HBS. Many people suffer from "premature optimization", trying to do business-related stuff because they see McKinsey in their future. I've met quite a few people from those global consultancies, and they actively encourage people to study theology or modern french literature. And don't get me started on parents asking for their children's middle schools to "focus on accounting, not these useless languages"...
- gtaylor 10y ago
  If you go that route, you'd better not fail. The debt would be crushing.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - orbifold 10y ago
    Easy solution: Your parents are well off. Then a lot of those choices are less dramatic.
    - zachrose 10y ago
      Easier solution for most: go to a not-insanely-priced in-state public university.
- 10y ago

dmpk2k 10y ago

I went to art school to think laterally and critically What evidence is there that art school is superior at that, compared with more practical disciplines?

smonff 10y ago
You can spend 100℅ off you time to think critically at art school. So some people will really manage to become some good thinkers or critics. But it is not a scientific field. Even scientists (sociology for what I know) working on these fields are attacked for the lack of scientific methodology.

echlebek 10y ago

A few dozen world-wide? Come on. :)

et-al 10y ago

You're an exception to the the majority. I went to a private art school, but dropped out after a semester. I agree with you that there's a lot to be learned there: if you can handle a tough critique after you've sweated over a piece for a few weeks, public speaking feels like a breeze. And yes, you get out what you put in--like school and life in general. Perhaps it's because your school was different from mine, but I found art school to be unproductive for a good number of my peers who graduated. Very few are going to flat out admit "yeah, that was a bad decision," but I think that money and time could've been better spent elsewhere and put them on a more comfortable path (but artists are supposed to suffer..). Art school in America is a luxury good, but many would-be art students fail to accept that.

rabbitz 10y ago
You said it right - art school is a luxury. Most of the comments FOR art school focus on the non-monetary benefits of going to art school which some people - who I assume are the main target of the article - simply don't have the luxury to pursue. For those that attend art school with the hope that it will improve future compensation / job opportunities, the article is spot on. Personally art school sounds like a great resource but unfortunately the reality is that I'm probably going to spend most of my life barely getting by as it is. I guess that's the problem with capitalism that people seem to forget about sometimes: you're going to have people (a whole bunch) at the very bottom of the pyramid / ladder / whatever who will never be able to rise above basic sustenance.

smallnamespace 10y ago

> The people who can make a living as an artist are a few dozen worldwide That's really hyperbolic and inaccurate. There are full-time artists in my family. They personally know dozens of artists who make a living doing it, and that's only a tiny segment of the art world. The art world isn't enormous, but its certainly more than 10^-8 of the world's population, as you claim.

overcast 10y ago

The entire world is a huge web of social ties. It's ALWAYS about who you know. Always.

mathattack 10y ago

Seems like you got the right things out of it. Do you mind my asking how much it cost? The article cites RISD at 245K. That seems crazy. But 80K may not be too awful.

xupybd 10y ago

You might not regret one second but did you pay every dollar? If you can afford it an education like this might seem worth the money but for most an education must have a good return on the investment or you're broke for life. Lateral and critical thinking are great but you still have to find a way to put food on the table.

verroq 10y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPlQUfj84sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPlQUfj84sg

sjg007 10y ago

I think that's a great perspective. We should go to school to learn and then apply that learning to a job.

blackkettle 10y ago

> You can also go to art school to make those social connections to the larger art world - the art world is nothing but a huge web of social ties. I found that part of it pretty dark and disgusting, really. I just wasn't willing to stab so many people in the back to get ahead. This is true of every profession. Politics is a part of human life. Academia is absolutely rife with this, business obviously; and you can argue that engineering and certain other professions are 'more' merit driven, but in the end this is only true at the bottom of the pile. Once you hit the threshold where you have sufficiently competitive domain knowledge, then the value of your position is determined by a balance of factors which begin to have more and more equal weight: Can you get along with anyone? Do you have a strong network which can help drive business? Can you sometimes make hard decisions? Can you formulate a larger view of the landscape? Of course these things count to a varying degree at all stages of a career, but there is either no such thing as a 'pure' meritocracy - because this is a fundamentally one-dimensional, naive view of the world; or it is a meritocracy by definition, and 'merit' is measure of outcomes.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

aq3cn 10y ago

I don't why there is a perception that Art Schools have monopoly over creativity. Are mathematicians or scientist not creative?

vivekd 10y ago

That sounds great and all, but I wonder if there were alternative ways of learning to "think laterally and critcally and have your ideas of creativity exhaustively challenged" without going into massive debt and dedicating several years of your life to an institution of higher learning. I'm certain there must be less costly and less time consuming way of obtaining these skills. In fact higher education would seem to me to be the least efficient means of obtaining these skills.