Just to defend formal art courses: the way they seem to operate (judging from my partner's experience doing a Fine Art Painting degree) is that at the starter l

Just to defend formal art courses: the way they seem to operate (judging from my partner's experience doing a Fine Art Painting degree) is that at the starter levels they get you to do a bunch of things you wouldn't want to given 'artistic judgement'/preference, to widen your skills and perspective. For example, the painting students were made to do sculpture, animation, and a whole bunch of things in BTEC (the year before they start the actual BA). While criticism, history and taste all came into the later courses (the fine art painters would have a weekly 'crit,' or "artists' stand-up" where they would discuss each others paintings from that week - classic existentialism terratory) that was mostly after you'd learned the basic skills and could actually draw/paint/sculpt reasonably well (which they had tested at interview.) one anecdote from the 'crit' - my partner once submitted three paintings to a crit; one blank, one by her, and one by me. She only revealed this after hearing people talk utter nonsense about my painting for five minutes. This is a classic post-modern taking-the-piss idea that has become part of art (where artists make things purely to mock the stupid ideas people have about 'what constitutes art'.) My painting was, as the article suggests, pretty rubbish.