The Listicle is a required blog sacrifice to the internet machine gods. Today I feed the beast.
In defiance of the forty think-pieces floating around on why getting your MFA is a bullshit waste of time and money, I present to you "The things I learned at art school."
Disclaimer: Post-undergrad, BFA in Painting in hand, I put up a picture in my studio of performance work where someone was inside of a giant fleshy balloon, with the warning scrawled over it: "In case you think you want to go back to art school..." I did not heed my own warning but that of a mentor who I asked to eviscerate my work and told me the transformation would be good for my practice.
Spoiler alert: it was. (Thank you, mentor.)
Without further ado:
In defiance of the forty think-pieces floating around on why getting your MFA is a bullshit waste of time and money, I present to you "The things I learned at art school."
Disclaimer: Post-undergrad, BFA in Painting in hand, I put up a picture in my studio of performance work where someone was inside of a giant fleshy balloon, with the warning scrawled over it: "In case you think you want to go back to art school..." I did not heed my own warning but that of a mentor who I asked to eviscerate my work and told me the transformation would be good for my practice.
Spoiler alert: it was. (Thank you, mentor.)
Without further ado:
- A positive mindset about doubt. I am a product of the western educational system, so I'm used to being handed clear and specific instructions on how to do everything. This means even a soul inclined to rebellion learns to be led along like a child through the learning process. The single greatest thing I picked up along with my MFA was an acceptance of doubt and discomfort as part of real growth. There was no 12 pt font formula, and no way to show enough effort to "pass." I had to create a set of goals and achieve them with guidance from mentors who respected me too much to offer baby steps. In other words, mentors who expected me to figure out what I was passionate and intentional about by myself. (At the time, this feels like the pain of your legs growing at night in childhood) Afterward, you bask in the comfort you have with uncertainty, because surprise, the world is ultimately chaotic, and so are you.
- An ability to resist art-world dogma. (The art world eschews dogma while having its own. Art school is a great time to decide how much of the kool-aid you want to drink, and how much you will happily nix. Ignoring out of laziness is not the same thing as examining and rejecting something.
- Dot-connecting 101: Experiment, then look back and articulate the connections. Work through the ineffable and undefined with the option to connect and articulate things post-mortem. If you already know exactly what you plan to do or find, it's not really exploring, is it?
- Fluency in the beautiful bullshit that is art-speak. You may scoff now, but soon you will be referring to groups of concepts as a "constellation" too. (I made buzz-word bingo cards you can use at your school if you'd like, because I am a giver like that.)
- A connected addiction to reading and translating critical theory. After you read poorly translated French philosophy for the third time through, everything else seems pretty transparent. You're welcome.
- Crit tools: seeing and deeply listening to work before you speak up, balance in the path of being open to new directions while maintaining your own ultimate direction.
- A solid base to venture out from: the completion of your MFA has a ton of self reflection, and while I rolled my eyes at the onset of this, it made me articulate my tools for a studio practice entwined with a research practice. Combined with the benefit of knowing more context through critical theory and exposure to other artists, this gives you the lay of the land around you and beyond you.
- Your own sphere: Art school is an identification of your artistic alphabet, the memes and archetypes of your own cosmology. You are only beginning. You could begin alone, but a group of reflections will keep you honest.
- Goals and guiding questions: How will you be an artist in our time? There is so much to see, study, experience, and connect. There is too much of everything, Give yourself something to steer by that holds up to critique.
- Persistence: The stupidity to think you will make it, the optimism to weather all the failures required. Comfort with failure is the best artist tool. In art school I literally said to myself: "Look at how good I am sucking today, I am so on right now."
- The MFA not a job prep program: use your time to grow a collective of artists. People matter more in education than checklists, Their cosmologies are the uncharted territory: alliance your world with theirs. No one else if going to come a long and do it. In art school or otherwise, find the ones who will do it with you. The mentors and artists you work with are everything.
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