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#but. unsurprisingly in retrospect. they were just like ''damn our kids want to die? that's crazy'' and did nothing. despite literally all -
satanfemme · 2 years
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I'm sure there's better schools out there, but I've attended about 4 different art schools (1 high school, 3 college) and all of them had a focus not on "how to make art" but on "how to be an artist". it wasn't a hobby it was a lifestyle. how to market your art, how to market yourself, how to make the art that industry professionals will want to see; the colleges, the employers, the professors. how to make bigger art, more art, quality and quantity all at once. and, because of the limits of time: how to skip sleep, how to skip meals, how to skip socializing, how to isolate yourself in your room all weekend doing nothing but making something for someone else.
these are all major elements in their curriculums, if not in some schools even more of a focus than the art itself.
from a capitalist's viewpoint this makes sense. if you're going to art school intending to get an art job, you're gonna need good job skills. you're gonna need to know things like how to sell yourself on all the major social media profiles and then some, both small scale for commission work and large scale for your jobs at major corporations. (you will, of course, most likely be doing both. neither job pays enough by itself). you're gonna need to know how to "grind", nonstop, you're gonna need to know how to grin and bare it. you're going to need to know how to mass produce schlock cause that's what a job is, and that's what you've signed up for. this is all logical.
but if you take a step back from that lens, it all falls apart. most of these students are still kids or young adults in their early 20s (which isn't much more than a kid, let's be real). so, a kid enjoys art for the love and joy of creation, a kid enjoys art because humans enjoy art, they want to make things for themselves, for their friends, to relax, to feel good - so they're coerced into an art institution.
And I can 100% guarantee you that ANY and ALL criticisms you have on the commodification of art on social media, absolutely applies to every single art institution I have ever been a part of, if not more so. Art institutions are not a safe haven away from capitalism, consumerism, and the domination of corporations - they fester it. They survive off it.
competition within the algorithm is brutal. competition instructed by your guardians, between yourself and your real life peers - as a child, teen, and young adult - is even worse. this is very literal competition by the way. I have, multiple times, had my art ranked in value against my peers. our art (if not our names) listed from worst to best.
the "you can sleep when you're dead" mentality is also very literal, I need you to understand. this is one of the things that haunts me the most. why does a child (as young as 14!!) need to sacrifice their health for creation - creation so forced it doesn't even have any passion or love attached anymore. you could say my teachers and professors didn't know what they were encouraging, but you'd be wrong. a student who sacrifices their health for art is more than applauded, directly for that fact. likewise a student who prioritizes their health, at the sacrifice of "better art", is called lazy ...at best.
I don't think people understand how hellish art schools are. I don't even think most art students themselves realize it amidst the plague of self-deprecating humor that spreads thru those buildings (which I've also seen encouraged by college professors). maybe some other schools are better. I don't know.
When I was still a child one of my classmates made a piece about how suicidal our art classes were making her. (they made everyone suicidal. this was known. there were surveys done about it, and nothing else). but, my teacher told her not to talk about that kind of stuff during crit, or he'd be forced to report it to the guidance office. although he wanted her to keep making this art (so personal, so meaningful, it was - by his standards - better than most our class's), he didn't want anything to be done about the suicidal tenancies of this child he was in charge of. he didn't want anything to be done about the art classed he helped plan and teach. he didn't want any solution to the problem, he just wanted her to keep making art about it.
I know this is long, and I've spoken about this before, but it feels important to understand. It's not just social media that's "ruining art". But it's not these art institutions either. you could reform this system as much as you'd like and I promise it'd do all but nothing for you. because these flaws, for how traumatizing, life changing - and to be frank: life ending - they are, they are not the root cause of this commodification. these institutions are the physical manifestation of capitalism. it's capitalism and the very lens in which we view art that's the problem here. maybe that's a grim note to end this rant on, when there's not much we can do about that on a personal level. or maybe there's better schools out there. I don't know.
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