<p>I'm in my junior year at Vanderbilt, and I've decided that I'm going to try to become an artist. There is an arts program here at Vanderbilt, but I don't think it's particularly good for starting a career in art (correct me if I'm wrong).</p>
<p>So, I'm wondering whether it would be worth my while to transfer to a school with a better arts program or whether I can reasonably expect to do okay graduating from here with a second major in art. </p>
<p>My main concern is that the amount of money my parents are paying to send me to Vanderbilt is a total waste for what I'm going to do with it.</p>
<p>Just looking for a second opinion on the matter.</p>
<p>So the most important things career wise for being an artist - and this is my humble opinion - are the kinds of people/ideas you encounter on your way and where you end up doing your MFA. </p>
<p>If you make a consistent effort to keep yourself informed about the ongoings of the contemporary art world (checking out major shows and reading some of the various contemporary art magazines would be good places to start), relentlessly criticize your work and manage to have some friends who are equally as interested as you are then you can start your career anywhere. But, that said, the school can make a difference.</p>
<p>If your professors don’t know who Gerhard Richter and Marina Abramovic are, you are in the wrong place. If you are at a school where people in their third or fourth years are still painting overwrought flower pots and bright “expressionistic” paintings, you are in the wrong place. In fact, if most of the art majors are still making paintings, you are in the wrong place. </p>
<p>While your MFA tends to be the most important career factor education wise some undergrad programs tend to pump out a few more successful artists than others. Brown, Bard, Yale, Wesleyan, Oberlin and pretty much every other UC are some of the usual, non art school, suspects. There is an abundance of threads on here with good (and bad) recommendations for liberal arts colleges with good (and bad) art programs.</p>
<p>That said, art is a relatively risky career choice and most art students, even from major art schools end up having lukewarm to out-rightly failed careers or decide to do something else. There is no guarantee whatsoever that going to a school with a good art program will make you even a moderately successful artist (unless said program is an MFA and said school is Yale or UCLA). Choosing a decent place for your undergrad however is probably the best way to start.</p>
<p>As someone who’s spent way too much time looking at which schools artists went to, I’d strongly recommend you transfer but then again i don’t know what your personal motivations and interests are. Honestly, you can start anywhere as long as you have the drive.</p>
<p>Umm any liberal arts college with a good art program will do. In most cases colleges will evaluate your transfer application primarily on the basis of academic merit and co-curricular involvement without too much consideration of your artistic abilities unless of course they are beyond average. If however you’ve been at vanderbilt for more than 2 years, you may have to transfer with a declared major. If that major is art then the admission folks will give more weight to your portfolio but each school does things differently.</p>
<p>I’d recommend:
Oberlin
Bard
Wesleyan
Brown
Yale
and most of the UCs
but there are a few other good ones
that i can’t remember atm.</p>
<p>They are relatively selective schools but so is Vanderbilt so you should be fine.
If you’d like to do some research and there’s an art bookstore nearby, you should flip
through this book phaidon recently published for the younger than Jesus exhibition at the new museum. It’s a survey of all the artists that were in the show and has short biographical snippets for each one which usually mentions where they went to school. </p>
<p>OP- are you saying that you want to transfer as a junior to a new school and start a new major, or that you want to transfer to a new school, maintain your first major and do a second major in art? What is your first major?</p>
<p>@kaelyn: okay, thanks. I’ll be sure to look into these. This is my second year at Vanderbilt, but I’ve also spent a year at U of Alabama. I will have to say, though, that I might just have to stick it out here because my parents would only pay for me to be in a private university for one more year (after this year). Which is okay, I guess, so long as I can set myself up for a masters elsewhere.</p>
<p>One other question: why would making paintings in senior year be a bad sign? What are most aspiring artists doing at the end of art school elsewhere?</p>
<p>@switters: I’m saying that I want to start a major in art, but that if I were to continue here at Vanderbilt it would actually be easier to just complete my major in Cognitive Studies and tack on a second major in Art. The system is a little weird here, so if I transfer into the school of Arts and Sciences, my liberal arts core would suddenly magnify in size.</p>
<p>In that case you should stick out, you mean you can double major without racking up more req. classes, right?</p>
<p>chill out kaelyn, dear, nowhere in OP’s post s/he said want to be a contemporary conceptual artist who makes rubber tongue stick out of wall that licks you.
and if profs know who Marina naked lady do weird stuff’s name but only concern how she’d go pee while " The Artist is Present" all day thing or Gerhard Richter but only because s/he likes German shepherd dog ( and can not pronounce the artist’s name) it’s not that cool, and sadly, most contemp intelli folks are biased and shallow beyond blah blah facade they’d put up with.
I’d rather talk to the old grump painting same scenario 100 million times until s/he get it right, let it be cloud, sky, sailboat, flowers.
nothing wrong with painting into senior years, of course nothing wrong with trash pile or haystack with one needle in it, that you are gonna call great art.
Art is everything and for everyone.
OP, you are the one to define that.
It will be lotta kaelyns and bears(me) to distract you from what your heart tells you to do.
pay attention, there is (some) good advice and be always open, but do not take anything as must do-s or don’t.
I like that you came from public U, your parents are supportive in their way, Tennessee is a mystery but I only hear good thing about Vandy, students works are not THAT bad, I have seen worse at Bard.</p>
<p>Don’t worry, study hard.
remember, everything you do BESIDES art makes you better artist, I do think, it is the fact.</p>
<p>Nothings wrong with painting in itself. I paint more than anything else.
But what you see in most art schools and art programs is that 75% of the
fine art students come in doing painting but as soon as they
start thinking about what they’re doing, they realize painting isn’t
for them. It’s something most people do unwittingly because it’s
what they were taught to do in high school or because it’s what everyone
else does. But when you are studying art, you really should start
thinking about what you’re doing and what you’re trying to accomplish.
When people get to that point most of them realize painting is not
where it’s at. If most of the people on a course are still painting
it probably means most of them have not gotten to that point. </p>
<p>The schools i recommended do have a more “conceptual” approach
but all that means is that they will be asking you difficult questions
about the kind of work you make and exposing you to the different ways
of making art that you might not have previously considered.
I think all artists benefit from that kind of environment. If you go to bard
and decide to do really “traditional” work, you’ll probably have a sense about
why you made that choice and your work will be better for it. If you do really
“traditional” work at somewhere really… “traditional”, all you’ll probably end
up knowing is how to mix a fantastic green to paint that embroidered tea cozy
in your still life. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but there’s just so
much more.</p>
<p>Bears is right in that you have to pick the best environment for you.
More “conceptual” environments do tend to come with their fair share
of pretense and snobbery but at least they’ll be challenging you. More
“traditional” environments come with their fair share vapidity and general
cluelessness. </p>
<p>I think the formula for art students fresh out of school is pretty similar everywhere.
Find a way to pay the bills.
Work on your work.
Live life.
Pursue career.
Some people are lucky enough not to have to do the first part, some people get too
caught up in it. It’s also easier in some places than others. In Düsseldorf for example
-where i currently am - there are lots of scholarships and residencies floating about
as well as a decent market for work by young artists which means folks here
have more income generating opportunities via art. Elsewhere they might have
to depend more on their jobs, parents, loans etc.</p>
<p>If money is going to become an issue try the UC’s,
If you also have well above average grades yale and wesleyan
should have enough finaid to take care of you.
sorry if i seemed a little overzealous.</p>
<p>@bears and dogs: yep, basically just majoring in art would be at least as time consuming as double majoring</p>
<p>@kaelyn: I’ll be sure to keep that in mind (conceptual vs. traditional).</p>
<p>It seems like it would be really helpful to go elsewhere, but considering my circumstances I don’t think I’d benefit much more by trying to study art elsewhere. One being that I’ve hardly begun studying art, and two being that no matter where I go I’ll almost certainly end up needing to study art independently or at least outside of a college environment even before I go on to get an MFA. Nashville might not be the best place for aspiring artists, but it certainly has some connections and something I can learn from. At least here I know I can focus on (almost) just art for a year and a half.</p>
<p>meh. As long as you don’t feel like you’re settling.
I like frieze and art review, you should take a look at em.
Artforum is nice for the pictures but the text is not so
legible. Let me know what you’re interested in and ill recommend you
some books/artists to look at. In exchange you can look at a text im writing.</p>
<p>Actually, that’s hard to say. I do mostly drawing and painting, but I had heard about performance art, which seemed like it might be more appropriate for expressing the perspectives I want to capture. Within drawing, I’m interested in art focused on depicting emotional states through the setting and pose of the person the art is centered around.</p>
<p>There’s a really good photograph by Lucia Holm that captures what I’m into. It is a picture of a woman sitting (clothed) in a shower, looking utterly defeated. I guess by this description it sounds like I should consider photography, but so far I haven’t found that medium particularly exciting to work with.</p>
<p>If you can’t really recommend anything from that, that’s okay. What’s this text you are writing?</p>
<p>Ye, sounds like you may be more into photographic arts. Photographic Art incorporates drawing, painting, and capturing emotional states. Photo Arts is also the tradition of cut up collages, photo montages, color theory, patterns, fashion, surrealism, personal expression, style etc. Many do digital today but to do any sort of photographic art requires an extensive photo and modern art history to really grasp. </p>
<p>I know that photo and actually like what Lucia Holm does overall. She is a beautiful talented tart that vaguely reminds me of some of the stuff Cindy Sherman did. Even though I like her victorianesque and modern fashion art stuff I hope she continues to explore the more conceptual stills without ending up sitting behind a computer monitor too long or becoming too PC or emo haha. </p>
<p>Too bad the US is still so prudish and anti art in general as always has been. If you want to check out some photo art not in US universities you should check out Jan Saudek as an example of Photographic Art. It’s silly how many people get upset today over the human body when Photo Art for like 75+ years was all about repressed or discovered sexuality in society and the nude female. I love how people blame the hippies today when American bohemians have been around for over 100 years celebrating freedom and sexuality against the status quo. It’s just they were happy doing it while since the PC movement most of the photo art in the past 20 years turned totally queer, sour, sullen and just downright depressing.</p>
<p>Yeah, that sounds like it, though I didn’t know it was called photographic art. Intuitively that makes me think only of photography, though you say it incorporates drawing and painting too. Not that I have anything against photography, I just like the act of constructing something (at least in part) with my hands.</p>
<p>I’ll have to look into Cindy Sherman’s work. I actually don’t know her.</p>
<p>Cindy Sherman was one of the famous female 70s art photographers that turned the camera on herself. She started dressing up and photographing almost cinematic type stills with herself as the protagonist. It is falsely called feminist today with such rampant media narcissism but she did have a social point on how females were depicted in film and art. </p>
<p>I have the same issue with wanting to create and hold something with my hands. Digital Photography leaves me cold and wanting and have yet to seen very many artistic innovations in Digital Photography that some Photoshop monkey couldn’t pull off. Photography fought to be more than just a snapshot and was raised to an art back during the Photo Succession up until the famous modern art exhibits at the NY Armory. If you know painters, Alfred Stieglitz married painter Georgia O’Keefe and was the photographer who lived in gallery 291 in NYC that helped bring modern art from Europe to the US.</p>
<p>Photographic Art has a huge history dating back to the American Pictorialists. Ever since about the 1860’s painters where complaining that Photography was not an art because was really hurting their business. They relied on Historical paintings and family portraits and now this box of metal with a lens was doing all the work. That argument went on for a few decades until people like Edward Steichen helped raise photography to art status at the turn of the century. There really is too much of a rich history to rely here but its deff worth checking out since photographic artists do some trippy stuff!!!</p>
<p>There are many compositional and conceptual aspects to photo art but ye I also paint B&W photos with photo oils. There is also tons of tinting and toning processes like using the sun to create cyanotypes (blue print process that engineers use) or van dyke browns. B&W and Color infrared film is also difficult, expensive, but fun to use if you know what you are doing to get eerie emotional effects. As I’ve mentioned this stuff is very popular with the young and the counter culture who buy and trade em. When I show young people bombarded by candy coated commercial images for nearly a decade a sharp good looking photo they just yawn because have become accustomed to them. Then I show them some photo art and they are like wow that is really cool and trippy looking and say I never knew stuff like that existed.</p>
<p>im sort of a dud where performance is concerned. Though i can recommend some people you should look at if you are interested in portraiture vis a vis painting. Historically there’s Renoir, Cezanne and maybe Egon Schiele. More recently there’s been Elizabeth Peyton, Marlene Dumas, Eric Fischl, Alice Neel, Dana Schutz and Lucian Freud. Luc Tuymans’ and Gerhard Richter’s portraits are also great but they are hardly for everyone.You might also want to look at Nan Goldin, Larry Clark and Rineke Djikstra’s photos. Cindy Sherman is quite overrated (and a little boring) if you ask me.</p>
<p>For brief history and ideas about portraits.</p>
<p>I really admire painters but was never really moved by portraiture, not even in photography to be honest. A lot of painting today including the names you mentioned just doesn’t do much for me compared to the rich Japonisme influence on the French leading to modern art.</p>
<p>I tend to think a lot of photographers in the history books can be a tad boring but came to learn and more appreciate through the historical, technological and social context. I merely just mentioned that Lucia Holm reminds me of what Sherman started out doing. I actually like Lucia Holm a lot better who actually started out a painter, which photographic artists tend to emulate in look and style. She has lots of incredible color actual FILM photos, a great sense of style and composition, and hot on top of that! I became aware of her through her photography not her music which i want to further check out. I really like Larry Clark and to a lesser degree Nan but they were totally 60’s-70’s counter culture which can be a bit much in today’s culturally stale holier than thou PC environment. No disrespect but a paper or argument on the ‘ethical conception of art’ discussing autonomism, aestheticism, and moralism or whatever sounds dreadfully boring; is that the PC psychobabble crap they got you doing in school?</p>
<p>@kaelyn: that’s okay on the performance. The general thread on reading recommendations looks very promising. Actually haven’t looked at many of the books yet, but I’ve got Betty Edward’s book, which has been quite helpful.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I’d be great at evaluating your essay, but I’ve studied philosophy in general enough to evaluate an argument. Feel free to PM me if you want an opinion about it.</p>
<p>@kmazza: thanks for the leads. Just for future reference, does photography where the colors are really enhanced (i.e. oversaturated?) fall under photo art? Does it also include where someone incorporates a photograph in a drawing, usually as the background?</p>
<p>To be honest I can’t stand over saturated digital pictures and think its been severely abused and looks extremely tacky. I suppose if the entire picture is suppose to be fantasy or Care Bear like then over saturated bright colors make sense. When it comes to nature, city scape, people etc if the person feels compelled to over saturate any of the colors I’m just going to think they are amateurish, possess bad taste, and don’t know how to use a camera or photo software. Unless the person was going for that Rainbow Bright look I personally wouldn’t consider over saturated pictures as art.</p>
<p>Now trying to make the colors pop out more with color negatives or transparencies can be considered art but there are other factors to be considered. Film photos like what Lucia Holm does even if saturated can be considered art. She figured out how to chemically work with certain stocks of film and just enhance the glitch error. She also knows her color, design, and compositional theory plus is excellent with lighting. To do what she does is more learned intent than just clicking the camera and fixing or manipulating in post production. Granted she does do some great manipulated Digital Media Art but I am way more impressed with her film photographs.</p>
<p>There is photo art with drawing and many use to even scratch the emulsion and do all sorts of creative/destructive processes. The original intent of photo art dating back over 100 years ago was to get that painting look. The colors were both bold and muted so the hue and look of them had the appearance of a painting more than just a photograph.</p>