As tuition fees saw up to nine grand a year, and contact time with academic staff becomes rarer and rarer, will this create a backlash to current trends of anti-craft and dismissal to talent and skill? As art students are taught by the second generation of academics, who were not taught how to make art themselves, what can be the near future for Fine Art? When only the higher middle and wealthy members of society can justify the costs of studying art within a recognised institution, who will suffer in the end, the artist or the institution? I don’t know of many cultural movements that didn’t start at root level and work upwards, consider the origins of hip-hop, punk, disco music, and the effects and popularity these sub-cultures have had on contemporary society.
Art students on a whole today are self taught, learning through self determination and peer interaction. Art schools act as a hub to bring in a diverse group of thinkers eager to learn and make an impact within society, through interaction and academic guidance they can better understand their lives and the possibilities of future paths for a society, through cultural studies. Hip-hop, punk and disco had/has energy channelling anger, bringing people together through a shared interest, no matter the race, age or social standing they are now part of mainstream popular culture, but they all started in the poor and (dangerous) urban areas, not in leafy suburbs and gated communities.
What is more interesting and or authentic, a gigantic ‘abstract’ sculpture designed by somebody in a position because of who they know, and commissioned by a profit lead oil company, or a cleverly thought out but simple detourned piece of advertising?
