When Alfred Guzzetti began his career as an artist in the 1960s, he was motivated in part by the war in Vietnam. Although he had never seriously considered a career in the arts previously, the pursuit of graduate school and a fellowship in England presented tempting options for avoiding the war.
Even so, art school did not seem like a prerequisite for becoming an artist. If anything, it represented the kind of establishment of which his generation was fiercely skeptical. Instead, Guzzetti chose to study literature in the United Kingdom and travel widely before beginning to produce and direct prize-winning experimental films and documentaries.
Four decades later, Annie Kennedy began her own artistic career by attending the Rhode Island School of Design. For her, art school offered a group of like-minded people who shared the enthusiasm for painting that had been absent in her Utah high school. RISD helped to validate her interest in art and provided her with a network of peers whom she could fall back on even when she moved back to Utah.
Working primarily as an artist has always been a challenge. Relying on personal passions and hand-made creations to make a living can be financially and emotionally draining when a society’s demand is not high enough to meet an artist’s supply. As Kennedy put it to the HPR, being an artist can be like spending a lifetime standing on a hill, observing the world from an important but lonely position. Over time, the tools for uniting artists and keeping their careers afloat have evolved, from Parisian cafés and countercultural movements to the Internet. Art schools embody these transformations and juggle students’ sometimes-conflicting needs for creative fulfillment and financial stability. The changes these influences provoke in educational institutions may also transform artists and their work.
Back to the Drawing Board
Back to the Drawing Board
The divergent experiences of Alfred Guzzetti and Annie Kennedy in regards to higher education speak to more general trends in the shifting role of art schools across the nation. For Guzzetti, now a visual arts professor at Harvard, going to an art school in the 1960s seemed unnecessary; instead, he recalled in an interview with the HPR, he focused on becoming well-traveled and well-rounded in preparation for eventually becoming a successful independent filmmaker who could offer unique contributions to his field. In his time, film schools were mainly a European phenomenon and a rare find in the United States. Even today, Guzzetti concurs with the advice of his colleague, the photographer and Harvard professor Chris Killip, who told the HPR that he advises prospective art students, “Take half the money you would spend on school and use it to travel, instead.”
For Annie Kennedy’s generation and its successors, art school has taken on a different role. Today, as the practices of getting together in coffeehouses and connecting through vast networks of underground movements have become outdated, art school can offer the rarity of a welcoming community of artists with whom to connect, learn, and grow. Especially in the formative years of an aspiring artist’s life, this kind of community can be crucial in encouraging a future career in the arts.
As RISD Dean of Fine Arts Sheri Wills explained to the HPR, “Every important art movement has been about a group of people who have gotten together and critiqued each other’s work. If you think about it, artists have almost always had formal education, and art has always involved a rigorous process of the guild, master, and apprentice. I’m not sure that this has changed much over time—it may look like change on surface, but fundamental principles have remained the same.”
Whether these spaces retain the traditionally nonconformist attitude that characterized earlier artist communities or add problematically commercial elements into the mix is up for debate. To Wills, schools like RISD help to fight back against the overly pragmatic American attitude that seeks for every action to yield dividends. Art schools provide an environment in which those kinds of anxiety-inducing concerns can be put aside and offer a space in which students can develop the kind of deep understanding of the tools, techniques, and history of art that they will need to discover what they can personally contribute. At an art school, students are taught about their own roles as culture-makers, and they can focus on making something meaningful instead of worrying about whether their career choices are as practical as those of their peers.
A Gated Community?
As RISD Dean of Fine Arts Sheri Wills explained to the HPR, “Every important art movement has been about a group of people who have gotten together and critiqued each other’s work. If you think about it, artists have almost always had formal education, and art has always involved a rigorous process of the guild, master, and apprentice. I’m not sure that this has changed much over time—it may look like change on surface, but fundamental principles have remained the same.”
Whether these spaces retain the traditionally nonconformist attitude that characterized earlier artist communities or add problematically commercial elements into the mix is up for debate. To Wills, schools like RISD help to fight back against the overly pragmatic American attitude that seeks for every action to yield dividends. Art schools provide an environment in which those kinds of anxiety-inducing concerns can be put aside and offer a space in which students can develop the kind of deep understanding of the tools, techniques, and history of art that they will need to discover what they can personally contribute. At an art school, students are taught about their own roles as culture-makers, and they can focus on making something meaningful instead of worrying about whether their career choices are as practical as those of their peers.
A Gated Community?
But there is undeniably a financial component to the rise of art schools in America. In general, most higher education across the country experienced a rapid expansion and contraction between the times when Alfred Guzzetti and Annie Kennedy went to school; the problem of too few professors initially led to over-compensation, and eventually to cutbacks. Although the United States now boasts an impressive number of art schools, these institutions can also come with an exorbitant fee. As Guzzetti pointed out to the HPR, “Parents of prospective art students must often pay an enormous cost to put their child through school. These worries then get internalized by the young people, and going to art school becomes a consumer decision … Once money becomes a big issue, you become more concerned with getting training to remain professionally qualified, and you also start your life off in a big hole.”
With the price of tuition factored in, art school can take on a role that comes closer to vocational training than to a Parisian café. Instead of a decision made on the basis of passion and the search for community, going to an art school can seem like an investment. Higher education generally offers the promise of increased prestige and qualifications that can help graduates to secure employment, and schools that focus on art are no different. Those who pursue a career in art know that they are faced with tough competition and a sparse job market. With those stakes in mind, attending an art school may seem like a necessary step towards becoming a competitive candidate.
With the price of tuition factored in, art school can take on a role that comes closer to vocational training than to a Parisian café. Instead of a decision made on the basis of passion and the search for community, going to an art school can seem like an investment. Higher education generally offers the promise of increased prestige and qualifications that can help graduates to secure employment, and schools that focus on art are no different. Those who pursue a career in art know that they are faced with tough competition and a sparse job market. With those stakes in mind, attending an art school may seem like a necessary step towards becoming a competitive candidate.
Viewing art school as an investment can detract from the community-building role that it could otherwise fulfill. When prestige, pre-professional training, and prohibitive costs are the most important aspects of an art school, its community necessarily gets altered. Only certain kinds of students have the self-assurance and financial means to make the type of investment that many art schools represent. Wills says that these students tend to come from stable economic backgrounds or have shown enough promise (and received enough praise) at a young age that they are confident in their abilities when they enter college. Such filters can also rule out artists with skills in less traditional areas, even though they may be able to provide the kind of unique perspective and innovative attitude that could advance the entire field.
After Art School
After Art School
What lies ahead for those who do manage to resolve the conundrum of whether or not to attend an art school? At first glance, job prospects for new artists may seem bleak. Alfred Guzzetti, Annie Kennedy, and Sheri Wills all agree that grants and fundraising are no longer a sustainable means of supporting a full-time artist. According to Guzzetti, the 1960s could boast of a substantial amount of public funding for the arts, but the money available today is made up of “nickels and dimes, relatively speaking.”
Guzzetti has produced numerous documentaries, experimental films, and tapes. He has worked on gallery installations and has collaborated with other filmmakers and musicians on a variety of different works. For all intents and purposes, Alfred Guzzetti is an “artist.” At the same time, he also happens to make his living as the Osgood Hooker Professor of Visual Arts at Harvard.
Annie Kennedy has an extensive artistic repertoire, as well. She has shown her work across galleries in Utah, has produced installation art, and sells some of her work commercially. She has also worked in art education for museums but has found that a full-time position in such jobs detracts too severely from her own artistic pursuits. Instead, she has stayed on as an adjunct professor at the University of Utah. Despite her lessened job security, she finds that she is happiest when she can dedicate herself whole-heartedly to her craft.
Without a steady source of funding, a career in the arts can demand less traditional trajectories than those that are typical of most other professions. “Most graduating students may want to consider art as their ‘career,’ but they also need to get creative about how they make a living,” Wills said. Getting creative about making a living often means combining more than one job—yet even for most professions outside of the arts, flexibility ends up being one of the most important traits that new graduates can have.
Guzzetti has produced numerous documentaries, experimental films, and tapes. He has worked on gallery installations and has collaborated with other filmmakers and musicians on a variety of different works. For all intents and purposes, Alfred Guzzetti is an “artist.” At the same time, he also happens to make his living as the Osgood Hooker Professor of Visual Arts at Harvard.
Annie Kennedy has an extensive artistic repertoire, as well. She has shown her work across galleries in Utah, has produced installation art, and sells some of her work commercially. She has also worked in art education for museums but has found that a full-time position in such jobs detracts too severely from her own artistic pursuits. Instead, she has stayed on as an adjunct professor at the University of Utah. Despite her lessened job security, she finds that she is happiest when she can dedicate herself whole-heartedly to her craft.
Without a steady source of funding, a career in the arts can demand less traditional trajectories than those that are typical of most other professions. “Most graduating students may want to consider art as their ‘career,’ but they also need to get creative about how they make a living,” Wills said. Getting creative about making a living often means combining more than one job—yet even for most professions outside of the arts, flexibility ends up being one of the most important traits that new graduates can have.
Image Credit: User Futurilla/flickr
