James Elkin and types of knowing. Can art be taught?

Contemporary art in context lecture by Spencer Roberts.

Last week we discussed John Dewey's legacy of the early 1900s and his views on art education in the concept of art as an experience.  We also looked at the competition and tension between the ideas of the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College in the USA.

This week we will discuss the practices of teaching 'Art' in universities in the United Kingdom, considering the fragmentations of art practices now into so many disciplines such as Illustration, Fine Art, Sulpture, Graphic Design, Animation, Design, Product / Textile / etc.. which creates interesting tensions for funding and proper processes of tutelage between departmental divisions.

The educational reforms of the 1990s have allowed the shared funding across divisions of art and design.  Therefore the challenge that we face at the moment is how this money should be shared and divided between such departments. Someone who has theorised this issue, which has been developing in the last 15 to 20 years, (and particularly now that Art can be studied beyond Masters to Ph.D. level), is James Elkin.

James Elkin was trained as an Artist, - a practitioner originally and he believes that there is something fundamentally important to make sure that children and young adults are given the opportunity to learn in such a way to gain an artistic mind, but also he fundamentally does not believe that art can be taught - per se.

Elkins has written many papers and published two books on why art can't be taught.  Interestingly, these books shook much of the foundations of academy when they were reeleased, but it seems he has now turned the table on the university tutors, and the re-adjusted their outlook on education, which,  for the last 40 to 50 years. For example, within the current system, a lot of time is spent trying to achieve the criteria of the critique.  This fundamental goal of the Art Student to achieve has remained pretty much unchanged since the 1960s.  However, Elkins believes that there is something in the structure of art indication and validation that needs to be changed.  He believes that you should no longer look at a rational view of the critique, - much of the time it quite simply it does not make sense. He is also keen to understand the classical role of life drawing and its importance of learning the 'capability of drawing' during the 21st-century.

When Elkins view is considered, I agree that it does seem quite clear that the critique given by tutors no longer needs to be rational.   I also agree and understand that it does not need to meet the 'social dynamic' which goes on in a conversation between student and tutor.

The key books Elkins has published are;  Why Art Can't be Taught,    and also Artists with Ph.D.'s ?
 (Focus should be given to these two books that are most significantly important in this area).

Having been a painter and an art historian, Elkins has virtually created a manual for students going through the University process.

For just one example, he has made tape recordings of a number of 'tutor - student critiques' and due to their recording and subsequent replay, he is able to show how so many of these encounters are just completely nonsensical in the modern university environment!

Coming back to the process of learning and the content, Elkins is also interested in the theory of Art in the new "post-post-modern" world.  It is interesting that as a result of the earlier work of the Bauhaus and the Black Mountain College, some of the views of the early 1930s and 40s seem to have come full circle into favour again today.  Ultimately, the goal must be to create a structure and learning environment in order for students to obtain the best education.  It seems that those ideas of freedom of expression, but then juxtaposed with good art discipline founded on the old way of Master Guilds and Ateliers may be a possible way forward.

Elkins idealises the golden age of art, rejecting the contemporary, for the academically combined historical elements to form new work.  He problematises these issues, including the old notions of perfect proportion and the decorum; no distortion; working not too fast and not too slow; with no emphasis on originality; a focus on the ideal form etc.  These ideals come from very old historical methods which included the idea of purity through mathematics and the early approach to art education.  He sees this as merely academic.  He also suggests that all the classical skills that were once taught such as those in Romanticism, are no longer understood.

The post-modernist view, often on the shock value of current art,  means that we are not part of the art hierarchy once associated with  Academia.  However, whilst there is a 'freedom part', the results often challenges the status quo.  Nevertheless, Elkins does believe tutors should consider 'individuality'.  Therefore, as the subjectivity of art and its critique, is all about how an individual views the world and translates it through the process of creating, rather than how he performs the critique, then the marking regime can and must be developed into something quite different than what it is today.  Taking the point further then, ultimately, Elkins argument is "What is there then, for art schools to teach us now?"

Consider the education process in the Bauhaus.  Maybe, the "core tension" of Freedom of expression but with strong boundaries of discipline in the Bauhaus was appropriate.  After all, this discipline, but also sense of freedom, could be useful, but with a bit more emphasis added on the Black Mountain College ethos too, which was to increase an individuals "sensitivity to phenomena", and ultimately in I think what were Joseph Albers words, it teaches people how to see.

Elkins brings up the idea that 'studio-based' teaching is often much about conversations between tutors and students and students and students, which is informal and very wordy.  It describes this activity is not coming to terms with the complexity of art education in itself.  Elkins even suggests that this 'hazy' low-level conversational engagement actually creates very little.  In fact it actually stops students from producing work.  [I might be inclined to agree with this from my own observations too]  Interestingly, Arnold Wiesse in the 1950s also talked about how art education may not have been working even then!

One of Elkin's further visions, talks a lot about pluralism and how artistic material is used today.  He totally advocates the sharing and multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration that goes on in modern universities.  Indeed to explore this further, another keen observer of art education, Marshall McLuhan, in his writing also goes further to say that even the materials themselves have an agenda in today's' world.

In order to try and achieve a successful academic model in art education, by having various research departments such as sculptural research or drawing research or whatever, this will provide the vital up-to-date concepts and information to feed into lectures during a university degree or Masters course.

In a nutshell then, Elkins is basically, very much against the idea of the critique for tutors to provide students in art school, which has been much of the agenda for the last 40 or 50 years.

So the question is what can be taught?  Well, Elkins thinks that with the current model, "mediocre art can be taught only". - He doesn't know how it works, but he feels that the environment is extremely important, as is our relationship with technology and computing as we progress further into this need for education.  He kind of likens this to the idea that claims that cancer is being caused by certain foods, even though there is perhaps little evidence for proof, against some of the claims against those foods.

So what else can be taught?
Well, thankfully there is plenty of scope, such as criticism, theory, philosophy, but also a kind of sophistry of 'visual acuity' and technique.  A role to be gained in this contemporary way of teaching in the university environment.  When we get down to the essence of the problem, it is really about non-verbal learning-expressionism, together with self-control self-knowledge and self-expression.

What Elkins does in the critiques of his own, is that he relates to the rhetoric, but also a kind of psycho drama and he provides instead, various options to be used as tools by the student.  He suggests, for instance, a tactic of keeping quiet when a tutor is asking a student about work.  He recommends that confrontation simply doesn't work.  He recommends the positive mediation is effective.  It suggests that both  tutor and student explore the concept of lightness, for instance, and the difference between lightness from Kitsch.

So in order for the critique the work he suggests a more harmless refinement of things.  Tacit-ness, Freudian psychology and similar approaches is what Elkins sees as an opportunity for the student to get, in other words correct and appropriate validation etc.  

He also wants students to re-engage with what hasn't been talked about in University education recently, such as the idea of life drawing, for instance.

The hidden layers in the real world can be played out in an art studio.  As a result, these encounters change our schemas of artistic freedoms and subjectivity.  It is these freedoms and changes of subjectivity which we may focus on at the next lecture. In the meantime, it is recommended that reading of Elkins books are vital, and apart from the experience and learning they bring, they are also very useful as a humorous manual for all art studies.