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Art
and the Undergraduate
Courses
in painting and sculpture have always been risky choices in a college
that produces more CEOs than any other in the land. But a surprising
number of undergraduates find the studio as alluring as the classroom
and the lab.
May
1997
by Annie Murphy Paul
John
Choi didn't come to Yale to be an art major. "I
knew that I wanted to take courses in art when I came here as a
freshman, but my original field of interest was molecular biophysics
and biochemistry," says Choi, now a senior. "I remember
telling people that I would most likely be a doctor, but that if
I could pick a dream job, it would be making commercials."
Once at Yale, Choi duly
took the courses required for admission to medical school, but he
also selected courses in painting and sculpture, as well as an introductory
class in graphic design, taken during his sophomore year. It was
the design course that prompted Choi to consider a career in art
more seriously. "All these years, I had really wanted to be
a graphic designer, but thought that it was too impractical,"
he says. "Then I realized that there are plenty of people who
are commercial artists who make a good living and have rewarding
lives. Why couldn't I be one of those people? I had to give it a
shot."
Not everyone was enthusiastic
about the switch. Choi's father, bitterly disappointed, accused
his son of being too lazy to do the work required to get into medical
school. "So I finally had to declare myself an adult and make
the first real decision of my life," says Choi, "and that
was to study art."
It's not surprising
that Choi's father found his son's choice unnerving. Although music,
theater, and the other arts thrive at Yale College, its prestige
rests on the reputation of its traditional academic departments.
The high cost of a Yale education and the uncertain job prospects
for artists can make the decision to study art seem risky or even
foolish. And although the Yale School of Art is regarded as one
of the best graduate art programs in the country, its undergraduate
component is less well known. Yet every year a small number of students -- there
are 29 art majors in this year's graduating class of 1,284 -- choose
to devote their time at Yale College to graphic design, as Choi
has, or to painting or printmaking, to sculpture or photography.
Far from squandering the opportunities offered by Yale, these students
say they are getting the best of two worlds: top-flight instruction
in studio art, and a superior liberal arts education.
Perhaps the most distinctive
feature of the undergraduate art program at Yale is its relationship
with the School of Art. Established in 1864, Yale's School of the
Fine Arts, as it was called, was the first American art school affiliated
with an institution of higher learning. For its first half-century,
in fact, the School offered only an undergraduate degree, or B.F.A.;
it awarded its first master's in 1936. The bachelor's of fine arts
was discontinued in 1975, but the current director of undergraduate
studies in art, Richard Lytle, says that "our program today
is in many ways the child" of the original five-year degree.
"We don't give B.F.A.s anymore, but we still retain the same
enthusiasm for educating young artists, and the same belief that
their development should be dealt with seriously and with concern,"
he says. The School of Art taught 732 undergraduates this year,
more than any other professional school at the University.
The graduate
and undergraduate art programs at Yale share the same faculty,
which means that "artists at the height of their power and
maturity are teaching people at the beginning of their careers,"
says Richard Benson, who was appointed last year to succeed David
Pease as dean. Undergraduate art classes are small -- their average
size is between 15 and 20 students -- and intense. "Unlike lecture
classes, we are in constant contact with our students, giving them
continual feedback," says Richard Lytle. "It's more like
a laboratory environment, or the kind of closeness that occurs in
learning a foreign language."
Lytle's analogy is apt,
says his predecessor in the job, Janice Murray. "When you teach
undergraduates, you're teaching them beginning language about how
we see, and that's never boring," she says. Murray, a graphic
design professor who was director of undergraduate studies from
1994 to 1996, says that she and her colleagues find it "refreshing"
to teach College students. "These are people who are willing
to try things out, whose reputation isn't on the line," she
observes. "It's a very different experience from teaching in
the graduate program, where the students have already committed
themselves to an area of study."
The presence of such
graduate students constitutes
another kind of education for undergraduates. Students enrolled
in the School of Art serve as teaching assistants for many College
art classes, but Richard Benson suggests that students gain by simply
sharing space with each other. "Undergraduates here tend to
be extraordinarily bright in a conventional way, while graduate
students have extraordinary powers of imagination," he says.
"Bringing them together benefits both groups." Because
distinctions between undergraduate and graduate students are less
sharply defined than in other University departments, art majors
enjoy an unusually collegial and egalitarian environment. Undergraduates
often call their professors by their first names, and intellectual
independence and self-sufficiency is encouraged. "I tell my
classes, 'We are not giving you student projects,'" says Ron
Jones, a sculpture professor. "These are issues that adult
artists wrestle with all the time."
Although they may have
more freedom to direct their studies than their classmates, art
majors say that their studio courses are every bit as demanding
as Yale's academic offerings -- perhaps more. "I've been really
impressed with the rigor of art classes here, with how much is expected
of students," says Suena Huang '98, a painting major. "Communicating
an idea visually is just as difficult as understanding a theory
in physics class. Choosing which color to use, which elements to
bring out and which to subdue -- it's hard, and there are no concrete
answers." Art majors must enroll in a minimum of 14 related
classes, including five terms of advanced courses, three courses
in the history of art, and a year-long senior project. A typical
art class meets for four hours a week, but that time is usually
spent reviewing and critiquing student work; art majors say they
put many more hours a week into actually painting, drawing, and
taking photographs.
Of course, they have
a full slate of other courses, too -- but students say that the artistic
and the academic often complement each other. Suena Huang, who divides
her time between the Art and Architecture Building and Science Hill,
says that chemistry and painting demand similar virtues: "patience,
perseverance, open-mindedness, and attention to detail." In
addition, she says, "my experience in the lab is a really rich
source of material for my art." Indeed, art students say they
often bring ideas and images from their studies into the studio.
"No artistic endeavor exists in a vacuum, and an academic campus
provides a context for all of your work," notes John Choi,
whose senior project depicts animated organic chemistry reactions.
Choi's classmate Stephanie Sandoz '97, a double major in art and
international studies, is using her knowledge of Asian cultures
to create a Japanese-style folding screen; senior art major Heather
Landers is designing a magazine based on James Joyce's Ulysses,
a book she first encountered in a Yale English class.
But many
of the benefits of a University education to an art student are
less literal. Professors
who have taught at art schools or conservatories say that art majors
at Yale are unusually sophisticated in their approach. "Yale
students display a remarkable ability to choose meaningful and original
subjects for their work," says sculptor Ron Jones. "Their
grounding in a liberal arts education gives them something to think
and make art about." Although an art school might have offered
her more thorough technical training, Stephanie Sandoz, who plans
to become a professional graphic designer, says that she feels she'll
have "plenty of time to learn specific skills later. I would
rather have developed critical and analytical thinking skills in
college, and that's exactly what I've done here." Her adviser,
John Gambell, suggests that a broad-based education is no disadvantage
in graduate school, either. "I've found that people with a
liberal arts background are often the strongest students in the
Yale graduate art program," he says. "They have a breadth
of knowledge and culture, and can articulate what they see."
Acquiring such intellectual
breadth takes time, however -- time spent away from the studio. Like
other Yale College students, art majors must amass 36 credits over
four years, distributing them among languages and literatures, the
humanities, and the sciences and social sciences. Art students say
that the scheduling of academic classes often conflicts with their
art courses, and that the demands of reading, writing papers, and
studying can leave little time for art. Richard Lytle estimates
that a Yale art major spends less than half as many hours in the
studio as a student enrolled in an art school might. "But those
who are hungry for more time to work find ways to do it," he
adds. "I've been impressed by their level of commitment."
Sculptor Ron Jones says that the key to teaching art students who
are also Yale students is "not to fight it, but to take advantage
of it." Says Jones: "I try to harness their ambition in
the service of art. Yale students want to do well, and they will
work tirelessly." He also relies on the round-the-clock accessibility
of Hammond Hall, on Mansfield Street, where the sculpture studios
are located. "Undergraduates are there at all hours,"
he says. "They may be in class all day, but they can work on
their art at night."
If finding the time
for art is difficult for Yale students, finding the courage to try
something new -- and the humility to accept unaccustomed failure -- may
be even more so. "Art is different from anything else, and
people who have been very focused academically have to unlearn some
conventionalized ways of thinking," says Laura Newman, a professor
of painting. "It can be hard to get them to do what they don't
already know how to do." Michael Roemer, a professor who holds
a joint appointment in American Studies and in Yale's small filmmaking
department, says that students in his introductory classes often
receive a jolt. "All of a sudden, they realize that they're
not very good," he says. "It isn't easy for them to find
themselves doing work that's obvious and clumsy." A random
group of young people, given cameras and told to shoot a film, would
probably produce similar results, says Roemer. "But it won't
stay that way for long. The students here learn with incredible
speed and motivation, and they do terrifically good things once
they get going."
Once
they do get going, however, there may be few places at Yale for
them to go. The
undergraduate art program offers only three classes in filmmaking
this year, for example, three in photography, and one in printmaking.
The intense focus of the graduate school, with which the undergraduate
program is so intimately linked, does not afford great variety in
its academic offerings. On the other hand, says graphic designer
John Gambell, Yale's limited selection encourages versatility. "There
aren't enough courses in any one medium to fill a schedule, so the
students have to learn to work in all media," he says. The
relatively small number of classes offered by the art department -- it
lists 24 courses in this year's catalog, as compared to history's
128 -- also means that hundreds of Yale students who want to study
art must be turned away each year.
Richard Benson says
that undergraduate teaching was reduced during a round of belt-tightening
at the beginning of the decade, and that expanding such instruction
is one of his priorities as dean. At the very top of his list, however,
is improving the facilities that undergraduate and graduate art
students share.
"This building
is difficult to make things in," he says of the 34-year-old
Art and Architecture building. "The
lighting is bad, the ceiling height is oppressive, and the ventilation
is poor." He would like to give students more studio space,
he says, and to bring all of the art programs under one roof.
That roof will likely
be the one at 1156 Chapel Street, a now- vacant building which the
University purchased last December. Officials hope that a renovation,
expected to be complete by the fall
of 1998, will provide new classrooms, studios, and exhibition space
for use by undergraduate and graduate students alike. It will be
the first time in more than three decades that the Art School has
had its own headquarters. But Benson is also determined to maintain
and even strengthen its ties with other departments. "The School
of Art has become more disconnected from the University than it
once was, and than it should be," he says. "Reconnecting
is a long-term goal of mine."
That effort might include
creating more joint appointments like Michael Roemer's, encouraging
more curricular collaboration with other fields (for years, painter
Andrew Forge and English professor John Hollander taught a class
called "Word and Image" together), or simply making it
possible for more students, from more departments, to experience
art at Yale. "We offer art classes to undergraduates because
we hope they'll find something in them that resonates," says
Janice Murray. "Whether they become artists or not, they'll
use what they learn about themselves in art class for the rest of
their lives."  |
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