From my perspective the answer is Yes-No...It IS indeed important to let them the freedom to find and develop their own style and approach, but, and this is often neglected, they also have to be trained in many and diverse techniques to develop practical artistic skills. And of course the latter point is dangerous because it could constrain them, but anyhow, it is also vital to be ABLE to develop sophisticated and innovative techniques and artistic objects.

Best,

CCC

From experience and my view, its good to listen what they need, what they want, try to integrate the most interesting requests; together with what is outside college, in terms of the use of Arts, is it as communication media? is it focus on selling?...then you can be more specific with the elaboration of the curriculum and define your school's perspective of philosophy.

Best

IC

Art is a way of seeing that pushes beyond, beneath, behind what we perceive in everyday reality. One's conscious decision to capture and express that unique impression or perspective is the practice of art-making. Schools play a vital role in teaching means and methods-- from traditional to radically new and as-yet untried, but choices of medium, style and genre stem from the initial impulse. Thus "defining" art is a slippery slope, as it 's essence shifts depending on the vision of the mind's eye for both artist and viewer/audience. As Vygotsky said:“Creativity exists not only in great historical works, but also everywhere human imagination combines, changes, and creates anything new.”

Thanks for helping me - so I recall and summarise in my own words:

The art student is the project - is the curriculum for learning art

Claus-Christian Carbon ·: stresses the importance of developing sophisticated and innovative techniques 

Inma Carpe ·emphasis on : the relation world - art school 

Diane Rosen - the student is the curriculum and creativity is a value on its own.

best wishes,

Willy

Art is rhetorical.  As the theorist Mikhail Bakhtin says of the novel, words contend on the page.  Just so, strokes of paint contend on the canvas and lines of ink on sheets of paper. Students learn to both express and to reach out to an envisioned audience, as in the case of writing,  Even art that is thought to be non-controversial is making an argument for something.  Students learn to become rhetoricians.  That is, they wish to move an audience.

At first, the visual artists and writers just wish to express what they are feeling and perceiving, but as they grow, they also learn to envision audience.  Each type of art is a two-way conversation between, in the case of visual art, the viewer and the artist.

Thanks Gloria Lee Mcmillan,

I retain: rhetoric relation to the audience - learn how to touch an audience - how to communicate in a way that can move a public.  

best wishes

Willy

I agree with all of the previous commentators. I would like to add that Art educational establishments, as they are assisting students to develop their own visual language, should also assist the students in developing a criteria with which the students can judge and evaluate their own output. For me, an art school education is all about preparing the students for life after art school, when there is often no one around to bounce ideas off. They need to be self-critical enough, and brave enough to make these decisions and to learn from those judgments.

Thanks Patrick Ford,

I translate as: responsabilisation of the student.

To make accountable towards society

As an Art Student, I wish Art Schools actually taught you how to make a living from doing things related to Art, rather than just teaching you how to "make" art. Art should be defined as a way of living within the fields of Art. That would be a more useful definition.

Thanks Paola,

I remember: preparing for a role in society - in terms of "making a living"

 A great art school engage students and get them to look at issues in a variety of ways !

Intellectual rigour and pleasure, both are important...

Art schools should be at the forefront of the debate as to what art is, could be, was and is to be. At times they need to stop doing art, at times they need to call art something else and at other times they need to demonstrate that without art human society is all that much poorer. Sometimes they should make things badly, sometimes they should make things with craft in mind, and sometimes they should stop making things. The only thing they don't need to do is to produce any sort of fixed definition of what art is. 

Is it necessary? If I look for an Art school it is obvious that they make arts and if I look to a research institution I suppose they make e.g. sciences. And both try to find an answer to the same question going different ways. Are they really different? Question: How long is now? In my opinion they make use of different languages… nothing else. So the schools of arts are looking for answers. Nothing more and nothing less.

The problem is: Art is a language and every language has standards

When you learn a language you learn it in a certain way:

example for pronounciation:

Frensh: Paris

English : Oxford

Italian: Tuscany

- So where lies the directive for an art school?

Do museums define nowadays what is good art?

- Witch ones?

Where is the "Orient of art" - is saying the same as : what kind of a definition do we need in art school

Are schools to defining this by themselves in their practice as Alex says?

or are they continuously try redefine art as Garry says?

Or lies the emphasis as Mats says on field-practise and networking?

Many thanks to all contributors!

Prof. Van Buggenhout,

To summarize your definition above: The artist should know some rules in regional spaces and time frames order to know where and which rules to break for a new paradigm.  Is this the idea?  Just random breakage is more like a bovine in a china shop, leaving many shards and little that illumines--although shards can illumine, if you are an archaeologist.

In my ears (spoken) languages are continuously subjected to evolution and development, they have a complex organic way to develop: we are creating words for things we discover or create. Yes, Schools have to be creative and self-confident to go ahead developing our vision of mankind. Vanguard. They are defining themselves. Creativity and freedom as well as time are pre-requisites for development in Art, Science and Philosophy.

Art is what artists do...

A school, in my opinion, should not define what art is. Rather, it could confront the students with available definitions, e.g. from the attached link.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/06/22/what-is-art/

Dear all, 

1, Every art school chooses her teachers - and in doing so positions herself towards art.

2, The institutions (museums, galeries, art shows, ...) have paradigms indeed - but not every art school points to the same paradigm when it comes to contemporary art.

1&2 = implicit art definition - a school can be distinguished on the base of her orientation. ( Networking, visibility, practice, teachers, gallery contact, school shows, training style, ...) .

The problem:

what about the atomic curriculum?

Leading art schools today put the student at the center of the training:

- She or he is autonomous in hers or his research.

- The teacher is coach or tutor of an individual project.

How individual and "breaking" can a training be? - given 1&2

- Or have students already chosen their preference by their choice of an art school?

Paradigm reinforcement versus break - that's the question.

So:

Can a school function and be appealing when it's really into the atomic curriculum?

Or must she plant a flag to have the succes that she deserves?

- A rainbow school or a focus school?

(or can we restart from the beginning and saying: all was already decided in the recruitment of the teachers...)

Thanks so much for your ideas!