Ira Goldberg, Executive Director of the Art Students League of New York

Art Students League instructor Costa Vavagiakis with a student As the executive director of a prominent art school, I often serve on juries for art exhibitions and competitions. I also want to say at the outset that as a painter, I have also submitted work to many juried shows and have had my share of rejections as well as acceptances.  Recently I judged the Chelsea International Art Competition at  Agora Gallery, in which the works of 40 artists were selected for the exhibition and other venues. Several artists won cash awards, but hundreds of artists went away dejected, disappointed, or with only the minor satisfaction of having tried and failed.

For those artists the questions arise, “Why didn’t I win? How can they not see how good I am?  How can I do better next time?” Of course, the essential issue behind these questions—“What is art?”—is a subject more appropriate for 150,000 words than for 1,500. Below are some thoughts about getting back to work after a disappointment and getting ready for the next submission.
   

First Step: failure is an option.  Entering competitions is important.  It keeps one “in the game”.  Accepting rejections is just as important.  Failure is necessary if an artist is going to advance and find his or her signature—the qualities that make an artist’s expression unique.  But finding one’s voice doesn’t come from conjuring something no one ever did before.  It comes from working through problems and pushing the canvas envelope to see how far you can go with color, line and design.  Art, perhaps more than any other endeavor, requires a willingness to fail.  Failure is part of the learning process.

I remember teaching a summer children’s class at the League and watching 12-year-olds working meticulously copying comic book images.  After an hour of non-stop work, one of the boys tore up his drawing.  “Why did you do that?”  I asked. “I messed up,” was his reply.  “You’re supposed to mess up!” I told him. Exploration and discovery are integrated in the creation of art.  We don’t stamp out a product.  Every time we approach the easel or the sculpture stand we are challenged anew.  That means that sometimes we fall flat on our face.  Artists who allow themselves to fail learn from that failure. That’s how we evolve.

Patience, unlearning, and learning the language. Everyone wants to be deemed a genius, the next Picasso or the next Rembrandt.  Students and emerging artists have a fantasy that somehow they’ll wake up one day, everything will fall into place, and every piece they make will sell for four or more figures.  The truth is that art is a language with its own intrinsic vocabulary and grammar unlike written or spoken language. It takes a long time to learn.  Part of that process consists of “unlearning” preconceptions that we all bring to the table when we start.  “I want to draw what I see,” is often the mantra of beginners.  It doesn’t take long before they realize that seeing in terms of art is a very different process.

I remember studying drawing with Robert Beverley Hale, who taught us how to see the body in terms of mass conceptions: a square for the base of the hand, cylinders for the fingers, etc.  I was having a hard time getting it.  So I was going to show Mr. Hale how it should really be done.  By keen observation I followed the contour of every part of the model by basically drawing a map of the body and feeling incredibly confident that all that mass conception stuff was just a waste of time.  Then I looked at the drawing…and went back to studying mass conceptions.

It takes years to get to a point when one can speak a new language fluently and art is no different.  Simple phrases have to be mastered before complex statements.  This is a lifelong pursuit, but the further one pursues the language creation, the greater the rewards.  

Go to a museum. As an art educator, I believe it should be a top priority of any school of fine art to teach cognitive skills—recognition, analysis, understanding, and eventually execution. The best way of doing that is by studying the work of the masters.

Emerging artists need to see the works by (I’ll limit myself here to the  Western canon) Rembrandt, Titian, Velazquez, van der Weyden, Rubens, Chardin, Claude Lorraine, Raphael, Tintoretto, Poussin, Bernini, van Eyck, Ingres, Hals, Picasso, Cezanne, de Kooning, Seurat, Van Gogh, Matisse and Corot.  Any serious artist is constantly going to museums to look at great works of art.  It is equivalent to learning technique.  You have to continually go back and re-examine how and why a great work of art works.  What makes it compelling? Is it just the technique of rendering?  What about the composition, the drawing, the division of space, the color relationships, tonal relationships, the repetition of form, the negative space between the forms?  And yes, the originality and the passion.  But just being passionate is not enough.  For all the emotional quality one sees in a Van Gogh painting, he completely understood color and design.  He studied the old masters, Japanese prints, worked in a gallery, was influenced by artists like Montecelli.   Cognitive skills cannot be developed unless one can understand all those factors that go into making a work of art.  And it takes time.
    

The Art Students League on 57th Street The commercial question.  So by now you must be thinking, “I’ll be working my office job until I’m 85 before I can expect any results.”  Don’t despair.  There are artists showing and selling their work in galleries every day.   But it’s very difficult to make a living at it.  Many serious artists think that “art career” is an oxymoron.  One of my instructors at the League told me, “If you’re here to learn a trade, leave now!”  I think that you have to be compelled to pursue art.  You have to want it badly.  It’s definitely not a career choice.

Of course, there are careers in computer graphics, animation, cartooning, game design, product design, etc.  They all require fundamental artistic skill.  The more one knows how to draw and understand form and design, the better one is equipped to master the technologies that drive these artistic fields.
Have I mentioned the Art Students League? The Art Students League of New York has adhered to its approach of teaching and training artists throughout its 134 year history with these core values:  accessibility through low tuition, autonomy for instructors to teach without administrative or curricular restriction and freedom for students to choose and follow their own course of study for as long as they need and desire.

In the League’s atelier environment, students can opt to take classes ranging from academic drawing to abstract painting to welded sculpture and assemblage.  We have 90 instructors, all professional, working artists who teach with the same passion they bring to their work.  Of course we can boast having taught more artists who went on to have prominent careers than any other institution: Georgia O’Keeffe, Lee Bontecou, Frederick Remington, Norman Rockwell, Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein, Helen Frankenthaler, Al Held, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Ben Shahn, Louise Nevelson, Eva Hesse, Maurice Sendak, Cy Twombly, James Rosenquist, Romare Bearden and Will Barnet—just to name a few. But these greats represent a fraction of a percent of our alumni. The League’s community is a cross-section of students aged 9 to 90, from all backgrounds and walks of life.  Each studio class has students with years of experience and professional aspirations working next to novices who have just begun.

The sharing of work and ideas is crucial to the League’s philosophy and to the growth of artists. The League’s environment and community will continue to thrive as long as there is a drive in us to create.  

Artistic thinking makes one see the world in a different way.  Everything changes, is renewed, has possibilities.  Nothing remains the same.  But only through patience and perseverance can an artist come to that realization.  Artistic expression is an innate human trait.  Everything discussed here pertains to that.  There is no greater human endeavor.  Back to the studio and on to the next competition!