If You Hadn't Gone to Art School....

[musket]

... What kind of school would you have gone to instead?

I would have applied to a school in New York, most likely NYU, with a good fencing team and tried for an athletic scholarship, as an English major. I'm not sure why I didn't do this to begin with, or at least try. I might not have made it, having such relatively poor math skills, but in a lot of ways in hindsight it would have made more sense than going to Cooper Union did, considering that I really didn't take up art until I was in my mid-forties.

 

[snoball]

I didn't go to art school, I didn't go to college/University, I graduated high school and that was it. And I don't think I'd change a thing.

 

[Maybenartist]

I never went to art school either, although I would have liked to. However, I never really knew much about art until later in life. If I asked any of my family if they'd heard of Klimt, they'd probably think he was from some box set or soap opera.

 

[Desforges]

I would have been a vet or a naturopath.

 

[Enyaw]

I flunked sandbox so I wouldn't change a thing either: wouldn't know how.

 

[Artyczar]

I hardly even went to Jr. high school. I left around the 8th grade. Later I took a few continuation classes in high school and a class or two in community college. Not really art though. In my 30s I took a ceramic class and absolutely hated it.

If I hadn't been an artist and musician most of my life, I would have liked to been a researcher of some kind, maybe something having to do with medicine or anthropology.

 

[Desforges]

I would also have loved to be a ballerina.
Loved dancing. Always liked strength.

 

[Artyczar]

I danced as a young child, but I was sort of made to do it, so I didn't enjoy it as I should have, but I loved it when I was able to go out dancing with my friends at the clubs.

 

[musket]

Do you know what goes into the making of a ballerina? These women half kill themselves.

 

[JohnEmmett]

Education is what you learn after you leave school.

…

 

[musket]

You must be happy about the new movie of Dune coming up, John.

I think it's true to some extent. I hated history in school, but now I love it. I had no clue about physics in school either, and I'll never be a maven, but it's fun to try.

A lot depends on getting a great teacher. My soph English teacher was. But they're very rare.

 

[JohnEmmett]

I saw the trailer…

A work of art.

 

[Bongo]

Well I didn't go to art school, so I know what happens when you don't go to art school -- not pretty.

 

[Desforges]

Do you know what goes into the making of a ballerina? These women half kill themselves.

Yes, I do ! Probably why I didn’t do it. And Penny Fairweather was better at it! And Helen Bumstead was a foot taller than me!

 

[musket]

A wise decision. I know something of that world. Be it Cecchetti or Vaganova, good way to ruin your feet, your back, maybe your whole body and your life if you aren't careful.

 

[Desforges]

Musket, that was a childhood dream, a bit unrealistic. When I became a teenager, it changed, I wanted friends. I always drew and wanted to become an artist and go live in Greenwich village and be with people I admired or move to Paris.

 

[musket]

I lived and worked in the West Village for several years, but not doing art. Alas, the Greenwich Village of old is pretty much gone. Back then, despite the presence of us boho types, between Bleecker and 7th Ave and south of Grove to Houston it was a solidly Italian working class neighborhood. Now it is of the rich, by the rich and for the rich, except for those with rent-stabilized apartments they've been living in for many decades. An old friend of mine has been living in the same basement apartment on MacDougal since 1971.

My aunt Bea and uncle Dud met in Paris in the 20s, where she was slumming with her boho friends and he was working as a dance hall gigolo. Bea was so different from her sister, my paternal grandmother, that it was hard to believe they were siblings at all. Grandma was a short, dumpy, pleasant looking, sweet old lady who had worked in a baby shoe bronzing factory. Bea was tall, elegant, sophisticated and beautiful, a born aristocrat. Dud was well over six feet tall, very handsome, a superb horseman, and had a fabulous collection of antique firearms and edged weapons (you can guess who my favorite relatives to visit were--nothing like playing with a brace of early 19th Century percussion cap dueling pistols for a growing boy). They must have made quite the young couple.

Bea gave my father his artistic and cultural education. He used to say that had it not been for Bea, he would have ended up inheriting his father's independent taxi medallion and driving a cab for a living instead of going to art school.

These times stink.

 

[Desforges]

Thank you for sharing that!
I really appreciate.

 

[stlukesguild]

There were times I thought I would have liked to have gone on to a Masters and PhD in Art History or Literature... but then I look at the crap that goes on in academia that in some ways is worse than what we face as teachers in grade school. Honestly, I think that if I had it to do over I'd skip Art School and study at a private atelier where the emphasis is on mastery of traditional skills and not a lot of contemporary Art Theory and Criticism. Many of these ateliers expose students to the reality of being a working artist... including not merely how to begin and complete a painting, but also the business aspects.

 

[Dave Woody]

I didn't go to art school, I am not a fine artist by any standard and yet I have achieved some
success. ....so...how have I managed to get my work into the Tate Modern, the home of Adrian Newey OBE
and many local business people? By painting events with a story that they personally connect with.