Mentoring as a viewer and life-long student

—Art education—

When I was studying art at a university, recently, I was sometimes subjected to an attitude that I think was not at all helpful. Sometimes, my teachers came to my work with an expectation of failure. They came to view the painting armed with rules and almost eagerly scanning the work for any areas that broke these rules. Instead of looking at the work as incompletely edited, they regarded it as mistakes that can't be resolved. Some of this comes from an ala prima mindset: a painting must come about through a series of deft brushstrokes so thoroughly schooled that the finished work is evidence of a flawless performance. But some of the attitude is based on a misunderstanding of mentoring.

I think a better way to look at a student's work is to respond to it as a viewer, and teach how it is working and not yet working with the expectation that the student will find ways to edit the work to expand on successes and resolve difficulties. My attitude is simply that a problematic work is not yet complete and that the student requires a fresh set of eyes to identify the discords. But only the artist can resolve those discords, and only through working on the piece. Very often, no one—teacher or student—can predict the method of resolution; it comes only through reworking.

Rather than negating the student's work as broken, then, my method is to reinforce the work as transitional. Either the work will lead to a better finished version or it will lead to a better next painting. Instead of saying, you didn't do thus and so it is flawed the teacher should say the painting is doing thus and that's not working. Instead of saying you should do thus to fix it, the teacher should say play with it to see what might resolve the problem; maybe the painting will suggest something to you as you work on it.The difference between these two attitudes is striking. In the first, the teacher is the authority and the student is lacking. In the second, the painting is lacking, but the painting itself is respected as the final authority and the student, not the teacher, is empowered to bring the art to life by listening to the painting, not by adhering to the teacher's commands.

My method of teaching comes from a particular standpoint that contrasts with the traditional top-down attitude of superiority that is common to institutional education. Instead of treating the student as a novice lacking knowledge that I possess, I treat the student as a natural in transition while I see myself as an experienced mentor.

All good artists are life-long students, struggling to make their art come alive. I understand the student because I am a student. I understand the student's art because I understand art. But no one knows the student's motivation and direction better than the student. It is true that the student cannot see the work as fresh as my eyes can. Instead of being prescriptive in my feedback, however, I am descriptive: I share with the student what works and what doesn't work to my mind and eyes. I don't presume to know how to proceed—I can only make some general and very open-ended suggestions that are based on a very rigorous knowledge of the fundamentals and principles of art and design.

For this reason, it is extremely important that the student is given the opportunity to finish the art before presenting it for feedback. Very likely the work will be in a draft stage, but it will be in a finished first or second or third state. It is not fair to ambush a student's unfinished work with prescriptive advice or admonishments of incompetence. This is not about self-esteem, it's about fairness. As a teacher, I can have no idea what a student is trying to accomplish until the work is completely presented. Then what is resolved and not resolved are clear. At this point, I can respond as a viewer to the work and offer feedback about what's working or not working, given a more solid understanding of the intent of the artist.

Teaching children to miss the point

—Art education—

Yesterday, I saw a museum lesson plan directing children to study a famous artist. It was filled with rubrics and schema and handouts and directions for implementation. But, for all the effort that went into constructing this recipe for learning, the lesson completely missed the point of the artist's work. Similarly, the day before, I saw a lesson plan that asked students to make art in the "style" of a famous artist, but the students only copied the subject matter and maybe the angle of view which is important but is not the most crucial component of the artist's style.

When I guide students to study an established artist, I help them determine what the artist was up to. There are two kinds of art. Many artists do both. One kind of art is timeless in terms of design principles. We might need some context to understand some of it, but don't require any specific knowledge to appreciate the aesthetics. If artists of a time period challenged each other with opposing concepts and approaches, then it helps to know this.  But that isn't required.

The other kind of art is mostly contextual. The point of the work has to do with something that was happening at the time. There are some design qualities we can talk about, but mostly what is timeless is the provocative nature of the art—the response it demanded at the time. Artists always do something like this. But, in this case, we need more information.

So, it is very important that students are encouraged to learn as much as possible about an artist. That means going deeper than the surface. If, for sake of example,  I decide to have my students explore Rauschenberg, I'm not going to have each student bring in a stuffed animal to shove into a tire (apologies if you've done this—I only just dreamed up the idea as an example and hopefully not too much of a straw man). I'm sure that some art lovers would look at such projects approvingly. But we'd all be missing the point and teaching the kids to miss it too if we only copied or explored the immediate content.

I once had a student show me something she made on her own and she said, "that's how Maya Lin would have done it." This is learning: when a student has a deep enough understanding of an artist's style that she can make the knowledge her own and later apply it to a completely new situation. My student understood qualities of Lin's style that transcended the immediate context and specific design of the art we had examined.

That's what I want them to do.