Art Students- then and now.

The title of this blog post was going to be "OH MY GOD! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH THE WORLD?! WE ALL DESERVE TO DIE IN SOME SORT OF TERRIBLE AND PAINFUL FIERY APOCALYPSE!  SINNERS! SINNERS!!!"

I thought that title may be overly dramatic, so I went with  "Art Students -Then and Now".
Why am I all worked up again, you are asking. Well, today it started with a post I saw on the site ArtDaily.org. This is a site which posts the terribly infuriating and sad news of the arts today. "Why torture myself by reading this" you ask? Well, it does occasionally have some sort of interesting bits of news about  museum shows, artists, archeological discoveries or art auctions. The rest of the stuff .........

I am not a fan of BS. If I were I would have gone into politics.
Truth is beautiful in life and in art. I respect art and artists that follow that model. The rest I dare say borders on being evil. Most contemporary art today is closer to vandalism than it is anything else.

Just to set the tone: In reading a book on one of my favorite artists, Jean-Baptiste Chardin, there were some quotes by him discussing the hard work involved in becoming a painter. He talked being a young student in dusty academies with backs bent over drawing boards copying from the antique and from nature. The years and years of hard work he put into his studies  before he was able to paint beautiful pictures. The genius of Chardin owes much to the training and study he received.
Below is a painting by Chardin of an eager art student working diligently.

Fast forward 300 years.
Here is a photo I found today on Art Daily of art students in training.
These are students of the Royal Academy of Visual Art in The Hague, The Netherlands. 

Let me repeat that... " THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF VISUAL ART!"
Below we see the eager students "diligently" participating in a "Graphic Design workshop".  

They are hard at work with an improvised drawing tool. To quote directly from ArtDaily.org - "Pencils, pens and brushes are stuck to a vibrator that makes drawings on the paper. At the start of the new school year students participate in all kinds of workshops."

I bet they do.
I don't really have to say much more do I? This is not drawing, this is not training, nor does this fit my definition of "Royal" or "Academy". It is a self important playground for a culture with too much free time and too little respect for beauty and truth.

The only thing that should be vibrating on the end of a pencil is an eager and intelligent art student with respect and love for the world around them.

Of course there are schools out there that offer training similar to that received by Chardin. They are not in Universities, Academies or Colleges, they are private training studios. Though they are rarely, if ever mention on Art Daily.org. If you want good training, find artist you like and go study with them. If they hand you a sex toy during a drawing class, ask for your money back and contact your lawyer.

I am still waiting for that fiery Apocalypse.