My love/hate relationship with the art department

I tried for three semesters to get into a photography class. I'm not an art major. I haven't constructed a darkroom in my parents' basement. During my interview for intro photography, I chose not to dissolve my soul and spoon feed it to my professor. Nor did I catalogue the reasons why, from the moment I laid eyes on my mom's Polaroid 660, the end all and be all of my life would be photography. Is it just me or shouldn't the $30,000-plus tuition we pay entitle us to an introductory class in any field?

NATHAN LITTLEFIELD/YH Next year the art department moves from the current Art & Architecture Building to its own location.

I finally got wise, registered for the 8:30 a.m. class, and lied on my application, claiming the ambitious art major as my intention for study. So began my love/hate affair with the Yale art department. Allow me to explain.

After the rigorous application process (for the intro courses, mind you), many come into the Art department expecting a program of study like that of an art institute. And it does have the feeling of an art institute, since its professors aren't so much members of Yale University as they are of the art department. This is true not only for photo, but for most fields in the department. The bulk of professors and lecturers live in New York City and commute several times a week. While the department is not closely tied to the rest of the University, it is well integrated with Yale Graduate School of Art. This relationship brings rich benefits to the undergraduate programs. All TAs are students from the prestigious graduate program, which continues to introduce some of the brightest and most exciting new work into the art world. Graduate student critiques are open to other students and most art classes take time to explore the graduate students' projects. These provide the undergrads with a chance to question the artists' work, their intentions, and any other matters the students want to discuss. In many of the concentrations the TA proctors the studio time, so he or she is the most influential in the actual development of the undergraduates' work.

The art department is not an institute in that the longest class it offers is a brief two hours. The lack of "craftwork" also detracts from the department's feeling as an art institute. There are no programs for ceramics, glasswork, jewelry making, bookbinding, paper and textile craft, or industrial design. However, there are makeshift craft spaces in some of the colleges (e.g., Pierson's glass studio or Jonathan Edwards's printing press). Moreover, in the programs Yale does offer—photography, sculpture, painting, drawing, film, and graphic design—there is little emphasis on technique. Students are encouraged to explore these facets of their art independently. While there is class time scheduled for the studio in the presence of the professor, this time is mostly spent commenting on students' conceptual capacities, not on technique or process. Although I believe students would benefit from greater training in the craft of their art, time is limited. This feedback, generally in the form of group critiques, is of the highest quality.

If the art department is not experiencing a faculty shortage and a class is made up of fairly expressive students, then the critiques become one of the most valuable experiences a Yalie can have in the art department. Faculty members and TAs are articulate and honest in their statements and well versed in their fields. The faculty make you want to work for them. They might be aloof, overworked, and inaccessible out of class, but, for two hours, burgeoning artists receive some of the most useful interactions of their careers.

All this said, the art department is being restructured over the summer of 2000. With the relocation and concentration of art programs in a new building (no longer having to share a space with the architecture department), Yale might come back to an entirely new art department this fall. On the other hand, no matter how much they redesign the programs, art students will still be art students: almost as brooding as philosophy majors, almost as dramatic as theater majors, almost as pedantic as English majors, but still somehow able to integrate their liberal education into their lives as artists.

A non-art major will probably not get into intro classes as a freshman. This is disheartening. As a student who has taken these classes, I've learned one important lesson—that these classes are not important. They are simply a formal means to express what you're already doing. The work that comes out of the department is truly remarkable, but I'm not sure how much of art really occurs in a tank of developer or at the tip of a paintbrush.

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