That same hypothetical painter who wants something powerful for herself wants to go to graduate school in painting. I have taught at several of these with soe regularity and at others now and then. One of the things theylike most to see is someone who has skills and sensitivities which show through the current work, and wants to change and do something radically different. Back in the days when I taught in such schools, I found it hard to believe that there wer e such people, but there were and there are, and faculties just loved the idea.
A young artist who has been exposed to several fruitful approaches, seems to have accepted one and done good work within it, and now wanted something else, was the ideal of a strong faculty member. The character and quality of work done in graduate school it seems to me should reflect the student more than what was done before. Noone really matures in two years, and it is my belief that it would be better for someone working for an MFA to end up in the middle of a step. I agree with Douglas Florian that the process produces more than a series of products would offer. It is good for the soul to be attracted to qualities not quickly arrived at. Also, which, when arrived at allow for a new procedural trip. There is a painting in the MOMA by Klee which is either called around the square, or the square. It is a fully enjoyable painting, and seems like the end rather than the middle of such a quest. The last time there was a museum Klee show in New York, I think it was at the Modern, it seemed to turn out that way. There were about a dozen paintings assembled, and because of Klee's habit of dating everything it turned out that the one they have was the last. They were all about tat square in a grid. They are all wonderful, but that one seemed like the most wonderful after which it seemed to me Klee would have to go to some other idea. Klee was a serial painter, much of the time. He tested out a new logic which would produce paintings unlike any he had done before, and work on it until he had realized that idea. I am not sure that I understand his sources of inspiration, but for anything to get to have pictorial, sensual meaning it must get to a place near the heart. Even with " the Thinking Eye" to guide us, we can't get inside his head to make sense of what moved him and why. It is hard enough to do for yourself, impossible to do for someone else. Now and then I think I can work it out with Nice Matisse, Klee, Odilon Redon, Marquet or Masson. So, the desire to make some kind of painting very far from what we do now is much less sensible than thinking of a procedure which might produce some results which would be, perforce, different from our current work, and then within the new procedure trying to work it out.
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