When I enrolled to study
art at Texas Christian University in 1973, I never dreamed of the
formidable forces of opposition I would soon face from my various art
professors. Fresh out of High School, I had studied art privately
for almost seven years, and was already consigning my work at 2719 Gallery in Dallas. They had sold one of my large canvases to the Mars Candy Company in Waco. I was a budding professional artist, or so I
thought. The only male in most of my college art classes, I made good
grades, and my instructors could not deny that I did my work and
turned it in on time. And I did it well. But I
represented something repugnant to them and my instructors seemed
eager to find every way they could to challenge and humiliate me.
After forty years, I still
am amazed at the wall I ran into just trying to study art.
I had old-fashioned
values, but I drew and painted well, and leaned towards
representational art. This was opposite of everything college art
professors of that era were trying to achieve in modern art. In some
ways, their success depended on effectively discrediting the art of
the past... and me. This persistent challenging on such an
intellectual level made me a little arrogant, as I stood my ground,
and eventually I became tired of it and disillusioned, and so by the
end of my first year of study I began to look for someplace else to
get my education.
I transferred out, walking
away from the Dean’s List at TCU and a sweet financial aid
package, hoping to find a more tolerant atmosphere at a state
supported college; North Texas State University in Denton. This only
shows how little I understood my plight.
North Texas had a “state
of the art” art department. I soon naively relished in my art
history and figure drawing classes, and looking around at my peers
whom were considerably more serious than at TCU, I still felt my
talent could win me an art scholarship. Since Linda my sweetheart
(and future wife!) had moved to Denton that year and I was in my
element, my happiness quotient may have been at an all-time high.
At the end of my Sophomore
year, I was required like everyone else to go through a “Sophomore
portfolio review” before I could take Junior level courses. I
considered this something perfunctory, in my case, and to be a mere
formality. I was agreeable that North Texas State planned to tell any
art student who lacked the stuff to be an
artist, that they were wasting their time, to
give them time to change their major to something else. I went into
my portfolio review with three NTSU faculty members expecting a warm
and collegiate reception.
But this was the day that
I learned the ruthless and ferocious temperament of Academia.
Quickly I realized that I
had come way under-prepared to face what was an adversarial
confrontation. The professors barely looked at my work or did so with
blank expressions. Time seemed to drag as they made small talk among
themselves, rarely engaging with me, but looking at each other, as if
to ask, who is going to tell him? There was only one professor whom I
knew, and he was my figure drawing instructor, Mike Cunningham. This
made me feel some comfort, because he usually gave me good grades,
and we had very little conversation during the semester, good or bad,
because he was rarely present in the class. He took the back seat
however and bowed in deference to the haughty young woman on the
team, who began to grill me, as if I was somehow a thorn in her side…
“Why are you here?” she asked. When I looked
at her incredulously, and explained I wanted to earn an art degree,
she got more specific.
“You know, why do you
create art… why do you paint?” She wore
a pained and condescending smile, like she had just gotten a mouthful
of bad fish.
Suddenly I knew what this
inquisition was all about. I was “straight,” a wholesome, all-
American kid with short hair, and drew things you could recognize…
and did it pretty well. I rarely missed a class. I made A’s and
B’s in my art classes. My developed talent was respected by my
peers. But I did not fit in. I was ... CONSERVATIVE.
It was like that Twilight Zone segment
when the beautiful girl has to have plastic surgery to make her
distorted and ugly so as to conform to the others... or else.
I was Opie Taylor all
grown up, I was the epitome of the bright and shining conservative adversary they wanted to rub out of existence. My skills only enhanced the
fact that engaging, beautiful art was possible. My approach and style
might be attractive, even seductive to the other students, and if
allowed to continue, would certainly ruin their designs to reinvent
art. Her question was a loaded one, and I gave her the loaded answer.
But I unflinchingly told her the truth:
“Ever since I was around
11 years old,” I waxed, “I have painted to glorify God and His
creation.” When I became a Christian at age 11, I promised God that
if He would rescue me from my miserable life, one that I had wanted
to end, I would, in trade, paint to glorify Him and His creation for
the rest of my life. Now my female interrogator was incredulous.
“That’s why you
paint?”
The three professors
looked at one another with veiled contempt. It seems that about right now was when one of
them, the Dean I think, excused himself. Perhaps he did not have the stomach for the dirty work of cleaning up the art department... That was fine with me. The
female interrogator continued. My answers did not satisfy her. I was
beginning to realize that this was no friendly intellectual debate.
In this 1970’s college art department, it was not America, with
every person free to believe and create what he wanted, with reasons
of his own choosing.
“We have discussed this,
and we are sure... you will not be happy here.
You are an anachronism.
You and your style are part of the past. You are not part of what we
are doing here. And your mindset here tells us you are not going to
change.”
“Are you telling me that
I am not welcome to study here? That I cannot major in art at North
Texas?” There was silence.
“We are telling you that
you will not be happy here, and you need to go someplace else to
study what you do, which is illustration.”
I argued that I thought
illustration, if that was indeed what I did, was certainly as valid an art form as the pornographic ceramics I saw produced in the
sculpture department, as honorable as stained glass or pottery or any
high craft taught in the art school.
They made it clear that my
arguments were pointless and they did not want me there. I was
stupefied. I tried to reason with them. “This is all backwards. I
am your customer. I am here to earn a degree. I need it and you need
me to pay your salary. It’s your job to educate me, even if you
don’t like me!” This did not go over well. So I begged for
sympathy…
“So I’ve been painting
all of my life, all I ever wanted to be was an artist. I’ve sold
professionally since I was twelve or thirteen. Now you tell me I am
not an artist! Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to
study?” I finally had changed gears to indignation.
It has been forty years since that day, and I could be imagining this, But I seem to remember her saying flatly, "We don't care!"
They coldly recommended
that I find another school, any school, or change my major… to
perhaps advertising, where my gift of illustration might be of some
use. I looked at Professor Cunningham to see if this was all a joke,
or that the female faculty member was overstating it a bit. He did
not crack a smile.
I had never given these
people an ounce of trouble. But Professor Cunningham had once
reprimanded me for naively helping other students when they were
struggling with their drawings when he was not present. They had come
to me more than once and asked for help, as he was often not present
in the class. And he rarely taught anything when he was there. I had
never suspected how jealous or threatened he must have been, or how
expendable I was.
After a brutal, heated
discussion, I felt their resolve, and I knew that they were right. I was
NEVER going to be happy there, because I made them unhappy. By the
end of the “perfunctory” sophomore portfolio review, I was nearly
in tears. Rejection, especially from your peers and especially your
mentors, is HELL. I picked up my stuff and walked out of the building
in a daze. I could not believe what I had just heard. It had been a
grueling, life-changing half hour.
And supposedly, according to my mentors, I was no longer an
artist. I went home to look up the word anachronism.
So you say, Russ, you seem
to be having a pity party. Maybe I am. Injustice has always pissed
me off, and especially when it changed the course of my life.
I thought it would be amusing,
with an art career now firmly established under my belt… to revisit
North Texas State of Yesteryear… (now University of North Texas)
And I did so, a few years ago, and I was in the area and went and asked to visit with the Dean
of the Art Department. Poor guy. He was an acting Dean… it was a
quiet summer day, he had obviously not prepared for anyone like me to
walk in the door.
I told him who and what I
was. I briefed him on a few of my accomplishments. He was polite and
listened, I’m sure wondering what he was supposed to do. So he
finally asked me what brought me there today, the point of my visit.
I just had one question… as I have had many young people over the
years look to me for guidance in pursuing an art career.
“Would you do the same
thing to them today, that you did to me then?”
The gracious acting Dean
was quick to say…
“You have to understand,
that was the 70’s… there were a lot of standards being challenged
then. Everybody was reinventing something. The pendulum has shifted
somewhat. We’ve since realized that our primary job is to educate,
regardless of a person’s color or creed.”
The dean made all of the
right reactions and said all the right words to make me feel
appeased, and I walked out with a tiny sense of vindication… I
wondered what ever happened to those art instructors who so
effectively booted me out of art school, and what kind of artists
they turned out to be…
I'm sure even now, they would not be proud of my legacy in the Brazos Valley. And I wonder what theirs is, in the final analysis of things. But I am sure that they were the big losers then and now. As were the thousands of students under their prejudiced influence.
Amazingly, we are still insisting that kids get a college education as a prerequisite for success... We are the living illustration for insanity.
