Old school, new school

An interesting exchange recently about arts education regarding an Ofsted report on art in primary and secondary schools and artist David Hockney (whose work I’ve know since I was a kid – his stage set for L’enfant et le sortilege resided in a contemporary museum a few blocks from my childhood home). The point of contention; that elementary school-age boys were not interested in the visual arts when instruction focused more on drawing and painting than on use of technology (digital cameras and computer graphics programs). Hockney counters that it’s a matter of quality tutelage vs. “bad, boring teachers”.

Hockney also asserts: "I was appalled when I read that school inspectors say boys are turned off art when it's too heavily focused on drawing and painting…It's a bit like saying schools shouldn't be bothering with grammar.”

Despite my avid interest in every great new thing, be it technology, pop culture or gadgetry, I’m a huge back-to-basics person. One can’t really fathom the next step in the development of an art form, be it sculpture or music, unless one has a firm grasp of both the basic building blocks/techniques and the long-standing traditions. It’s difficult to advance a technique unless you’ve fully mastered its mechanics; it’s harder still to rebel against tradition unless you have an ingrained understanding of it.

The flip-side, of course, is a willful adherence to an outmoded methodology just for the sake of tradition, which I find just as problematic.

From the musical side, in my frequent collaborations with young composers, I find that those with the most rigorous training in traditional harmony, formal analysis and counterpoint are the ones who are best able to take an innovative approach that finds full expression. Composers who have only a very basic grasp of theory and analysis (and you would be surprised at how many fit the bill), no matter how creative, are in the short-term unable to practically express those fresh ideas, and in the long-term much less able to keep developing them.

What makes me particularly supportive of Hockner’s critique is that he himself has successfully integrated his “traditional” training in color and composition with newly available technology; his latest exhibit is of works drawn and painted using a computer – it’s nice to see someone “walk the talk”.