The problems presented by many institutions of art and learning feeling the need to be "cutting edge" have been with us for at least a half century. What is new is the degree to which these ideas have begun to crowd out everything else, and the degree to which these institutions seem to have become willfully ignorant of cultural history. By the time any institution becomes aware of some

stylistic shift in the arts, it's "newness" is long gone. Institutional cutting edge is a contradiction in terms. I believe that this has occurred as the result of a power struggle between two fundamentally different kinds of people, who have been educated in fundamentally different ways.

Artists trained in specific disciplines and academics whose experience has been peripheral to artistic discipline. If we go back, say about 15,000 years to the drawings found in Lascaux and Chauvet Pont d'Arc we see artists intuitively setting up a spatial field on a relatively flat surface in which forms are constantly adjusted for scale and overlapped for spatial clarity.

The sophistication of these drawings and the degree to which these artists are willing to push and correct in order to express remembered events never fails to amaze. If we then move up a bit, to Italy in the 16th century and look at studies by Michelangelo for the Last Judgment or Pontormo's studies of intertwined figures, we see artists adjusting, correcting and overlapping forms to achieve a kind of spatial clarity.  A look at the drawings of Mondrian from early in the 20th century and we see the same process. An artist correcting, adjusting, searching for expressive moments of space, form and light. Another chronological jump to  DeKoonings drawings of the late 40's and the painting "excavation" and again we see an artist adjusting and overlapping forms to achieve a sort of expressive clarity. The point is that the process of drawing has remained pretty much the same and in fact, the materials have remained the same as well. From the cave drawings to this moment humans draw with various

shades of iron oxide either in sticks or ground in a binder. Styles are somewhat different, and to a degree expressive purposes are different as well, but the core language is the same. To artist/teachers who understand this, the process of teaching is pretty much the same as well. There is that story of Matisse teaching a drawing class at the time of his notoriety as a “fauve”. He attracted students who wished to learn how to be “wild beasts” as he was said to be. Much to their disappointment he handed them some charcoal and paper and pointed to a model and said that they were to draw......or so the story goes.

In studying art in NY, when the painters sometimes called Abstract Expressionist were at the height of their influence, I and other students wished to learn from them a way of making those brush strokes, and those drips! But there they were with those sticks of charcoal and a model. The point was clear. First things first.

First, basic visual language, traditionally learned through drawing and with good reason. In a drawing, everywhere the eye wanders must have spatial coherence. Sensitivity to this central aspect of the language is developed through training and experience, just as one is trained in the grammar of speech and writing. The translation of the real and spatial world onto the two dimensional surface,the notion that how we move the chalk or paint brush, up or down or sideways has spatial implications, is the essence of the language of drawing and its extensions.

Once sensitivity to space and form is established, it can become the matrix upon which all the additional particulars of  art forms can be built. Without this understanding, all mark making becomes surface decoration, description, and rhetorical.

Drawing covers many conceptual ideas of design and space beyond the perceptual that are the essential foundation of all visual language. Moreover, visual language is distinct from all other language in it’s understanding of time.

Other language, such as written or spoken, must be understood in a specific sequence. In visual language, most often there is no primary sequence. Every sequence must be coherent spatially, and so deals with the concept of simultaneous movement and possible pathways , and is a distinct way of understanding time.

From the earliest geometric systems of subdividing rectangles such as the golden section through various perspective systems such as one point, two point, and isometric up to their modern variants such as cubism,the essentials of establishing the concepts of space on a flat surface have been taught to become the foundation for the  various artistic possibilities. As every practicing artist knows, much of their training involved a good deal of physical practice in order to commit ways of seeing and skills to intuition and the central nervous system. As in learning a musical instrument in which understanding of musical ideas and bodily response become inseparable,the body develops visual understanding.

The forced introduction of both digital media and critical theory into first year programs redefines art education, although not with pedagogical clarity since administrators who are forcing these changes tend not to be trained in particular artistic disciplines. It is clear to me that the rapid onslaught of of theory and technology short circuits artistic learning and the development of insight, and leaves the body out of it altogether. Of the hard edge painting championed by Clement Greenberg in the

70's, Phillip Guston said this: " The problem with them is that they start out where they ought to be ending up."  There is no substitute for process. The italian word for drawing is disegno which means design. This emphasizes the way in which the rectangle is geometrically subdivided rather than making

drawing only a way of describing recognizable things. When renaissance artists copied the work of other artists, frequently from prints rather than originals, it was the composition, the design, that was the point of interest rather than the specifics of description.

In the history of teaching art, when 2D and 3D design were introduced it forced drawing (and sculpture) into a secondary role,

the role of of describing the appearance of things. Rather than art instigating ways of teaching, ways of teaching began to change the way art looked. Who cannot say that much art looks like 2 or 3D projects made large?  What stil remained though was the idea that visual understanding required much physical training to develop all those connections and synapses that become an artists understanding of visual language.

There are those who seem to have some notion of “skill” existing as an ingredient separate from concept. Concept means an abstract idea or notion. Another definition is a general idea derived or inferred from specific instances or occurrences. The way in which artists translate perceptions of space and form to a flat surface, whether the forms are overtly recognizable or not, is an abstract idea. To teach drawing is to teach a concept. The word has meaning. It is not a style, even if it has come to be one in a more superficial artworld view.

There is an argument made for shaping first year programs to serve the requirements of the 21st century artworld. Those who make this argument are suggesting that there exists some sort of historical imperative for artists. “We are in the 70’s......here is what art should look like.  The 21 st century......here is what your involvement needs to be.” This attitude is the antithesis of artistic freedom and more ideology than education. At this point in our existence I wonder where the artworld referred to might actually be.

Is it in New York? I have lived in Soho for 40 years and at this point there isn’t even much of an afterglow. Bloomingdales has a Soho branch. In art journals and magazines? In the university? Everyone in the university seems to be referring to an artworld distinct from the university. I suspect that the artworld is now somewhere in our heads.

If digital media and critical theory seem unrelated, I believe they arerelated, particularly with regard to the motives of the administrators  who are pushing them.  All this practice and training in becoming an artist represents specialized knowledge and specialized knowledge represents power. People who have been peripheral to art, those who write about it or administer programs have in my opinion have always resented this kind of power. I believe it was

Lucy Lippard  who said "We have freed art from the tyranny of the hand".In other words if you can theorize, it is all the power you need. This kind of argument sometimes speaks of making art more democratic. Talent and artistic insight are not evenly distributed to all human beings. Not everyone can or will be an artist.  Would one say in learning the cello that we need to free musicians from the tyranny of the hands? Would anyone argue for substituting a machine for John Coltrane? It has become a unique characteristic of visual art to make such an argument

The issue here is what needs to be taught in first year programs in particular, as distinct from suggesting that digital media have  no place in art departments Clearly, the computer has become a useful tool. Without the understanding of basic visual language however the computer is no more useful than a pencil. There is a coherent body of knowledge about visual art which stands apart from

the politics of taste. It is our job to transfer this knowledge with as much clarity as possible. Practically, there is only so much room in a foundation year. In addition, most students entering first year programs come directly from high school where there is an emphasis on written language. Many of us have seen those moments when students blow off studio classes when a paper is due or an exam is scheduled. Asserting the importance of visual language and studio experience is one of the important qualities of a program. Traditional teaching, drawing based, which emphasizes practice and physical training has been and remains the most effective means of doing this and of transmitting visual language and its complexities.