“How can you possibly grade ART?” I have been asked this question many times over the years in casual conversations with strangers upon their finding out that I am an art instructor. Maybe because I have done it thousands of times now the question seems odd, if predictable. Skill at communicating visually is not mystical to me. In fact, it is immediately obvious when I look at a work of art that is done well, or conversely one that is done poorly. That is one of the things I love about visual art- it’s nakedly authentic presence. Of course, I have my own tastes and some kinds of art inspire me more than others- usually the art works that can inform my own art in some way. But this is almost entirely beside the point for how I asses quality in craft, depiction (if applicable), and expression.
To teach is to walk a sword bridge. On the one side, you are there to make concepts clear, to make skills graspable, in effect to demystify an area of human understanding or endeavor. This function is especially important for students who are intimidated by art (or any other subject). On the other side you are there to re-enchant the world through initiation into a different way of seeing it. As I like to say to my students; you will take a water bottle for granted until you try and draw it. When you painstakingly record the ellipses subtly opening as they become more distant to your eye level and the miraculous symmetries of structure and rhythm throughout the design of the bottle, this ostensible detritus heading for the recycling bin can, to the attuned artist, focus the hand, eyes, and mind completely.
The world then, must become more visually rich, more subtle, and more awe-inspiring down to the most prosaic of objects. At the same time our aesthetic depiction of it must become more approachable, better charted, and increasingly amenable to rational analysis.
The world is often homogenous and abstract to the casual observer. I had the privilege of walking through a forest with a botanist many years ago. She gleefully pointed out all of the slow-motion drama enveloping us. The trees blighted by fungal pathogens, the floor dwelling ferns fighting for access to scant sunlight, the two trees of different species growing out of the same hijacked root system. It was like watching the relentless war for survival in the animal kingdom easily observed on any nature program but on a glacial time scale. I had walked through the same area months before oblivious to any of this. It was just green and pretty. I remember thinking that she gave me new eyes to see and that I would never take plants for granted again.
This is education to me- the continual move towards a more truthful internal representation of the world and a concomitant appreciation of our own position within it. To become an educated person is to become refined and articulated, able to see specifics and connections that others fill in with naive expectations, cliched observations, ideological certitudes, and a constellation of safe but inaccurate prejudgments.
Art is a window into another person’s internal representation of the world. Is this young artist’s representation able to convey the spatial relationships of objects of varied size, shape, and spatial position or cluttered by obvious proportional misunderstandings and spatial contradictions? Is her ability to see relationships of value capacious enough to capture the beautiful interactions of structure and illumination in our visual experience or lacking in range and comparative nuance? Is his ability to pin-point a color mixture three dimensional and light contextual encompassing hue, value, and intensity or does he just paint all red objects from strait out of the tube of red paint he happens to be holding?
Clear and honest expression requires humility and courage. Really learning something new is uncomfortable as it challenges our needs for comfort and complacence. But if my students are willing to probe the depths of their own visual ignorance with me, maybe they will take this willingness to examine their presumptions in other domains. Precisely because the assessment of visual art is so immediate, the million little distractions art teachers are so apt to point out and seek to remedy become increasingly clear to the students themselves. Once the students see a glimmer of a deeper way of seeing and engaging with the world, the ones with a little courage and curiosity will pursue it and this can become a template for a lifetime of self-education and more authentic self- expression. These are the students that get an ‘A.’