Art Education at Yale
I believe that the way art is taught at Yale is superior. My only art education is from Yale — before that, I did math + science in high school for easy A’s (Notes 1).
I fell in love with art because it challenges me to think and to imagine. I wrote this post because a friend on Facebook talked to me about finding an art school for her daughter, and I recommend that she look into Yale.
Notes
- Science is absolute. Art is qualitative. To get good grades, science is the natural choice. My favorite subject in high school was organic chemistry, and it’s why I did freshman orgo with all the pre-meds at Yale. Because it’s fun. Also, McBride (Notes 2) is nuts — one of my favorite professors at Yale. #crazyisgood
- J Michael Mcbride. Yale Faculty. Member of Yale faculty since 1966. Professor Emeritus of Chemistry.
Text as Image
Text
There’s art education — and there’s Yale art education.
The Yale way is not the way how art is taught in most schools. The Yale way, I believe, is largely what shaped me to be the person I am — because the Yale way is unusual — but it works.
Most art schools teach students how to draw — the technique of drawing things. In many ways, this technique-driven approach has trained a large number of people to become the perfect reproduction machines. It makes people think about art in their ability to create works of amazement — but to me, largely missing the point.
The Yale way is to let you do anything you want — but always asking an important question:
Why?
My concentration is in graphic design, so I will use design as an example.
Let’s say you’re designing a poster for a movie — why did you use this photo? Why not an illustration? Why is photography better than other types of visual representation?
Why this font? Why place this font at this location? Why not 1mm to the left? Why this color? Why not a shade lighter? Why this size? Why not bigger? Why not smaller?
When you’re eventually able to articulate succinctly why you did everything that you presented, it’s considered finished.
In many ways, the art education at Yale is similar to how one would present at a thesis defense. It’s similar to how a Q+A session at a press conference is carried out. It trains everyone to think for themselves and to have the confidence to be able to defend every decision.
It’s why I can usually talk about what I do and why I do anything in all of the works — because partially, to be able to talk about my works is a core part of my education.
Fundamentally, art and design are both rooted in concepts — concepts that you can see. A concept is a statement and thesis. It‘s an idea that you can experience visually.
You know what art is not? Art is not the perfect reproduction skills. There are far better ways to do that — machines.
Training to become the perfect reproduction machine will never make you a great artist.
Learning how to express yourself in the best way possible, on the other hand, most definitely will.