Too Much Academia in the Arts?

Dana Gioia, a former poet laureate of the United States, has lamented in a May 1991 article in the Atlantic Monthly that as the number of poets, published poets and academic study of poetry has bloomed, the numbers of the public reading and appreciating poetry has plummeted. He attributes this largely to the academization of the study and production of poetry. This process has isolated this art-form to a subculture of the public at large.

I contend that much the same has happened to the visual arts. MFAs abound everywhere and are seen as a key to university jobs and even acceptance by gallerists as proof of artistic achievement. Note, however, that the quality of instructors is high, even in locations and institutions far from the art-centers, New York, Los Angeles and even my beloved Chicago. If you take an art class you will find a good teacher.

But the visual arts, like poetry, have been consigned to the status of a subculture, largely unimportant to the people at large, except when a piece or an artist astounds and offends and is seen as somehow having been paid for out of the public purse.

Further, the visual arts have been isolated in the subculture of the high-end hedge fundies who drove the prices so high as to render relative value absolutely meaningless.

Why should anyone care? Why do I care? I make art no matter what and I make art in spite of my MFA from a university degree factory. I spent years unlearning what I learned at that program so that I could find my own 'visual voice.' I care, we all should care, because we are part of the human condition, we comment on it, we are.