gained a knowledge of “modern” and “contemporary” (i.e. postmod-
ernist) art history, theory, and criticism through seminars in those fields.
In truth, however, few who are awarded the degree have attained any
technical proficiency in the making of art at all, for they can neither
draw, paint, nor sculpt competently. Learning to draw—from casts per-
haps, then by copying the work of old Masters, and after that from life—
is no longer considered “relevant” to the needs of future painters and
sculptors, still less to the far more numerous future conceptual, installa-
tion, video, and abstract “artists,” not to mention photographers.
Like “master,” the term “fine arts” in the degree’s title is an egre-
gious misnomer. The M.F.A. is now awarded for study in areas having
little or nothing to do with the “fine arts,” as that term has long been
understood. At one state university in the southwest, for example, can-
didates can major in what have been traditionally regarded as craft
media—ceramics, fibers (weaving and painting or printing on fabric),
metals (jewelry)—or in invented “intermedia” art forms such as instal-
lation, performance, sound, video, and Web art. Its sculpture curriculum
“runs the gamut of the contemporary sculpture environment,” including
instruction in both “neon” and “kinetic” sculpture.^27
The work produced in such programs is exemplified by an exhibition
at Michigan State University in the spring of 2005, which featured proj-
ects by six degree candidates in “studio art.”^28 One “graphic design”
piece consisted of a multichannel video and “mixed-media” installation
and was entitled Crossings... Time in the Midst of the Pressures of
Chaos. Its maker explained her approach to art as follows: “In this
post–September 11th age, drawing upon studies in visual communica-
tions and anthropology, I aim to obscure, disorient, re-orient, and engage
the viewer in new angles of understanding, using design and media as
tools for social change and promoting a peaceful coexistence.” Another
graphic design student exhibited a thirty-second movie entitled Anger
(an online still from the film displays computer-generated white lines
criss-crossing at sharp angles on a square gray field).^29 Three of the
works in the exhibition—abstract paintings in acrylic and mixed media,
oil, and collage and mixed media—were accompanied by the following
“artist statements”:[First painting] I see landscape as a point where the terrestrial plain meets
the sky and as a primal human condition, which acts as a metaphor for the
public and private self. My work sources structures from molecular, biolog-
ical, anatomical, and cultural systems, all of which provide multiple views
of a constructed self.174 Louis Torres