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only in it for the work. This student doesn’t care
about making money from their art and often decry
other’s work as ‘blatantly commercial’ or predictably
au courant. This might also be the art student who
has followed an artistic path simply because another
path doesn’t present itself. “A lot of people graduate
and then realize they don’t know what to do next,”
one student tells me. “They go on to teach
somewhere maybe, or they move someplace quiet
to, like, throw pots…or they eventually just stop
making art altogether.”
Of course, such stereotyping is both na_ve and, for
the most part, very dumb. It’s easy to make
caricatures of the art student (for example, see Terry
Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential), but most
aspiring artists are, in all likelihood, some
combination of the above. They are artists who hope
to make a living as such, at least in some capacity.
Stereotyping art students as shiftless dreamers or
hyper ambitious Damien Hirsts in the making fails
to take into account that, regardless of what non-art-
making humans might think (particularly when
confronted with a particularly inscrutable feather-
constructed example of contemporary art), going to
art school—and paying for it—is not easy. (“It’s
hard to imagine that anyone would make it through
the program unless they really believed in what they
were doing,” says Altmejd.) When I called up
various students at Columbia, The Art Institute of
Chicago, Pratt, and SVA, most of them seemed
somehow embarrassed—and mildly horrified—
when talking about the cost of school (which ranged
from $17,000 to over $30,000 dollars a year). Still,
most of them believe that the experience is well
worth the cost, (“Just ask me in 20 years when I’m
still paying for it,” says one first year SVA student.)
even if it means that student loans will, in some
cases, probably follow them quietly into the afterlife.
“I will likely be paying off my student loans until
I’m in my 50’s or 60’s,” says Yale grad Gareth Long.
“I think of it as my mortgage…but mostly I try not
to think about it at all.” Still, Long also considers
the art school experience worthwhile. “I think so,
yeah,” he says, “The first year out of school is kind
of a shock to the system since you become used to
not worrying about anything but making art.
Suddenly you have to pay rent and find a job. I’ve
been lucky, the artists that I work for now are people
I met through Yale. Even though school ends, the
relationships you start there keep going. I still
depend on a lot of my friends from school for input
and advice.”
Left, Student’s studio with a view.
83 / 96
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