Category: Online Art Class

Often when people find out I’m an artist, they will lean in very cautiously, and embarrassingly admit to me that they just don’t “get” most art being made today. They try to understand it, they tell me. But it just doesn’t make sense to them. They are a victim of art shaming.

If you are one of these people, and I’m pretty sure nearly everyone is one of these people, I’m here to tell you that you are not an idiot. That it is very brave to admit that you don’t understand something at which the rest of the world is smiling and nodding, whether they understand it or not.

Art shaming is rampant in the contemporary art scene, and it adversely affects many of us. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

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Invisible Suits

There is a children’s tale I am fond of called The Emperor Has No Clothes. In it, a hoodlum convinces the Emperor that he is the best tailor in the world, and will make him the most beautiful suit humankind has ever laid eyes on.

It’s a magical suit, where only very smart people can see it, the suit-maker insists. The suit-maker asks the Emperor to provide the raw materials, pure gold thread of course, so that he can weave the magic fabric for the suit. The suit-maker pockets the gold thread and hands over an invisible suit.

When the Emperor tries on his new “suit”, everyone congratulates him on his beautiful suit. They are afraid to say the Emperor is naked because it means they are stupid. So the Emperor goes on parade to show off his new invisible-to-stupid-people suit. Only one person – a child – points to him and asks why the Emperor has no clothes.

The child is the only one with an Innocent Eye, the only one in the crowd who is able to truly see without being blindsided by the labels and the “expert” in the story.

Want to learn how to make realistic artwork? Check out our Ateliyay! Curriculum.

It’s OK to Not Understand Modern Art

Many people don’t understand the majority of Modern Art, but most of us are afraid to admit it.

It’s like admitting you can’t see the Emperor’s suit.

We are art shamed into going along with the experts’ narratives even as we experience cognitive dissonance between what we see and what we are told is great artistic mastery on par with a Da Vinci or Hokusai.

Smart people are supposed to “get” Modern art whether it makes sense to them or not. 

I’m a licensed art teacher, a professional artist, and a recognized expert in the field of art. And I am here to tell you I don’t get most Modern Art, and it is ok if you don’t get it either.

It doesn’t make you stupid to look at a can of human feces and not understand why some people think it is monumental or Earth-shattering.

It’s ok to look at a Jackson Pollock painting and think to yourself, “My child can do that!”  As someone who teaches art to children, I can assure you that dripping paint on a canvas is cognitively something a child can absolutely do, as I am sure you already know.

Discover our Ateliyay! Curriculum that takes you from the very beginning to very advanced drawing and painting skills.

Your Art Opinion Is Valid

There is no reason to be ashamed of not liking a work of art, or to allow anyone else to art shame you for a perfectly valid opinion.

When we allow ourselves to use our Innocent Eye and not rely on experts weaving invisible suits, we get the joy of using our own judgement and discovering our own aesthetic preferences. 

We don’t depend on interpreters to tell us what foods we like to taste or which books we like to read, although we might appreciate recommendations. 

Art doesn’t have to be any different.

Do you feel visually moved by the machine spilling blank pieces of computer paper from above? If you do, great. If you don’t, that doesn’t make you dumb. 

And if a supposed artwork is stupid to you, you can say so with confidence. You can say it the same way you might declare “I don’t like anchovies” or “I can’t stand Orlando Bloom’s acting outside of Lord of the Rings”.

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Art Traps

It is not surprising that there is so much generalized insecurity in the population about understanding art.

Branded Artists and the Museum Elite love purposefully setting up laypeople for failing to recognize what curators claim is a masterpiece, and then art shaming their victims.

In 2001, Damien Hirst created a work consisting of beer bottles and coffee cups which was, unsurprisingly, thrown away. There was much to-do about how a very important work was not recognized by the person who cleaned the space, subtly implying ignorance and stupidity onto someone who saw garbage and threw it away.

In 2004 a bag of paper and cardboard, a work by Gustav Metzger at the Tate Museum, was thrown away. Again, the buzz in the art world swirled to shame the perpetrator who ignorantly disregarded what the establishment elite had labeled great art.

In 2014, Sala Murat left some cookie crumbs and newspaper in a gallery which was, of course, thrown away.

Frankly, I would have done the same.

Garbage-as-art is continuously set up specifically for the art elite establishment to look down on the unknowing public by purposefully creating a situation where the “art” would be thrown out by people not in the know. This exclusive circle of decision-makers weave invisible suits, and otherwise intelligent people doubt their abilities because it simply doesn’t make any sense.

Garbage-as-art is just one of many games so-called authorities play to enforce their art shaming onto the public.

Learn how to draw and paint today with our Ateliyay! Curriculum.

Be Your Own Art Critic

I hereby give you permission (not that you need it) to use your own judgement about art. You are entitled to your own aesthetic and to surround yourself with your definition of beauty and good art.

It’s time to stop giving an elite art oligarchy and their crazy-making games complete control over who is allowed to interpret art.

Let’s end the art shaming once and for all. Like the art you like. Hate the art you hate. And own it without fear of ridicule. There is no reason to be ashamed of not understanding something that makes no sense to you. In fact, it is quite brave to inform the Emperor that he is naked.

Further Reading:

What is an atelier?

How to Draw a Person

Colour Theory

Teaching Portraits

Have you ever experienced something being presented as art that didn’t make sense to you? Let me know in the comments below.

What makes a bridge strong? Is it the materials used, or the engineering technology employed in its creation? Is it how much weight it can hold, or what natural phenomena it can withstand?

Perhaps the strongest bridge in the world is the Firth of Forth Bridge in Queensferry, Scotland. It manages some of the heaviest freight train loads transported in the world.

Or maybe it’s the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge in Kobe, Japan, which regularly withstands typhoons and tsunamis.

But what if the secret to strength lies in another direction altogether?

What if a bridge can be built so strong that no stockpile of war-grade explosives can destroy it? What if a bridge can be built so strong, that it rebuilds itself? What if a bridge can be built so strong, that it can change locations if it comes under threat?

The Ponte Vecchio

During WWII, when Hitler’s military was evacuating Florence, Italy, orders were given to destroy all the bridges into the city. And all the bridges were destroyed, except for one.

The Ponte Vecchio survived. It was decided by Hitler that the Ponte Vechio was too beautiful to destroy, and was left standing. In this case, beauty was stronger than all of the explosives on hand in Hitler’s forces.

The Stari Most

The Stari Most bridge, a beautiful example of Balkan Islamic Architecture in Bosnia, was destroyed in 1993 by Croat paramilitary forces during the Croat–Bosniak War. This bridge was so beautiful, and thus so well-loved, that plans immediately were set into motion by an international team to rebuild it.

Each and every stone the rehabilitation team could find was retrieved from the water below by specially-trained divers. The entire bridge was put back together using 16th century technology to ensure that it was rebuilt as closely to its original form as possible.

Show me a bridge built today that could inspire that level of love and devotion –  that if it were destroyed the world would unite to rebuild it. The Stari Most is a strong bridge indeed.

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London Bridge is falling down, falling down….

Many of us have heard that tune since our elementary days. But did you know that although the original London bridge was taken down, that it still exists?

That’s right, you can see it in Arizona of all places. Lake Havasu City, Arizona to be exact.  Robert P. McCulloch purchased the bridge in the 1960’s from the City of London when London decided it needed a larger bridge. He then had it meticulously rebuilt in Arizona.

A bridge that can relocate across an ocean? It must be quite beautiful to accomplish such a feat, as no one would go through the trouble for an ugly bridge.

Beauty Matters

If no one wants a bridge, no matter how well-engineered it may be, or how strong the materials from which it is made, it won’t survive the tests of time. If humanity does not want a bridge, it will be discarded like so many others. Blown up instead of barely saved.  Lost to history instead of painstakingly restored. Dissected instead of carefully relocated.

A bridge cannot be truly strong if it is not also beautiful.

Do you think beauty is as important as the engineering of a bridge? Let me know in the comments below.

Want to hone your sense of beauty? Check our our free art lesson plans.

Is copying bad in art?

In my experience within art education communities, there is a deeply held belief that copying anything in art is harmful. It’s true that copying another’s work and passing it off as your own is clearly unethical. But copying other artists has long been one of the most efficient ways to transfer artistic skill and information from one generation to the next.

Want to learn how to paint a mastercopy? Join our online Ateliyay! Painting Bootcamp class today!

A music teacher does not ask the novice trumpet player to compose a symphony in their first lesson. Instead, she asks that the student learn the already discovered fingerings, the already discovered musical notation, and the already discovered techniques for posture, breath control, etc. In fact, trumpet students inherit a massive amount of technical knowledge before attempting something as complex as writing an original symphony.

Yet in many art classrooms today, with no training whatsoever, we ask students to “do what they feel” and create “original” artwork. The result of this informationless approach is that students are incessantly reinventing the wheel. I cannot tell you how many students believe that they uneaerthed xyz drawing concept because they were forced to rediscover it when no one taught them it already existed.

One of the most efficient ways to transfer known artistic skills is through the use of mastercopies. This is very similar to having music students master known songs, such as Mary Had a Little Lamb, in order to practice low level skills before advancing to more complex tasks.

Learn how to paint a mastercopy in our online Ateliyay! Painting Bootcamp.

The Sazuki Method, created by Japanese violinist Shin’ichi Sazuki during the mid 20th century, is a widely adopted and effective pedagogical model for teaching music and is used throughout the world.

When learning music using the Sazuki method, students are first asked to imitate, or make mastercopies of, short simple works. After mastering these simpler works, they are tasked with more complicated variations of those works as well as additional songs that they can imitate in order to learn their instruments. This progression of copying increasingly more difficult works helps students to master skills. As the students progress through the course of study, they gain foundational knowledge on which to draw on throughout their musical career.

For many centuries, training in the arts followed a similar method for transferring known knowledge to new students.

Nearly every recognized master of painting – Da Vinci, Degas, Delacroix – advocates the constant and regular copying of the masters in order to advance artistic skill sets. Surely all these geniuses cannot be wrong. The taboo of copying in art education must be replaced with a healthy respect for learning through studying what is already known as the masters strongly admonish us to do.

By first mastering the techniques, ideas, and skills that have already been discovered, students can explore truly new ground without wasting time and effort on what is already known.

You can get detailed guidance on how to paint a mastercopy in our online Ateliyay! Painting Bootcamp. 

What do you think? Should art students complete mastercopies to hone their skills? Let me know in the comments below.

Want to help your students learn from matercopies? Check out these free art lesson plans.

Are you afraid you might not be good enough to start atelier training? You’re not alone.

Atelier Training Can Be Intimidating

I constantly field questions from people who have always dreamed of drawing and painting realistically, but are intimidated by the thought of actually going to an atelier.

For some reason, people seem to think they need to be really good already in order to start atelier training. This is simply not the case! The entire point of atelier training is to learn the skills, not to have them already.

The only thing you need in abundance to start atelier training is an intense desire to work realistically at the highest levels.

When visiting an atelier for the first time, it can often be intimidating for potential attendees to see the beautiful work being created by students in their 3rd or 4th year of training and feel like they could never do that. But, it is important to understand that you, too, can draw and paint at that level if you put in the same effort.

The people who succeed at atelier training are the ones with the ability to sit in front of the easel every day and work. That’s it. There is no magic to it.

Yes, Atelier Training Is for YOU

People often ask me if they can handle the new online Ateliyay! Painting Bootcamp that teaches atelier skills. I’m always astonished! These students had  made huge technical jumps in my workshop only a few months prior and they were STILL intimidated by entering the online Ateliyay! Painting bootcamp.

So, let me restate what I told them: Of course you can learn this. Anyone can learn this. It is simply a matter of if they want it enough to put in the work.

“If you think

you could never

draw and paint

at an atelier level,

you are wrong.”

If you think you could never draw and paint at an atelier level, you are wrong. Atelier training is an intensive training journey that takes you from your current skill level, and leads you to advanced technical abilities. Your job is to simply take the first step. Come as you are.

What happens when an art community suppresses itself?

Types of Community Suppression

When I was 14, my classmate, who I will call “D” and I completed a science project together and have been good friends ever since.

D’s great-grandparents had immigrated to the United States from Greece almost the exact same year that my great grandparents had immigrated from Germany. And although there were active and robust Greek and German communities for many years in our town, by the time D and I met, the cohesiveness of the German community had almost entirely dissolved while the Greek community was still very much active.

I remember feeling very jealous that D spoke some Greek, that his mom made the most amazing baklava the world has ever witnessed, and that he was in close contact with his distant relatives in Greece.

In contrast, I spoke no German, the Oktoberfests that used to be ubiquitous festivals in our town had disappeared, and I had no contact with anyone in Germany.

As an adult I realized that there was a very  obvious reason for these contrasting 3rd generation immigrant experiences. Being German was a very unpopular identity to be during and after WWII in the United States. The German-American community found it expedient to self-suppress its culture so as to create as much separation as possible between themselves and the U.S.’s enemies in Europe.

As this family history illustrates, self-suppression is astonishingly successful when instigated internally by a community. And this kind of self-suppression is what caused the loss of an enormous amount of information in the visual arts community throughout the last century.

Self-Suppression of Artistic Knowledge

In art, an ideology took root around the turn of the last century that in hindsight is quite extraordinary.

The control of the Salon system, largely responsible for both training and awarding careers to artists, had become unbearable to many artists by the 1880’s.

Some were upset at the lack of appreciation of the new color theory being employed by the younger Impressionist painters. Some traditionally academic painters felt slighted by the Salon for only accepting an ideologically narrow swath of primarily narrative pictures into their exhibits.

One of the first major break aways from formal training, and the hundreds of years of inherited artistic information that it represented, came with the Salon de Refuses which eventually upended the art establishment of its day.

This dislike of the official Academies and their control lead artists to create less formal organizations for learning, like spending the summers painting with Monet and other small ateliers.

The growing and continuous dislike for the control of the Academies was directly proportionate to the increasingly extreme backlash ideologies.  While the struggle to create careers and sell artwork without the help of the official Academies persisted, the hatred for the Academy system grew within the minority artist community.

What started as a revolt against the narrow control of the Academies over style and subject matter became a revolt against everything the Academies stood for.

The Academies became so unpalatable to some artists by the 1880’s that any hint of formal training became viewed as an encumbrance to authentic expression. As students purposefully purged centuries of knowledge from their artistic educations, the self-suppression accelerated.

The Rise of Artists as Special Prodigies

By the 1920’s, knowledge and training became outright taboo in many artist circles, less it infect the innocence of true artistic expression.

Unfortunately, there was also a lot of duplicity by artists purporting a system of “no training to be a real artist” but who then had extensive training themselves. Artists who are often praised in art history textbooks for their “innocent” visual depictions were actually quite well-trained.

Picasso’s father, for example, was an atelier-trained artist that trained his son. And even Mondrian was classically trained before shedding technically-advanced skills for painting squares.

Unfortunately, many 20th century artists that had some of the inherited artistic knowledge of previous generations of artists chose not to train the next generation of artists. This could be out of fear of ruining their creativity, following the philosophy that was in vogue at the time.

However, I would argue that these artists who had training also had a monopoly on knowledge that by that time hardly anyone else had access to. What started as a steady decline of the Academies due to Salon de Refuses dissidents became nearly complete destruction of their knowledge by the end of WWI.

Deaths of the Academy leaders due to old age (and in some cases the war itself) destabilized both the knowledge and politics of these centers of learning. Artists who acquired Academy knowledge during this highly unstable time were quite lucky and few and far between.

Picasso and Mondrian in particular continue to be exulted by art gatekeepers to the status of geniuses largely from the lack of even remotely comparably-trained artists. There was not much incentive for these artists to admit they learned their craft by teaching others what they were taught and relinquish their “genius” status.

Few Places Left to Acquire Atelier Knowledge

It is clear that there were many events that converged that lead to the self-suppression of skills in the visual arts by the artists themselves. These include a belief that training would ruin artistic creativity, a lack of places to get training as an extreme anti-training ideology took root and closed down the places that had previously offered it, and artists that had the training themselves that refused to share their knowledge with others.

Additionally, two major world wars literally and figuratively killed technical artistic training as a mainstay in the visual arts. Artists died fighting in these wars, and the demoralization of a battered populace after witnessing horrors previously unknown made the idea of beauty as an ideal in art unbearable to many.

Today, however, there is a Renaissance afoot of bringing technical knowledge in art back from the brink of extinction. Ironically, the counter-cultural movement in art is now to acquire the nearly-lost skills the last century of artists purposefully hurled aside.

But the movement does not seek to go backwards in art. Rather, the Atelier Movement works to provide skilled training to artists so that truly new ideas can be brought forth. As in other subjects, it takes a solid understanding of what is already known to truly be innovative.

Why do you think technical art knowledge ebbed in the 20th century? Let me know in the comments below.

“A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.”

– Edgar Degas in the Shop Talk of Edgar Degas 

Translating Visual Information

Did you know that a camera is only one way of compressing a massive amount of 3D visual information into a 2D form? Today the highest compliment society pays many artists is that their drawing or painting  “looks just like a photograph!”

To many atelier-trained artists, however, this is a grave insult. This is because there are nearly infinite ways to compress massive amounts of visual information, and the camera does it nearly the same way every time because it is a machine. Even when humans tinker with the settings of a camera, the compression of visual information is still done mechanically. The camera is not capable of thinking about organizing all the visual information to highlight the gesture of its subject, it can only capture it exactly the way it is.

But each artist has a unique insight on which pieces of visual information to incorporate into the final drawing, painting or sculpture. Each atelier-trained artist compresses information uniquely depending on their preferences for interpreting the visual information of the subject depicted.

Drawing Is Like Handwriting

In handwriting we are all taught that a circle with a stick to the right of it is an “a”, yet we can still recognize the original sender of a message based on the writer’s unique use of how they write their alphabet.

This is also true with representing nature in charcoal, paint, or clay. Most people can see differences between a Michelangelo painting and a Raphael painting even though these two artists spent much of their careers working in the same places with the same themes and the same patrons.

Skill-based drawings and paintings are just as unique and identifiable as individuals’ handwriting. It takes knowledge, however, to see and appreciate the differences. If you did not know how to read, you likely would not be able to tell the difference between handwriting styles.

Likewise, if a dozen different artists paint a red rose from the same viewpoint, they will all see it differently. Some will see the color as purple, others as pink or coral. Some will conceive of the shape of the petals as round and others as angular. Some will perceive the rose to be bright and others as dark. This is because each artist cares about different aspects of the rose and has unique individual preferences for organizing its visual information.

Training how to see in a nuanced way from a master is what Michelangelo, Artemesia Gentileschi, Augusta Savage, and Edgar Degas all did before they became great artists. All of these artists have inherited hundreds years of artistic knowledge through atelier training, yet their work is each so distinctive and unique.

Find Your Unique Artistic Voice

There is so much knowledge that can be obtained from the visible world that you might otherwise miss without a trained eye. And there are so many choices you are unable to make with your artwork if you are unaware they exist. There is no need to reinvent the wheel of visual arts knowledge. If you want to learn what is already known at its highest levels, pursue atelier training. I promise, it won’t ruin your inner artist’s voice. It will enhance it.

Cameras are just one way of translating information onto a 2D surface in a realistic way. But photography is not the only way. And definitively not always the best way.

There is a misguided belief that all realism is photography, and that all realism looks the same as photography (photorealism). But this simply isn’t true.

Cameras and artists both take in massive amounts of 3D information with the challenge of translating it into only 2 dimensions.

Yet cameras do it in a completely different way yielding completely different results than atelier-trained artists.

To be clear, both have their advantages and disadvantages. This article is intended to highlight what the differences are, and in particular, where realism drawing and painting excels.

Editing Out

When taking a photograph, the default situation is that everything included in the viewfinder when snapping the picture will be in the final photograph.

In order to change anything in the scene, the photographer must either remove it before pressing the shutter button, or afterwards eliminate it using computer software or manipulating it in the development stages.

The default in painting is that nothing is included. Anything a painter adds to a scene is done thoughtfully and with purpose. An artist rarely paints everything seen in a scene simply because it is there.

If a painter adds a plate to a dinner scene, it is done with an absolute purpose. This might be to assist the story-telling of the picture or to enhance its composition.

Because painting requires so much focus and effort for each object portrayed, no matter how large or small, painters per force must be judicious about what to include in their paintings and why they are including it.

 “Take..the scene around the bedside of a dying woman, for example; seize and render the entire scene in a photograph, if such a thing is possible – it will be spoiled in a thousand ways. The reason is that according to the liveliness of your imagination you will find the subject more or less beautiful; you will be more or less the poet in that scene where you are also an actor; you see only what is interesting, whereas the camera records everything.”

– Eugene Delacroix Journals

Photography as the Only Realism

There is a contemporary and deeply ingrained cultural belief that the only accurate way to depict “reality” is through photography.

Because other artists throughout he 20th century largely ignored realism as a language, photography created a monopoly on “truth” in realistic imagery.

When we want to compliment an artist, we tend to say “That looks just like a photo!” because photography is the only point of realistic imagery reference for many people.

This monopoly on human perceptions of reality is ubiquitous, yet a photograph is no more “real” than flying pigs.

After all, photographs are just pigment on paper or light on a screen. And yet photography has become the standard to which anything “real” is compared.

Photography of course has its strengths, but it is not the only version of realism that exists. When knowledge of other types of realism are crowded out by the photography monopoly, humanity loses out on more expansive visual experiences.

What We Don’t See Hurts Us

I had the privilege of visiting the Borghese galleries in Florence, Italy several summers ago and was absolutely horrified by the picture-taking behavior of the majority of visitors.

I overheard one gentleman communicate to his wife, with a smug air in his countenance, that he was so clever as he had quickly gone around the gallery and photographed the artwork so he could look at it later without the crowds.

What a shame it is to allow a machine to do your seeing for you!  To let it eliminate massive amounts of visual information that may have otherwise interested you had you looked at the real subject with your real eyes, which function much differently than a camera lens.

Do Cameras Have Feelings?

A camera lens, as a non-human and inanimate object, does not have human emotions. It does not make value judgements for you about what it beautiful, or ugly, or beautifully ugly.

This can be advantageous for describing some subjects realistically. And can be used to great effect by many talented photographers.

However, there are downsides that are not largely understood or acknowledged.

Photography may eliminate what you find most interesting about the scene before you – such as the color intensity of a sunset on the beach. (How many of us have tried to capture a sunset with our cameras and come within even 3 standard deviations of what we were visually after?)

The camera will average all that it sees and weigh them as emotional equivalents. Even when tinkering with the settings there are only so many choices a camera can make. The visual information is already greatly edited down.

The human eye sees 3 dimensions. The camera translates everything into only 2 dimensions. The information between the 3D version you see with your real eyes and the 2D version the camera creates is edited out is lost.

But who chose what to keep? You or the camera?

Whereas with observing from life to make drawings and paintings, artists are working with the full range of visual information and deciding what to edit out from the full spectrum of 3D information.

It’s true that additional manipulation can occur in the editing phases of photography, and many photographers are able to execute beautiful works in such a way.

However, the information of the three dimensional world has already been distilled by a machine and can never be taken back to the way a human eye first discovered it. If the photographer is not intentional in the choices they make before snapping the photo, they are likely to lose some of the information that they would prefer to keep.

Because atelier training is so rare today, most people aren’t even aware that there are more choices to create realistic imagery than those made by cameras. This is because we no longer practice seeing realistic imagery in ways beyond photography.

Comparing Oranges to Oranges

Consider this painting of oranges on the left by William McCloskey. He has transformed the fruits into whimsical and charming playmates.

Compare this image to a photograph of oranges on the right (courtesy of Wikipedia). It is a very accurate portrayal of oranges, and if that is the intent it certainly succeeds. However, they are not the same.

Yet they are both illusions of “real” oranges. Neither is an actual orange. But because the artist is working with the full range of information instead of a pre-edited amount of information, more choices are available to them.

End the Camera’s Monopoly on Realism

The absolutist, evangelical extremism and adherence to photography as the only true realism is absurd.

This devotion to just one very narrow way to organize 3D information onto a 2D space is truly astonishing, especially considering how many other perfectly valid, and often more informative, ways there are to visually describe the world around us.

Although the camera lens is just one of an infinite number of ways to translate 3D information into a 2D form, it is by far the most ubiquitous.

The sheer mass of photographs have trained our eyes that the camera’s interpretation, and only the camera’s interpretation, can be realism.

Realism is so much greater and broader and more interesting and more informative than that.

Let’s cheat ourselves no longer of the visual feast before us, and broaden our conceptions of realism beyond photography’s narrow stranglehold.

The best place to start? By learning how to draw. Or how to paint.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

Is atelier training Eurocentric art?

When considering mathematical concepts, rarely do people worry if the Pythagorean Theorem came from Ancient Greece, and that the symbols to represent numbers come from the Middle East. Throughout the history of humanity, discoveries in math have led to a collective body of knowledge that benefits communities all over the world and is shared between cultures.

Art is no different.

Scientific discoveries in art have historically been and continue to be contributed by many cultures, European and otherwise, throughout the world. Although atelier work is often perceived to be Eurocentric art, it actually represents a collection of knowledge from all over the world.

Edo Era Japan

One prolific moment of rapid growth in the technical knowledge of art came during the Edo and Meiji periods in Japan when there was a great interest in integrating Japanese realism skills and techniques with those of the realism concepts of the West. Eventually this merger formed new schools of painting in Japan which attempted to blend together what the artists chose as the best techniques of both cultures.

Mori Sosen, a Japanese artist with an interest in merging Eastern and Western techniques, has a whimsical and wonderful sense of life, gesture, and realism, particularly in his charming monkey pictures.  

Japanese artists with an interest in Western techniques became known as yōga, and their paintings and prints were widely exported to the West, where they stirred profound interest in Western artists to explore Eastern techniques.

In particular, using the Eastern technique of soft edges to show depth in a picture plane as an alternative to the Western concept of linear perspective was embraced with gusto, and was broadly adopted by many artists (many of whom eventually formed the Impressionist Movement). 

The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance during the 20th century in NYC was heavily influenced by the knowledge found in ateliers in Paris. Many of the visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance came from a studio run by Augusta Savage. Savage studied sculpture at schools which held some of the world’s collected knowledge about visual art during that time, including an atelier in Paris.

Despite being awarded and then denied on the basis of being Black a full tuition scholarship to study in Paris, she somehow managed to get there anyways and studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Back in NYC, she trained Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, and Gwendolyn Knight to name just a few of the influential artists of the Harlem Renaissance shaped by the world’s collective knowledge, contributed to by Augusta Savage and built on by her students.

Contemporary to Augusta Savage and her Harlem Renaissance studio, another culture was trading visual ideas with those from Paris. 

The Santa Fe School

Dorothy Dunn was an artist trained at the Art Institute of Chicago (many of her teachers trained in Paris), and taught art at an Indian boarding school in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The Boarding School Era is a dark mark on American history, and involved purposefully snuffing out all expressions of students’ Native cultures to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” as the motto coined by General Pratt, founder of the first Indian boarding school, went.

Dorothy Dunn taught the skills she learned at the Art Institute of Chicago to her students at the Santa Fe Indian boarding school, and the students merged this knowledge with expressions of their own individual tribal artistic knowledge. (Children from many tribes, including Chiricahua Apache, Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, and Tiwa, were sent to the same schools to be forcibly assimilated into Euro-American culture.)

Dunn was eventually run out of the school for going against official policy by encouraging expressions of Native American culture. Artists including Allan Houser, Ben Quintana, Harrison Begay, Joe Hilario Herrera, Quincy Tahoma, Andrew Tsinajinnie, Pablita Velarde, Eva Mirabal, Pop Chalee, Oscar Howe, Geronima Cruz Montoya, Sybil Yazzie, and Narcisco Abeyta were taught by Dunn, and one of the most highly praised contemporary art movements known as The Santa Fe School became largely influential in changing perceptions and policies related to Native Americans in the United States. 

A Contemporary Atelier Salon

The Art Renewal Salon runs a contemporary, semi-annual competition for atelier-trained artists with more than 6500 entries from 72 countries. All of these entries are in the language of realism, yet each of these international artist uses atelier skills for their own purposes.

Art as a Collected Body of Knowledge

Just as the Middle East became the center of mathematical knowledge during the middle ages, Paris became the epicenter of the world’s collective knowledge of art during the late 19th and early 20th century.

Currently, the United States and Italy are hubs for atelier training due in large part to the efforts of R.H. Ives Gammell in Boston and Nerina Simi in Florence to save the collected body of atelier knowledge at the peak of its unpopularity.

This cross-pollination of artistic ideas has happened, and continues to happen, throughout the world. And like math, it benefits artists to study what is known about art throughout the world in order to truly move visual thinking forward.

Do you believe atelier training is Eurocentric? Let me know in the comments below.