Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students

Elkins is right. Even we, in a small art and design school at the ends of the earth, cannot agree on what it is we teach. Good. Its when people pretend that they know, that the trouble starts, and the discourse thickens, and the students glaze over etc etc. Beware of lecturers for whom the students and their work are the subject-object of a discourse they, the lecturers, are practicing on themselves. The question then becomes, what constitutes a lecturer, and what is a lecture, or a crit, or whatever? I tell my students that I am here to make noises around things that usually don't make noises. They say and do the the things that count.Elkins, as usual, clears the air around art.

The book itself is a great read. I found it to be a very interesting take on teaching art.

Great read

I was required to buy his book for a class. Never underestimate the things your art professor requires you to read! I wish I had read this years ago...Fantastic.

Good book with some good points but I like other Elkins' books MUCH better.

good book

WE ARE LIVING THE WORST PERIOD IN ART........ALL WE SEE EVERYWERE IS GARBAGE.....A WONDERFULL BOOK ...EVERYBODY INVOLVED IN THE ART WORLD MUST READ...

I read this book as an Art Education student, and I feel like there is some value to this book as long as you take it with a grain of salt.Elkins asks a lot of questions about education and the arts that are good to have in mind as you prepare lesson plans. They challenge you to think critically and to try to understand exactly what you are teaching. Often certain ideas in the visual arts are hard to describe, and so as a teacher you should be able to simplify an idea into its most basic form.He discusses the idea that certain elements of creating art cannot be learned without a lot of practice, and simply making art, and therefore cannot be taught. While the student artist needs to do the work to learn the process or to develop their personal style, it does not negate the efforts of a teacher who instructed the student on how to develop those skills.There are several reviews that criticize Elkins as being an art theorist, and therefore he cannot write about how to teach art, as he isn’t an artist. Again, as long as you are careful not to take everything literally, you can take ideas from this book and use it to supplement your lesson plans and it will be of value.

This book offers some fascinating reflections on the practice of art education, and particularly the practice of critique. It offers some tools for thinking in a more structured way about what can occur during such encounters. It makes interesting use of transcriptions of critiques aa the raw material for illustrating and elaborating the more abstract points. Ultimately the argument is pretty opened-ended - indeed inconclusive - and while that feels a little unsatisfactory, given our innate desire for narrative closure, given then nature of the argument it is probably inevitable.

Found this a useful text for insights about crits, process, bias and from an art historical perspective. HIghly recommended to anyone embarking on a Visual Art education from Undergrad to the moon!

thorough but if you read to conclusion... as the author says, you shouldn't have bothered...

thought provoking

fraco