Viewing page 20 of 62

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

                                         April 1, 1968
[[strikethrough]] To: LETTERS, ARTFORUM, 667 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y. 10021
Re: "...an American artist's education..." p. 26, ARTFORUM, March 1968 [[/strikethrough]]

Sirs:
Dan Flavin has mentioned the truism that "art cannot be taught," and something about "the intention for sufficient attention to it(art)". I would add that seldom does a real creative artist teach for long at any league or academic institution, which is unfortunate for the students but perhaps fortunate for art.   Anyone that has to rely upon schools or academies for sufficient attention to their art is hardly the artist type. Artisan, maybe, but not an artist.
   The artist is almost the exact opposite of the organized commercial-academic professional...the system's agent charged with the task of organizing art like any of the numerous technologies. The real artist is, from start to finish, an individual. I didn't say individualist. Every and anybody is that. Being an artist is like being Christ himself. But the artist does not say he's God.   Only a rich, varied and direct experience with living, not just the educational substitute, is the surest foundation for a faith in oneself. 
   As to the specific...the American artist's education: before he would be an artist he would have to discover, all over again, for himself, in his own way...America.   This is not exactly a four-year course. Yet, in his rediscovery of America, below as well as above the border, I think he would himself as a person, which is the pre-requisite of realizing himself as an artist.   This all may very well include time and exposure to all the various techniques of the media as well as the academic formulae and substitutes of the school-gallery-museum triumvirate. By this time, however, our artist may be more youthful than youth itself, but alas, no longer a youth(under forty):
   Contrary to the P-R syndrome, not every one who picks up brush, chisel or agent is an artist anymore than anyone who says "Lord, Lord" is saved. [[Signature]]
A.J. Schneida, 1816 Anchovy Avenue, San Pedro, Calif. 90732