Where are the art teachers?

One of my art teachers, the likes of whom are hard to come by nowadays, used to say that it is a fallacy to declare that academic artistic training can limit creativity, or to asseverate that anybody should be allowed to express himself freely.

"Can you imagine me sitting at a piano, with the meagre knowledge of music that I have, and start thumping away trying to express myself?" he used to ask. "You can bet that I would be a miserable failure for I have not the mastery of that medium. It is the same thing with the art of painting," he used to say. "It is only when you have mastered the grammar of art, that you can feel free and confident to express yourself."

So let us not delude ourselves by feeding on such lame assumptions and let us not mislead the students entrusted in our care by allowing them free rein to splash and splutter paint about, ignoring the importance of the basic skill of drawing. It is all right for the three to six year old, but heaven forbid if we do not advance beyond that.

I shudder at the state that art has been reduced to nowadays. And what is worse is having the local newspapers publish self-promoting reviews by budding "artists", whose works had best be kept hidden in their deepest drawer.

Please, whoever is concerned, put a stop to this practice, or at least get a responsible person to vet the validity of such pictures of "works of art" before they are published. I do not entirely blame the said "artist" ignorant of his limitations. My admonishing finger rather points to the art teachers who fail to set their students on the right track.

But then again what sort of art teachers are we breeding? An Advanced or Intermediate Matsec certificate in art, among other subjects, suffices for them to be admitted to university to follow the course of their choice. They come out of university exuding confidence as they rest upon their laurels blissfully unaware that lacunae in their artistic education still need to be filled. They all come away drilled in pedagogy but only few of them can aspire to be really good art teachers for many of them lack a basic element: sound practical training. So let us not run away with the idea that a university degree suffices as a requirement to teach practical art for the real facts can very often be otherwise.

But who can blame these enthusiastic graduates? If their exercises in drawing do not bring a frown to the teacher's forehead, why should they be unduly worried? It is the teacher's job to make them aware of their shortcomings and their job too to correct them.

Is it possible that the sound training that a lot of us had acquired at the School of Art has all gone to waste? Haven't we, as teachers, held ourselves responsible of passing on what we had learnt?

Thankfully, some of us still keep to the methodology of our own teachers. We recognise the validity of academic training and exercise it concurrently with a freer mode of expression. But, alas, I fear that other art teachers, wary of being labeled old fashioned, try desperately to move with the times. They have succumbed to the general laissez-faire attitude and consequently their students are deprived of the discipline of good drawing.

It is also a regrettable fact that some extremely good artists who have the needed know-how to teach practical art are not university material and therefore not judged as qualified to teach the subject. For this reason our children cannot benefit from their services while graduates with the required qualifications to teach art are not capable of teaching art.

So, what sort of artists do we hope to reap in the future? Certainly not the likes of distinguished personalities such as the late Emvin Cremona, Esprit Barthet or Antoine Camilleri and a few more of their ilk. How are future artists going to match up with such artists who have gone through the proper channels to emerge in time as very significant artistic personalities well able to express themselves in a manner best suited to their personality? Sadly the artistic climate is too uncertain as it stands, and no ray of light on the horizon to allow much hope.