The Unspoken Gorilla

NEW YORK—At a time when the art market is piping hot (despite predictions of a correction by market watchers like collector Eli Broad), graduate art programs across the U.S. have been one of the main beneficiaries. Schools have seen an increase in applicants, and the MFA degree carries a new prestige. The results for students are not inconsiderable. There is greater chance of finding success upon graduation, and a lucky few forgo the usual early-career struggles and shoot straight to art-world stardom. But has the market in turn changed the nature of art education itself? Do MFA programs address the market in their curriculum, respond to it, or ignore it altogether?  

Following a series of interviews with teachers, students, and alumni of MFA programs at schools including Yale University, Columbia University, School of Visual Arts, and Hunter College, ARTINFO found that almost everyone we spoke to agreed that there is little attention paid to the market in graduate schools, at least on the surface. Whether in making art or critiquing it, the focus still seems to be on a much nobler cause than trying to be the next hot art star or creating work that goes along with a current trend. And yet, by most accounts, the market is nonetheless something of an unavoidable presence, which students, however idealistic, must learn to come to terms with.

It’s a complicated situation that is summed up nicely by Yola Monakhov, a 2007 graduate of Columbia who has worked internationally as a news photographer in crisis areas and for the past year and a half has been a contributing photographer to the New Yorker. “A lot of the rhetoric in the past two years in the program has been ostensibly anticommercial, but people are showing in galleries and selling work like everybody else,” she says. “To be in school at this time, when the market is so abuzz, is difficult because of the sheer power of all that money. It would be as difficult as being a stage actor in the shadow of Hollywood.”

The MARKET v. The Market

Of course, it’s old news by now that savvy dealers go to MFA open-studio events and thesis shows to find artists either to represent or to feature in exhibitions. But do the schools and teachers encourage such close interaction with the art market? According to artist David Humphrey, a critic at Yale, the school does not promote this type of activity and, if anything, frowns on overt careerism. “Sometimes [the market]’s there as this kind of unspoken gorilla that people have on their mind, but what happens inside the program stays focused on the issues, the history, the social context [of art],” he says. “The market does have a big force inside the grad studio, but I think it’s an ambiguous force, sometimes pernicious, sometimes not, but something to be dealt with. You pretend it’s not there and then it comes back, you address it, and make it go away.”

Cat Balco, who graduated from Yale’s Painting and Printmaking program in May 2007 and now teaches painting and drawing at Hartford Art School, confirms Humphrey’s statement: “The market’s certainly something that’s in the air; because many of my classmates are showing pretty seriously it’s definitely out there.” But Balco says it’s rarely discussed in critiques. “Nobody gets kudos for having shows. If anything, it’s the opposite. In one critique some faculty member said, ‘This looks like professionalizing too soon,’ in a pejorative sense.” And yet while Balco stresses that students don’t focus on the market, she says that they did wish it were easier overall to be a practicing artist.

Her concerns remind us that when we talk about the market, we may be talking about one of two very different things. On the one hand there’s the behemoth we read about in newspapers, in which a few bold-face names like Gagosian, Hirst, Koons, and Saatchi earn millions in what looks from the outside like a game of Monopoly. On the other hand, there are the more scaled-down, familiar concerns of painters, sculptors, and others who are trying to make it as practicing artists.    

According to Josh Jordan, who graduated from Yale’s Painting and Printmaking department in 1997 and is now teaching at Montclair State University, one value of the MFA is that it confers a kind of legitimacy on a young artist. He believes that earning a degree from Yale, though it’s unlikely to be a ticket to instant success (of the kind seen in such highly publicized as those of 2002 Columbia graduate Dana Schutz and 2005 Hunter graduate Jules de Balincourt), is like having “overdraft protection on your checking account.”