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Art School
Art school is a clusterfuck of pretentious, coffee-sipping, Indiefuck hipsters who failed freshman Algebra. Their mothers pay for their "education" unaware of the fact that 99% of art school graduates, devoid of any useful real-world skills, find themselves painting faces for minimum wage at Six Flags, until the horror of a failed life makes the knives sharper and the prospect of self-ruin far more appealing.
Art school presents the opportunity to learn certain skills which are, as one might imagine, incredibly useful over the course of one’s life, such as the proper method for shooting turpentine, how much weed one can smoke in a single afternoon, and how to properly construct a fursuit. In the modern day, art school is not just about learning how to paint, draw, and poop rainbows, it is about the history, methodologies of and care of a pronounced level of hatred for that which one does best. After a year or two of learning why art sucks, why you have no chance of ever becoming successful in the eyes of your family or peers, it is not surprising that many n00bs wanting to be the next Toby Driver or David Firth drop out to go become writers, pregnant whores, or, heaven forbid, cubicle jockeys. Chances are high that they may have knocked up, or been knocked up by, that grad student twice their age (complete with an ubiquitous love of Bjork) who sat next to them in their Post-Post-Post Modern Theory seminar class. Most people who graduate art school end up going to /qst/ and having orgies with their kin.
Admissions Requirements
Contrary to popular belief, it is not necessary to know how to draw, paint, sculpt, use Illustrator or even be interested in learning any of the above. What is necessary is a deep, fiery-with-the-heat-of-a-billion-suns desire to be dramatically more indie, angsty, elitist, and "sincerely" emo than anyone in your peer group. This desire is a manifestation of a comfortable, middle-to-upper class life experience, knowing only that in order to stand out they must be able to claim hipper-than-thou status of a socially-maligned, misunderstood victim.
The vast majority of art schools have a strict dress code; see emo for pointers. Broad recommendations include (but are not limited to) such expressions of individuality as: dyeing your hair black; nautical stars tattooed above your elbows; wearing dark thick-rimmed square glasses; gauging your ears so that you will never be able to hold a normal, respectable job; obsessively replacing your wardrobe with tight jeans and faux-thrift-store shirts, preferably with stripe or dotted patterns; and the wearing of obnoxious hats made of oppressively warm fabric. Additionally, if one is a homosexual (or even just trying it out to look cool), it is acceptable to wear black turtlenecks, so long as one adopts the necessary affectations to pull the style off with aplomb. It is important to note that Hitler tried and failed to get into art school. Basically, the only way you can get rejected is if you are literally Hitler.
Supplies List
In addition to your uniform, it is advised that you purchase the most expensive computer that you can fit on your mother's American Express card and then proceed to use it solely for the purposes of watching crap on YouTube; downloading mp3's of each and every song recorded in the 80's; trolling and camwhoring on LJ communities; making an ass out of yourself on MySpace and Facebook; and making animutations using songs by Circa Survive. Also advised is the purchase of each and every art production program available, so you will not be denied the pleasure of complaining about your student loans for the next 40 years. Make sure a Macintosh "PC" is part of your ARSEnal because, like, lol, everyone knows Macs are for art kidz.
Buy an old camera regardless of whether you plan to take a single photography class, and use it to shoot at least one black and white roll of you in your uniform with a mopey, droopy look on your face. If you're a girl, make sure at least one has your saggy ice cream cone-shaped tits in full view; this is very artistic. Ensure you also purchase an old bicycle, paint it a ridiculous color, and though you never will actually ride it, proceed to tell everyone you meet that you own it and not a car (bonus points if you do, in fact, own a car). Now with that bicycle do away with those brakes, and make it your own brand new, yet didn't buy it new, got it off craig's list/ friend gave it to me/ built at a community bike shop "fixie"! You see having a death trap for a bike is much cooler. Now you can parade around town like some autistic 8-year-old showing off that Barney purple iro with orange deep v rims. Also, don't forget to add those spoke cards!
Now that you are never really going to actually do art. Sadly baby jesus naked in a toilet does not really count, because we all know that you had an assignment the next day and wanted to create something provocative. You are most likely going to party all the time. So lets get that 24 pack of PBR and that eight ball of blow up on that list, because how else are you going to convince people that $20,000 a year justifies what you're doing?
At some point you may need to pick up some pencils, ink, brushes, paint, clay, or other related bullshit, regardless of the fact that your emo self will never be able to draw for shit. If you can't afford any of the above due to the associated costs of purchasing drugs to "open your mind," it's acceptable to substitute your own blood and hair for ink and brushes, and your own feces for clay, pencils, or paint. Done successfully, this will create an air of controversy around you and your “art”, which is the whole point of going to art school in the first place.
Art School Culture
Most art school students and alumni are attention whores, and because of this, much lulz can be observed on campus. Nearly everyone, male or female, has been almost raped and this is the source of fuel for many projects.
Fellatio is an essential staple of any respectable art school education; it is generally considered a social faux pas to turn down requests for it, particularly if you are male, as homosexuality is about as counterculture as it gets. You will have to improve your form if you want your professors to actually give you a grade that reflects the amount of work you've put into a project; otherwise you can expect to have your painting of W jerking off on Jesus referred to as "contrived" and "shallow" while the girl next to you who painted a furry W jerking off on Jesus is lauded as a genius. You will also be expected to fellate every nonsensical, limp-wristed art movement that has ever existed, while disdaining everything that more than 100 people have heard of.
Usually, at least 100 or possibly 1 student will suicide or overdose before graduation. This results in much angst and the same fags who previously talked mad shit on them for being shallow and a sell out will cry about how the deceased was an hero and a brilliant artist to boot. What also will follow are numerous tribute pieces and poems, all of which will be praised as beautiful, even though they're most likely whatever crap the artist was working on at the time of the drama, just with the face of the pwned hastily p-chopped on.
And then of course there is always the occasional schizo breakdown resulting in a fun break from painting pictures of fruit:
Kendall College of Art and Design Massacre
Notable Art Schools
VCU: Located in beautiful downtown Richmond, Virginia, VCU is famous for its drunk students partying with their equally drunk Hobo neighbors. Since this "School" lacks any real Dorms, students are forced to live out in the ghetto that is the City of Richmond. The School offers majors in Homeless beatings, Prostitution and Drunk in Public Arresting. This is also the School that gave the world the FedEx Cavemen and Moot.
UNT: The Sears of Art Schools, and with much the same clientèle: fat, working-class Mexicans, meth-cranked, thieving Po' Whites, scenester faggots who think their opinions matter, Towelheads and Burka Bunnies training for jihad, and welfare-skollership ghetto Blacks. The "prestigious" University of North Texas in scenic Denton is really only prestigious if you are a music major. The College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas (i.e. the visual, plastic, and broadcasting arts schools) is an embarrassing addition, tacked onto the music school to give cash-strapped Dallas parents the illusion that little Zoë and Braden are getting a well-rounded arts education there. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The visual arts program at UNT is operated by, for, and in a manner interesting only to talentless high-school faggots who didn't have the cash, connections, or chops to get into Pratt or MCAD. Unless you are an "artiste" of the dead-ferret-in-a-fishtank school (or a Fabio-esque Blonde God with long, flowing hair who can orally satisfy art instructors of both sexes) you will not do well at UNT Art. Interested in commercial art? Forget it! You'll be a pariah, mocked by your betters in the Fine Arts program as a mere "craftsman". Pottery, Jewelry, Computer Graphics more your style? Ditto. Interior Design majors do okay, due to the influence of the Homo Mafia that runs the design biz, but unless you are gay (ladies: lipstick lesbians only, please) UNT's College of Interior Design is not for you. And perseverance will not save you: UNT art graduates who do not become obese, Wiccan, polyamorous Ren Faire types can expect their bachelor's degree in Art to score them a wonderful creative career making copies at AlphaGraphics, or maybe forty years of being stuck in a cube twelve hours per day doing pie charts for multilevel-marketing hucksters. For those who want a "career" (LOL) in the graphic art or design fields, UNT Art is a complete waste of their time and their parents' money. Get a job hanging drywall, and paint pictures of flowers and dogs in your spare time. You'll be happier.
School of the Museum of Fine Arts: This Boston based school is where you go if you have the money for RISD, but your jaw hurts. This is the home of the emo hipster art student. They were fucking invented here biatch. SMFA has a strict 'no fat chicks' policy, which is balanced out by their acceptance of a large number of fugly chicks. They also have program of mandatory lesbianism in your second year. The SMFA has no grades. None. All you do is show up at a "review board," where 3 teachers that you get to pick and another student judge your work. Because of this, nobody ever flunks the SMFA. Well, they do, it is just hard to do. You literally have to miss your review board, and the makeup board. You can also get very far at the SMFA by being ghey. Teachers like Mary Ellen Strom give preference to ghey students. One faggot there got several grants, jobs, and teaching positions by taking pictures of homos on the steps of his home. Seriously, queer art rules there. SMFA is the only place evar where a bar-code-on-forearm tattoo has been spotted in the wild.
SAIC: A social experiment started in the 19th century by collecting every fugly chick in the mid-west and Koreans with too much money. Also known as "Starving Artists In Chicago", the employment rate of graduates is just under that of Ghana. No one ln this school expects to achieve anything ever, apparently spending $150,000 for the lulz. Lots of rich kids shopping in thrift stores. Taking a shit and calling it "process oriented" is an acceptable final project.
SVA: Notable for dorms in which students are raped by the oldmen with which they are forced to cohabit. Go a little ways off campus, and your ass is going down. Srsly. Also one of the few school stupid enough to have "Cartooning" as a major, resulting in over 9000 terrible furry webcomics. They had ads running on DevianTART for a while, which proves their extreme stupidity.
SCAD: SCAD has two campuses, one in Atlanta Georgia, and the other in Savanah Georgia, both populated by large numbers of furries and overflowing with USI. SCAD is the favoured breeding ground for furries and poor people who need assloads of jewgold from scholarships. Video game companies love SCAD, and look to them to create their next Ratchet. It is insanely easy to get into SCAD in the first year, as they only care about the green. Although 90% of SCAD's students stay the full term, that 90% is composed entirely of furries and closet furries cleverly disguised as neckbeards. The remaining 10% are the ones that realize their stupidity and seek education for a real job.
FullSail: Nearly the most expensive of any of them, Fullsail is more like a running joke for Orlando residents and college students than an actual art school. The general consensus is that if you want to spend a year going to school at retarded hours doing meth, graduate with an associate degree in douchebagology, and end up with a job making copies at Kinkos, then Fullsail is the place for you. Fullsail accomplishes their goal of getting students the fuck out as soon as possible by openly encouraging the use of meth, coke, and any other drug that's going to keep you awake in order to attend class at 3 in the fucking morning. It's also important to note that Fullsail is not a regionally accredited university, which means that your time spent at Fullsail means absolute shit to every other university. Hey, at least you still have those meth hook-ups, right?
CalArts: A college that has one of the intense animation programs in the country. There's other programs like dance, music, and film, but you'll probably drop out anyway. They've churned out many stars like Brad Bird, Tim Burton, and, more recently, Lauren Faust and Craig McCracken. CalArts has been likened to a cult, especially if you're in the Character Animation program. It's not unheard of for applicants to apply seven or eight years in a row. On the downside, you'll be a soulless husk by the time you graduate, but on the upside, you can sell your cancer-inducing cartoon show to Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon.
Art Center: Widely considered to be 'not an actual art school' because the kids there are focused solely on commercial skills rather than Expressing Their Feelings and actually make real money after graduation in high-end LA design work. Filled with Koreans! Average age of admittance is something like 28, and unfortunately for your favorite DevianTARTlet, mary-sues are not good portfolio material with them. Down-side of Art Center: You will have no free time and will want to die for three years. Up-side of Art Center: You will have a future!
MassArt: Full of typical art school douchebaggery except it has effete working class students instead of effete upper-middle class students. Only state-supported art school in the USA. Has immense butthurt and the faculty are all communist lesbians. Puke-art, ass-print illustration and vandalism/theft are common.
VCA: Australia's most prestigious facility for incarcerating waitresses, bar-maids and kitchen-hands is the Victorian College of the Arts. Affiliated with Melbourne University which is like the big sister that tried not to be seen with you in high school while she hung out with the cool kids. The only known contribution to culture made by VCA students is at the mass protests that universities nation wide like to participate in. The VCA contingent is always the only part of the mob of protesters with a dance line and buskers.
Sheridan College: Located in the barren, snow covered wasteland that is Canada
Ringling: Located in the hot swampy ass of Florida, Ringling is consistently considered to be the second best school for animation. They are basically "Calart's bitch" and filled with Calart rejects, thinking they can make up for their lack of art skills with z brush and maya. The school churns out students all with the same mind numbing Disney/Pixar style, hoping they can one day suck the big D, by landing an animation job, because the actual drawing roles are too busy being taken by Calart graduates. Computer animation is basically their only note worthy major, but that does not stop them from trying to convince you they are somewhat okay in other majors, by including "alumni" such as Michelle Phan, a notable illustration major drop out, and also Youtube/makeup industry drop out, who has a cancerous comic on Webtoons, displaying the shitty skills she's obtained from this school.
Academy of Art University: The only school with an 100% acceptance rate even without a portfolio, with both "Academy" and "University" in their name, as they desperately try to convince you they are a competent learning institution, when they are a complete scam that rivals that of Fullsail and the Art Institute. Prepare to be bombarded with emails and phone calls, shoving down your throats with their "successful students", and "amazing faculty", when it is really the community college of art schools, filled with societal rejects who regrets every decision they've made in their life that led them to land a place in this hell hole, because they know they've wasted 4 years of money, 4 years of time and have absolutely no future.
Furries and Art School
Furries represent an abnormal number of art school participants. Since there is no such thing as a six-foot-tall naga with big anime eyes and a leaky, veiny phallus posting on CL to get laid IRL, fans of fur have to rely almost entirely on drawings to fuel their disgusting degeneracy. To make sure that they can better represent their fantasies, thus allowing bigger orgasms, many furries will turn to art school as a means to improve the quality of their “lives”.
This means that there is often a sizable fur community at any given art school, and thusly that an unfortunate number of people will attempt to work their fursona into as much of their work as possible. This is particularly the case in the illustration departments; furries generally find fine arts too demanding, as none of the "greats" that you are supposed to emulate engaged in creating furry pr0n. Because most art school professors are leftards, it is often fairly easy to justify babyfur as an abstracted manifestation of the internal conflict which results after being very nearly raped or some bullshit like that without the risk of the fursecution that they'd find in the rest of society.
Inevitably, at any given art school halloween party, there will be numerous fursuits in attendance. This is one of their few opportunities to flaunt their furggotry in public and get away with it, so it is advised that you stick to hanging out with all the indie fucks dressed like pirates to minimize the risk of being roofied and violated horribly by a big, bumbling fox in the bathroom.
Socializing in Art School
The best way to make friends or get fucked in art school is to just tell your victim that you hold their art in high esteem, and truly admire their creativity, originality, and artistic vision. Say this with a distant, disdainful look on your face and don't make eye contact, and you should have no problem consummating. You should be able to see either a cock bulge or wet spot, depending on gender, forming after saying this, if it was done correctly. This is particularly effective if you are in another pretension-immersed program at the school, such as creative writing or philosophy, as one develops the same pseudo-intellectual attitude in those programs, yet one does not need to see the person later in any of your classes.*
England is quite popular with art school students, and thus referring to things as "pants" or "smashing" will earn you the admiration of your peers. Also, forming bands is common, whether or not you actually perform. Ever. To make sure that everyone knows you're inclusive and original, make sure to give a really cute hapa girl a tambourine to beat around on even though she has no musical talent (hey, neither do you, and giving her a spot in your band will probably get you some IRL sex from her), and be sure to include a profoundly retarded instrument like a jug or a trashcan. Giving your band a name like “Warhol Dongrockets Cider” will give you instant street cred, particularly if you write exclusively about the 80’s and/or your nebulously descriptive emotional state and your last failed relationship.
Because drama is a huge part of artistry, it is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, to start RL flame wars with your classmates. Even if you both agree on something (you're probably both members of the Green Party who enjoy abortions and not eating meat), one of you must take the dom position so you can flame eachother back and forth.
*Tfo developed this strategy after the sheer number of former embittered tricks in his own program forced him to take his cock-craving ways elsewhere.
Possible Careers for the Art School Graduate
- Working at your dad's Fortune 500 company doing something that has nothing to do with art
- Working at an art supply store for minimum wage
- Working at a record store for minimum wage
- Working at a coffee shop for minimum wage
- Working at an organic grocery store for minimum wage
- Killing yourself for great justice
- Basement dwelling
- Maintaining your LJ and DeviantART accounts religiously, hoping someone will notice you
- Finding a benefactor to fellate in return for paying your loans (good thing you studied up on that, amirite?)
- Selling your body to DeviantART and furries by endlessly churning out commissions, effectively giving you the worst case of carpal tunnel ever recorded
- Hawking pot-themed art on the Venice Boardwalk
- Being an Art Teaching Child Molester
- Designing business and greeting cards, none of which include giant eyes/hair.
Commmon Myths of Art School
- Art School is really a College. (False, it's comfort for parents of DevianTARTs that some school accepted them.)
- The girls at Art School are hot. (False. You think a chick with a tattoo of huge angel wings on her back and has neon turquoise hair is hot? Shoot yourself in the fucking face.)
- People in art school have ghey sex. (False, again. They suck so bad, they can't even get each other laid. DeviantARTs are doomed to virginity forever.)
- People in art schools get jobs after study. (False, as above)
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It's not your fault -
Soartisticautistic. -
Very few art students manage to find work. This one did. -
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Art: Then and now! -
See Also
- Tom Preston, a success story.
- Unrealistic expectations
- Art
- Deviantart
- Etsy
- Hipster
- Pabst Blue Ribbon
- Tumblr
- Radiohead
- Avant-Garde
- /ic/
| Featured article September 2 & 3, 2012 | ||
| Preceded by Orvillecopter |
Art School | Succeeded by INTERNET HATE MACHINE |