Independent Studio| 16 Credits TOTAL
NYSRP applicants will be enrolled in a 16 credit Independent Studio Program. This program includes a Critical Art Seminar, Contemporary Art Seminar, and Critique Session course requirement.
Students also receive individual work spaces.
Disciplines typically practiced and developed at the NYSRP:
Painting • Sculpture • Photography • Illustration • New & Mixed Media • Digital Arts & Video • Fiber Arts
Contemporary Art Seminar | 3 credits
The basic methodology of this 3-hour seminar introduces students to a series of theoretical issues respective to contemporary art by emphasizing historical considerations, current critical discourse, and studio practice.
Rather than a media focus, or a chronological approach, major theoretical issues are introduced and examined in terms of the manner in which they have been articulated over the course of the century, in some cases, or in recent decades. A brief preliminary list of issues follows to give an example of the structure of the seminar.
Students will receive a detailed outline of the issues, ideas and artists to be discussed at each session, together with key critical essays that will be required readings. In addition, students will be required to attend specified gallery and museum exhibitions that will be brought into discussion throughout the semester. Each student will be required to make a 15-minute slide presentation and mini-lecture on a current exhibition. Each seminar is followed by individual studio critiques of three students. Grades will be based on class participation and on oral presentation.
The issues addressed in the seminar will be: authenticity, appropriation, originality, anarchy, subversion, contamination, persona of the artist, autobiographical impulse in art, aspects of performance art, art for art’s sake vs. socially engaged art, quality and taste, the body, form and content, cultural production, political art, cultural responses to art, exhibition history in the 20th century, postmodernism vs. modernism, and up-to-the-moment art practice.
Academic equivalents: art history, art theory, liberal studies.
Current faculty: Jan Avgikos, art critic, writer and historian of modern and contemporary art.
Critical Seminar & Visiting Artist Program | 3 credits
The Critical Seminar focuses on guiding students to develop comprehensive art writing skills and a deeper philosophical approach to their art practice. The seminar also addresses modernist issues such as humor and irony beyond art criticism, including the nature of creativity and studio practice.
After the weekly Critical Seminar, a visiting artist delivers a one hour presentation, followed by individual studio visits with either the visiting artist and/or the Critical Seminar Instructor.
Grades for the Critical Seminar are based on attendance, class participation, and studio performance.
Read more about the Visiting Artist Program.
Academic equivalents: art history or liberal studies.
Current faculty: Dominique Nahas, art critic, writer and historian of modern and contemporary art.
Critique Sessions |10 credits
Critique Sessions Include 20 hours of individual studio practice, a mid-semester critique, a final review, and the Open House exhibition.
Two fine art faculty meet jointly and on alternative weeks with students for the Critique Sessions. The session includes discussing contemporary art issues as well as sharing news about social and political topics of the day. Individual studio visits are conducted after the conclusion of the group discussion. Students are also required to make occasional off-site studio visits with faculty.
Academic equivalent: studio practice, independent studio.
Current faculty: Glenn Goldberg, painter; Pam Lins, sculptor.