Debate on Learning the Arts

I recently had a discussion with two friends after hearing some abysmal compositions by composition students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. They were all hell-bent on becoming the new Schoenberg,  with plinks and plonks running hither-thither, with seemingly no real notion of why one musical statement should come before or after another, or why come back to a "main theme". It struck me that these students had likely listened to and practiced a very specific course of musical history, and that they seemed to have never learned the basics of putting together an extended piece of music, based in classical tradition. I remarked upon this, subsequently expressing an old belief of mine in learning the "classical" approach to both music and visual art, learning its long history, before developing one's own particular style. My statement was gradually shot down by my friends. Damian, who is a composer, obviously came from the musical side of the issue, and as he saw it, if someone had listened to only one genre and created great music of that particular genre, it shouldn't be disregarded simply because of the limited scope from which it was created. Eugene, an art history student, disagreed with my admittedly academically inclined perspective, arguing that visual art could feasibly be created in a vacuum, without any external knowledge of other existing art, because it is a human impulse to create and express visually. I have to agree with this point, and I will concede that my long-held but never-analysed theory has deep flaws in its logic, and needs to be amended. And how could I have been so narrow-minded when I adopted this belief years ago? I can remember when it was formulated in my mind: a summer intensive course in which I took a painting class with students who wanted to paint the live models "their" way, as opposed to focusing on first getting a full understanding of what they were seeing and translating to canvas. Here I was thinking almost solely in terms of the exclusively Western, traditional ways of "Art-Making", in which one must painstakingly learn the craft of making a pretty picture, practicing after the patriarchal canon, for the ultimate goal of being a "good" (aka well trained and disciplined) artist. It is a notion which also suggests that "good art" is necessarily made by an Artist Who Knows What (S)He Is Doing. Yes, there is a hugely vast range of art made throughout history and modern day by people who studied its history and developed their skills according to that canon, but what of non-Western art? Does the fact that a craftsman from an African nation probably has never drawn or painted from a nude model diminish his work, or the effect it has upon the beholder? No, of course not. And what of those unique art-makers, who through some mental or spiritual 'spark' began making art out of the blue, simply because they had to? I've always been a proponent of art as an ultimate means of expression, and yet I had unwittingly been censoring that idea with one that said without the correct training, such expression would be insufficient.

I will say, however, that a well-rounded education that includes and utilizes historical contexts does have an effect of simply making person more informed about where one can potentially go in their artistic/creative practice. As opposed to making in the here and now, with no looking backwards or forwards. Perhaps knowing about the past is the reason we can analyse our practice and look to our own future.