Saa It's about Art (or something...)

Last Friday I had the misfortune to go to the It's About Art show run by the SAA at the Trafford Centre in Manchester, (some of my students wanted to go) . It was a truly depressing experience. held in a large boomy exhibitions shed. There were about eight or ten "artists" around the edges, all equiped with headsets and video cameras and loads of easels set up where people were urged to copy every stroke and mark made by the artist. The worst was a very syrupy picture of a Siamese cat, which they were all copying from identical photos. As you can imagine the noise set up by all these tutors speaking all at once set up an incredible din that gave me a headache after about half an hour. This was definitely one for the Bob Ross school of art and you sensed his ghost hanging over the whole thing. Oils were notable by their absence, most demos being watercolour, acrylics or pastel. Now some will say these type of things are allright for the amateur, but he trouble is that it gives people the wrong idea about what art is. Originality and creativity were nowhere to be seen, just slavish copying and an obsession with technique for its own sake. And don't get me started on the refreshment facilities......