The Strange Death of the Art School

In a university where the intellectual life is built upon the art of criticizing—on deconstructing a creative work—the art of creation itself, the art of creative construction, meets with scanty support, understanding, or approval. To be blunt, most academics know how to take something apart, but not how to assemble it. Student work, when scrutiniz

The arts focus gave humanistic theories of creativity a particular ideological shading, for art was traditionally understood as the antidote to the ills of industrial society. The Romantic artist was putatively (if never really actually) outside the realm of capitalist production, and as such represented an exception to modern alienation.