Daily Mail Online: Nearly 7,000 students were pictured recently sitting for an entrance exam for Shandong University of Arts and Design in east China.
On February 16 the examinees sat patiently in the 200,000-square-foot hall of the Shungeng International Convention Center in Jinan city, reports the People's Daily Online.
With registration for the university on the rise, this year's competition has become much fiercer as the number of students set to be recruited by the university has shrunk.
3 comments:
This is absolutely terrifying. I can't imagine having to take an exam in this fashion, for a few reasons. The first and most obvious to me is just how objective the admissions department is making skills like painting and drawing, which in my opinion should be expressive and totally subjective to the interpretation of the artist and his/her audience. How on earth are these students chosen? It seems the only way to "grade" these pieces of art would be to boil them down to an objective black and white scale, perhaps of how accurate they are to the real-life subjects. The fact of this makes me so completely sad, because there is no imagination in this kind of process. I don't even know how I would begin to stand out in a situation like this other than to have some wildly different interpretation of the subject. I also feel as though something very important is missing in their admissions process. For example, here at CMU we have interviews so the professors might get some idea of how open we are to training or how "teachable" we are. If an art student is accepted based on his ability to replicate a bowl of fruit...How are we to know whether he is able to expand his horizons? How will we test his variability and ability to adjust? I feel like there is so much more to art than this admissions process is letting on.
I think that this article really puts into perspective the college process that we go through in America. Sure, we have a lot of competition as well but I can’t imagine sitting in a room with 7000 other students all drawing the same things. I can’t help but think that there would be a lot of self comparison with everyone’s artwork in such plain sight; It’s enough in the studio with 27 other people. The pictures within the article really leave a big impact; just seeing row after row of students with pretty much the exact same thing on their boards is kind of stunning. It’s amazing how all of these young artists have such a drive to get into this design school, especially the artist that was painting with his feet because he didn’t have any arms. One thing that was very noticeable from the pictures was how most of the paintings seemed to be of the exact same style. I don’t know what the guidelines were, but I wish that there was more individual differentiation between all of the artwork. Overall, this makes my portfolio and interviews look pretty stress free.
What makes this so scary to me is that these students aren't taking a written test, but all painting the same thing. I think art should be the last thing that's assessed this way - techniques and expertise can be taught, but one's creativity and aesthetics are what speaks the most about that particular person as an artist. I definitely think this school is taking the wrong approach - the student who painted with his feet because he has no arms is obviously very passionate and ready to learn, but his dedication probably won't be recognized by the teachers who are going to go through thousands of paintings. This makes me wonder how the school actually teaches their students, and whether they recognize creativity/individuality in art at all. I actually searched for artworks by students studying at this university, and apparently each year the graduating class has a showcase - the theme is decided by the school. Although the students who study there do produce beautiful work, they are all very coherent and adhere to the same theme given by the school, which is disappointing. It's also shocking that there's only 31 art and design universities in China - which is a very disproportionate and small number compared to the student population in China.
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