Help Portal Pick a grad school

I don't know anything whatsoever about the American uni's but the RA in London has really excellent contacts with the art world and its students seem to walk into gallery deals etc. There was an interesting programme a while ago about its final year students and their degree show - galleries were queuing up to 'book' them! and collectors buying work. Teaching seemed very constructive and challenging.

I suppose visits to the candidates are out of the question costwise?

Edinburgh and Glasgow also have excellent reputations and the Scottish art scene is buzzing.

I don't know much about technical, but do consider spending some time in Barcelona. Gaudi, a restaruant that Miro used to hang out out (I can get you the name, he designed their coasters, lol.) It's a fantastic place for art. Here's a cool Gaudi site: http://www.op.net/~jmeltzer/gaudi.html

Sounds like a good reccomendation to me!

Cool. I'll check them out. I will visit once I narrow down, but not before I apply - way too expensive!

Wow, that is magnificent. What a creative architect!

I'll definately have to stop in Barcelona next time I have a lot of money .

Gaudi was an artist. He knew nothing about engineering. To find out how his constructions would stand up and not collapse, he used to build mini models in exact scale to his full sized ideas, and hang a variety of weights to them to test where the structural stresses would be. Checking those balances in this bizarre way seemed to work for him, in terms of getting his projects assembled.

yeah, I was just telling my sister (architecture student) how I thought he was cool and got a bashing. Apparently engineers have to work dilligently to keep them from toppling over. She also claims he is the origin of the word "gaudy."

Pffft on her! My dad's an architechet, Guadi isn't his style, but he has a lot of respect for the guy.

an artist called Hundertwasser was influenced by Gaudi and did some fascinating work - individualising flats, designing motorway service stations that had turf roofs sweeping over them so that they weren't such a blot on the landscape, his flats had terraced gardens at all levels - an interesting man.
hundertwasser

Friedensreich Hundertwasser



The Paradise Destroyed by the Straight Line
An ecologist without a conscience is doomed
to failure, and the same is true of an artist
who does not bow to the laws of nature.


The world has not improved.
The dangers felt have turned into reality.


Nevertheless, today, although
nothing has been done,
my longstanding warnings are at last
being taken seriously.


Yet there are still no lawns on the roofs,
no tree-tenants, no plant-driven water
purification plants, no humus toilets, no rights
to windows, no duties to the trees.
The essential reafforestation of the town
has not come about.


What we lack is a peace treaty
with nature.


We must restore to nature the territories
we have unlawfully taken from it.
Everything horizontal
under the sky belongs to nature.
Everything touched by the rays of the sun,
everywhere where the rain falls is nature's
sacred and inviolable property.
We men are merely nature's guests.


In 1952 I spoke of the civilization of
make-believe, the one we must
shake off, myself, the the first of all!
I spoke of columns of gray men on the march
toward sterility and self-destruction.


The same year I used the term
"transautomation" to show the way beyond
the rationalism of technocrats
toward a new creation
in harmony with the laws of nature.


In 1953 I realized that the straight line
leads to the downfall of mankind.


But the straight line has become
an absolute tyranny.


The straight line is something cowardly
drawn with a rule, without thought or feeling;
it is a line which does not exist in nature.


And that the line is the rotten foundation
of our doomed civilization.


Even if there are certain places where it is
recognized that this line is rapidly leading to
perdition, its course continues to be plotted.


The straight line is the only sterile line,
the only line which does
not suit man as the image of God.


The straight line is the forbidden fruit.


The straight line is the curse of our civilization.


Any design undertaken with the straight
line will be stillborn.
Today we are witnessing the triumph
of rationalist knowhow and yet,
at the same time, we find ourselves
confronted with emptiness. An aesthetic void,
desert of uniformity, criminal sterility,
loss of creative power.


Even creativity is prefabricated.


We have become impotent.
We are no longer able to create.
That is our real illiteracy.



- Hundertwasser