From the perspective of an Art student....

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To be honest, I think this movie tells a lot of the truth. If you do a traditional drawing or painting and it is amidst all these other works that are trying to be "different" it is still picked on as not being original enough. Really? It isn't? Because people are not trying to be something they are not and are not following the craze of today being "indie" and different isn't really different in any way.

God bless.
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As an ex art student, truth be told, the art world is full of bullsh*t. Same with English majors (I was one).

like many I too am an fine arts major (Junior Sculpture Major)

The movie was sort of right, however it took everything to extremes. Which worked well for the movie.

My figure sculpting teacher actually went to Pratt (school this film was based on) and said a lot of it was accurate for when he was there (The 70s) even the Wasted alumni who talks to students about the *beep* side of the art world.

Though I dislike the students like Jerome just as much as I dislike the ones like Eno, I think a lot of people sympathize for Jerome just because he is making what the average Joe thinks is good art. Honestly Jerome is as bad as the rest, he's just on the opposite side of the spectrum, while most of the students were on that Pompous Conceptual art side, he was on the Elitist Traditionalist side, the only difference was that he seemed to enjoy 20th century artists, when most of the people who are like him don't like anything made after the 1800s. I admit I was like that in High School, but the older I'm getting the more open minded I get, in fact if I were to meet my highschool self, he'd probably hate me.

The critiques were semi true, so far in my art classes the ones who could render something realistically got praise, however those would make something conceptually intriguing also got praised, the only ones shot down in class were kids who just didn't give a flying *beep* what they were doing. And they were graded accordingly, however it is true that girls tend to cry if they get a bad critique and more than often storm out of the class in tears. Though I will admit for final critiques (we have one huge critique with guest critics that lasts two days and we go over one or two of a students sculptures) we do tend to be very brief with the bad work (5 to 10 min), and extremely lengthy with the good stuff (20 to 45 min).

I will also say the feminists in Art History classes always seem to point out the chauvinistic tendencies of most male artists, and then repeatedly nod their heads if we talk about female artists or movements.

I honestly think Jonah's minimalist paintings weren't all that bad, but I think it's because they were painted with some sort of authority, as in ,it looked like he knew exactly what he was doing when he made it. That can go very far in art.

The only thing this movie was missing was *beep* behind people's back and the Asian exchange student(s) who makes everyone else in the class look like *beep*

its never about what you know, its about who you know...goes for pretty much everything in life - if you think any different you need to get out into the world and not hide in collage and university all your life.

i almost went to art school and even attended the Baltimore Institute, College of Art's summer program for high school students serious about art school, and I thought this movie was spot-on hilarious.

You missed the point. And I agree with you that the undercover cop's stuff was crap, and they were making fun of the people who find meaning in nothing, who think that a crappy painting done by an inept idiot is good and is saying something, when in fact it's not, and was just done by an inept idiot. It's making fun of the pretentious *beep* that think they know everything and when faced with crappy art, they try to sound all smart by talking all sorts of nonsense. For example, the guy in the class who never turned in anything, and when he did, it was just scribbles.

It's making fun of the art world because so many of them are just pretentious snobs who think their *beep* don't stink.

I am a former art student. I have a BFA. I am currently doing nothing related to art. I was one of those art students who could do some interesting things in art school at times, but didn't really have the inspiration or vision to pursue art as a career or lifestyle. I was always aware that I wasn't anywhere near the best or the most innovative in my classes, so this entire opening is meant as a disclaimer to the classic "You're clearly one of the pretentious art students this film was lampooning" responses that could crop up from my reaction to this movie.

To be fair, I haven't finished the movie, yet. It's on pause because I was so tired of the way the movie was portraying the art class and the students. Maybe it's different in various art schools, but in my classes we critiqued everyone's work, and we weren't allowed to do that kind of bashing of another student's artwork. I mean, saying "It's pathetic" isn't a critique. We couldn't get away with just saying, "I like Flower's piece." We had to discuss the whys. And when they do that in this film to justify some of the really underwhelming work they are swooning over, it's way over-the-top and obscenely stretched. I get that it's mocking art school and the pretentious jerks who often make up a good number of those students, but even in my most pretentious classes, students were not this bad. And for the teacher to get all excited over such a trite painting (the car) was simply laughable. The movie isn't pure parody, so it's hard to keep buying into this when it's setting up the drama and the sympathy for the lead. It's not believable drama because this wouldn't happen. And there's no way that the student could repeat what he did before in basically the exact same way and get the same kind of praise. If he had to present a series, sure, but there's nothing new to say about his second piece. "Oh, it's a sandy colour, which makes sense with a tank. And the tank is smaller... and in the middle of the canvass. I guess that works well with the race car with a yellow background." It's hardly original or brilliant in any way. Sure, it's kinda ballsy for a freshman to do, but other than that there's not much to say about it.

This is the worst-case-scenario portrayal of art school. Although, to be perfectly honest, I went to the art school at a liberal arts university, so perhaps the students there were more well-rounded, in general. Still, we had plenty of artsnobs. I was just hoping for a better lampooning of art school than this. We all get that art students can be really obnoxious and delusional about their artwork, and that plenty of what is said about art sounds like total BS, but I'm heading into the last third of the movie (I think) and I'm just ready to scream at my TV because of how obscenely ridiculous these critiques are. Jerome may not have any great talent, but there are definitely complimentary things to say about his pieces, and he could very well grow from that. He's a freshman, and despite what that jerkfaced successful artist in the film said, you absolutely CAN learn in art school.

Also, I found that there were plenty of opportunities for art teachers to show their work in affiliated galleries and places that wish to support local artists. Teachers were having their work shown in galleries all the time. And yes, they also sold work.

This thread is too long to read but I feel like sharing an opinion as an art school graduate.
I graduated art high school. I'm not from the US; as I understand there are mostly art colleges there, and I don't really know what they're like. Where I'm from, art high schools are very few, but most of the stuff that other people learn in college, we learn in high school (there's actually an ongoing stigma that graduates of art high schools are questionable applicants for art colleges because they've already learnt everything).

A lot of my friends and professors saw Art School Confidential and the consensus was that the movie was mediocre in the sense of film art, but otherwise it was spot on. The student stereotypes were very accurate. Annoyingly accurate, actually. I've met every single one of them in school, even was one of them. But the thing about the film is that they only focus on one class and they put all those stereotypes in one class, while I saw them in several generations and many variations.

So, while I agree that it's distressing if people take this film as a serious depiction of young artists, I also agree that it is brilliant in its depiction of art in general. Because let's face it, most people don't care about art. A lot of people who buy art buy it because it's famous.

Art School Confidential parodies the modern artist. At no point in the film had I felt sympathetic towards Jerome. I thought he was a deluded young man with a very mild talent. He had learnt how to draw, but that was it. Skill and talent don't have to work in synergy.

I thought this film depicted, very painfully, how people are deluded about being special. Jerome thought that by being skillful at drawing and painting, he was already there. But he soon realized that he was not likely to become what he wanted to be by being himself. So he became someone else.

When we first saw this film, my friends and I were left a debilitating heap of nothing. We had talent, sure, but for the first time in our young lives, we realized that it takes extreme measures to become a famous artist. Talent alone is nothing. I think that's the point of the film. And there's nothing insulting about it. It's just the way society works.