Within the school of arts, the fine arts programme has traditionally taken up a central position. It is organized in six majors or studios: painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, performance and media art. These studios are tightly interconnected and continually enter into artistic and organizational alliances. The contemporary visual arts world is characterized by an openness between different disciplines that were traditionally rather closed. Even when their body of work evolves within a single medium, many of today’s artists spontaneously engage in cross-disciplinary projects. The contemporary painter, sculptor, media, installation, performer or graphic artist is at all times part of the much wider context of visual culture and the other arts. It is this openness that guarantees a critical artistic practice.

The specificity of disciplines

Still, each studio grounds its pedagogic approach in the specificity of its discipline. This goes beyond the teaching of techniques; above all it implies an engaged and critical way of dealing with the visual style and traditions of the medium that in some cases go back many centuries. From the very start, students of all six majors are encouraged to find their own way in their chosen discipline. In that process of developing a personal artistic practice, a critical resistance to facile solutions and to a dominance of virtuosity is essential. For art is also, and perhaps mainly, a way of thinking, in and from the actual artistic creation. In a ceaseless search for insights and practical solutions, the artist is continuously rewriting his own history. This requires from students and teachers a limitless curiosity and a lucid, intelligent attitude. A keenness to know how things work, to see, to expand and intensify perception, this is what each studio wishes to kindle in its students.

Master in fine arts

In the master programme students are given even more room than before to expand their individual artistic practice. Students choose the mentors who will support their development and act as a sounding board. The contextual theoretical courses from the bachelor programme are now offered as elective seminars each student can combine to suit his or her personal practice. Frequent consultations and contact with the other master students guarantees an open and fresh view of one’s own working process. In the master programme, the testing and nourishing of the individual artistic practice is explicitly done in relation to the professional field. Each student is expected to actively participate in the artistic field, working in a museum, as an artist’s assistant or as an employee for a cultural non-profit organization. This entire process results in a completed graduation project that is evaluated by experts from the field: gallery owners, museum directors, critics and artists.

Master coordinator: Laura Herman