<p>How is the Cooper Union program for graphic design? I heard that it was lacking but then again, it is Cooper Union…</p>
<p>my kid is a reject will try again ( and again)
he did CE saturday class 4 years one of them was graphics.
Didn’t do anything hi-tech; stencil, color theory, proportion, movement, typography, very joseph albers - like what I did, like, 30 years ago at my school.
I don’t know how college class would be, there are mac labs and softwares are OK and accessible but something tells me it is not that kind.
Noone stop you (maybe laugh at you, but ) if that’s what you want to do ( commercial generic digital stuff) but then why do you want to go to Cooper for that?
There are few kids going next fall, if they’d stick around, you can ask more.</p>
<p>english lesson
^or how you say is this fall? this year, I mean</p>
<p>I didn’t know Cooper that much, since my daughter is going to be there next year, I started to ready more detail in their website. there is a faculty really impressed me:
Assistant Professors
Mike Essl
Mike Essl was a partner at the award-winning design firm The Chopping Block, Inc., which he cofounded in 1996 with a fellow graduate of the Cooper Union. During his six years with the firm, Essl’s clients included Sony, Nickelodeon, National Geographic, MTV, Intel, Microsoft, Roadrunner Records, the band They Might Be Giants, and the rapper Warren G. After receiving his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Essl went on to work for Columbia University, Chronicle Books, and DC Comics.</p>
<p>PushPin Studios anyone?
Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast…Herb Lubalin famed typographer…
Cooper has actually produced giants in the field of design and while
they might “have been giants” no matter where they went to school they
attended Cooper.</p>
<p>Cooper is actually known as very strong design school in the field or at least has been in the past.</p>
<p>hey smarty, where have you been?</p>
<p>yeah I heard that one of them giant said in the record,
“years at Cooper was a … torture”
meaning so wrong a place for his practical designing mind and skill. Then again they seem never failed to mention they did Cooper, so that must be the point of OP here?
I would love to see kids draw and fill in colored squares using straight edge and the flat brush dipped in gouache in this time and place of history of art an’ design, which was my kind of torture.</p>
<p>Not sure if this is relevant but quite a few of the design professors at parson’s went to cooper.</p>
<p>very relevant that after all these (20-30?40 for that NY heart guy?) years they are the big shot at parsons and sva in the same town 10, 15 blocks radius.
what does that tell you about cooper?
we love them!!!</p>
<p>kaelyn, where are you heading? good news?</p>
<p>Hey bears</p>
<p>I’m currently at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the Doig class. I’m still undecided
I may stay here at the academy or go across to Chelsea in London. Initially i was thinking RISD but the deadline for the deposit passed which leaves me stuck with SAIC or those two.</p>
<p>How good your German need to be?
any class done in English?</p>
<p>They don’t really have classes per se over here. All they really give you are big studios to work in, access to some good technical facilities (printmaking, woodworking, photo studios etc) and their best wishes. They REALLY emphasize personal direction. There are occasional lectures but my German is hardly good enough. </p>
<p>The system here is typical of state funded German art schools which, contrary to what you might think, can be extremely selective (the average admission rate here is about 5-10%). If anyone is interested, the usual system here is that you do your first year in the Oberreich (their foundation equivalent) then apply to join a particular class. As mentioned, the classes aren’t really “classes” where you get lectures and assignments but rather a series of ongoing group critiques moderated by the professor. There’s usually a colloquium (the group critique) every four to six weeks though this varies from class to class. Some classes, I’m told, only have 3 colloquiums a year. All of the professors here are really accomplished artists, Peter Doig, Tal R, Christoper Williams, Markus Lupertz, Anthony Cragg etc. And since many of the professors are not themselves German, their colloquiums are held in English.</p>
<p>If you join as a “gasthörer” (their equivalent of an exchange student) like me you won’t need to meet the German language requirements. But, if you decide you want to enroll here as a full time student you will need to have C1 German proficiency (i.e near native proficiency). Not to worry though, I have met a number of students who have bypassed that requirement by means of sheer talent or… otherwise.</p>
<p>The period of study here is indeterminate. Some students only study here for three or four years before graduating while others only leave after eight. In order to graduate, instead of meeting a traditional credit requirement or completing a predetermined course of study, students must pass their “leaving exam” in which a student’s work and progress is reviewed by the academy staff. The thing that was most surprising to me about the academy is that students can not simply apply for a place in a class and expect to get it. Instead they must seek out the individual professors and arrange to have them review their work. Furthermore, after the first year, students are not guaranteed a place in a class as there are in fact several students who don’t get accepted to any classes. </p>
<p>It’s not absolutely necessary to learn German over here though it helps immensely. Most Germans speak at least basic English and pretty much every German under 30 can have a functioning conversation in English. However, you will hardly find anything written in English which can be a pain. </p>
<p>Just thought I’d put all of that out there in case anyone was interested.</p>
<p>so are you the personal pupil to the artist since/from your country and invited to be there, or like, anyone can go if they can pay?
internationals’ life there seems bit like that girl in Persepolis, so different from what I hear from my German friend went artschool there (OK, 30-40 years ago haha) what is the point then, be in Germany if not for the teacher? or that’s why you might be moving soon?</p>
<p>sorry OP off track</p>
<p>i’m thinking about apply cooper art this year while now i’m going to RISD this fall. I know RISD is a great school, but considering that cooper’s tuition-free scholarship, I will try again. So what do you guys think about cooper’s art, and maybe compared to RISD?</p>
<p>I don’t want to say anything to offend mighty RISD anymore in term of how hardcore Cooper wannabe view the school in general.
your username looks familiar, you must be around awhile, you should know.
Then again we never know what your works are like now or next year nor how cooper people would view your stuff.
I learned this year that Cooper actually wants fresh HSkids with good tech and good brain, if you got in RISD you’ve gotten them both, I guess it depends on what else you have beyond those.
Though if you are only going for money, that is a wrong reason.</p>
<p>The advantage to being here is that they really give students the resources and space to figure themselves out with a certain amount of guidance. I was talking to a girl from my class at the academy who is currently doing an exchange at the Royal Academy in london and she felt really wary about the fact that in the British and American systems they push students a lot. She felt like while there are definitely advantages to that kind environment for a self possessed young artist she felt like the bulk of the kids in those schools were really just products of a system. Products who went through the motions of trying make work that looked really developed but actually wasn’t. Conversely she recognized that alot of the kids at the kunstakademie sort of fall through the cracks and end up wasting 5-8 years of their lives but that was good in itself since if those students weren’t able to get their acts together on their own, they really shouldn’t have been trying to be artists to begin with. Just a perspective.</p>
<p>You can only do an exchange here once you’ve been accepted to the class of a certain professor. While some classes have pre-existing exchange programs with specific institutions others work on a completely personal basis. Pretty much if you decide that you want to spend a year studying under artist Y, you find someway of contacting him, show him your work and he decides whether or not you can join his class. The student fees for guest students are about 150 US$ a semester and 315 US$ a semester for full time students. There are actually a lot of international students here at the academy though most of them come from somewhere else in Europe. There’s quite a number of japanese students here and a sprinkling of middle eastern folks. There are also two guys from nigeria, a hand full of americans and one or two canadians. As you might imagine, the classes with english speaking professors have a slightly more international composition.</p>
<p>Re: cooper. Most of cooper’s admitted students are significantly better at what they do than your average high school student. However that doesn’t necessarily mean that cooper produces better artists. Some people might even argue that they are worse off for it. Either way, RISD, perhaps above all other american undergrad art programs, has the best track record of producing of commercially viable and, even, successful contemporary artists. Both schools are quite good in their own rights and it really comes down to what kind of environment you want to be in, what kind of work you think you’ll be interested in and how can a particular school help you with that.</p>
<p>Cooper is a very small school with very ambitious and occasionally ******y kids who mostly work in the vein of fine art. They push an interdisciplinary and by default somewhat conceptual/contemporary approach to art making from the get go. RISD is a large school with a lot of kids who have a range of interests outside of fine art and the student body tends towards design. The curricula are much more rigid and traditional than cooper’s but their students don’t seem to be any worse of for it. They also offer a more traditional college experience/environment than cooper.</p>
<p>I would say that if you’re a very motivated kid with a lot of strong ideas about where you want to go with your work and have demonstrated a flair for contemporary aesthetics and working in different media cooper would be the place to go. If you’d like to develop a little more slowly as an artist and perhaps along a more “unforced” path with a little more direction RISD would be better for you. Though as a recent cooper rejectee I must admit i’m a little disillusioned with cooper’s cult status. </p>
<p>RISD all the way (financial restrictions notwithstanding)</p>
<p>Now that is pretty interesting, that kind of thing would only happens at here graduate school, no?
What do you think kids’ skill levels are? The German foundation covers all the basics prior to be accepted to the class or you don’t really need to know how to draw or use certain medium? </p>
<p>I was at Met Picasso show and thinking… they did not have any his super early notable works because they are locked in at Barcelona (pee in the pants!! genius) and the show is made out of what’s in the Met’s holding which aren’t much. As his (love)life and strings of European historical events unfolds, he would change and always doing something outrageous either good or bad…
But but but he have had solid skill before anything else.
What good in it that you could built on sinking sifting sand which nowadays we all seems to value more and more?
Do we really no need to learn how to do things properly so long you become marketable and reach whatever you are aspiring to be? ( ok ok I know people RISD do that in their first year yes yes yes but not near what Picasso did when he was 10, 12, 14 )
I don’t know, I never knew, that is one of the reason I don’t do that no more.
Where and what do you want to become?</p>
<p>The kids here come in at different ages and technical skill levels. There are a number of kids who can draw extremely well but in all honesty technical skill is only as necessary as it is necessary i.e for the kind of work you want to do. The foundation year is similar to the rest of the years in that there isn’t a hard and fast structure or an endless series of technical exercises (though students are given enough of them in the beginning). The foundation class does push students towards developing their technical skill but not nearly as intensely as US schools. </p>
<p>Generally the work the first years produce is much more interesting than their american counterparts at risd or pratt since they are encouraged to develop work along their own interests. Also because, after their first year, students must go through a competitive process to be accepted into a certain professors class and it would be very difficult for anyone to make a judgment about someone’s potential as an artist based on a series of still lives and figure drawings. I asked my class’ tutor if there were any schools around where people did drawings of flowers and pots in their first year and his response was “yeah, for the mentally disabled”</p>
<p>Not being able to draw is a significant hindrance to any artist/designer but at the same time being able to draw well is no real indicator of artistic potential/ability. Surely Picasso and Hockney wouldn’t have been able to produce the kind of work they did if they didn’t have a thorough technical grounding but could you imagine someone telling a young Stella or Warhol they shouldn’t be artists cus they can’t draw well enough.</p>
<p>you can not be serious
have you ever seen Warhol’s super early pen ink sorta works? pee in the pants!!
friend of mine was Stella’s pupil at SAIC four decades or so ago. and it’s another pee in the pants.
You need to live bit longer to be critical of old boring folks, sorry being ***** but just needed to add.</p>
<p>from boring old hag</p>
<p>re:kaelyn & bears and dogs</p>
<p>Thank you very much!! i think i am more interested in design. but still, i love art really!! actually, i applied cooper arch this year and got wl and finally got rej. and i think i want to be an artist/a designer more than an architect. so i will try cooper art next fall. i am definitely not going cooper for its money, but honestly, money means a lot to my family. if there’s a chance than i can learn art and only cost my parents not so much money as the art majors usually do, i will be really really very happy about it. anyway, i love risd and it is my first dream school. and i really love its first year’s foundation study program. good luck to you!</p>
<p>Oh, that’s how I saw your name then,
Why arch?
then you should apply both art and arch if getting " IN" is what it count.
there was an art reject gotten in arch following year, the kid’s works are lots of drafty, cross hatchy, technical, maybe better fit for arch.
I am sure you’d researched enough what they are gonna make you do and what they won’t teach you ( like, PC CAD? I am guessing)
Arch # seems harder than art but it is not really, because most kids won’t "get " Cooper’s hometest but take it literally especially for arch.
If you are WL ed, you must have had put up good fight, so close.
How that work? is it final or maybe up until Sep, some kids might still withdraw and make room for you? Did you beg and cried? I don’t think Cooper would be nice to you (or anyone for that matter) but you should try nonetheless.</p>
<p>Good luck and see you around !!
Love Peter Cooper !!!</p>