101 Things to Learn in Art School

What is the first thing to learn in art school? "Art can be anything." Thesecond thing? "Learn to draw." With 101 Things to Learn in Art School, artist and teacherKit White delivers and develops such lessons, striking an instructive balance between technicaladvice and sage concepts. These 101 maxims, meditations, and demonstrations offer both a toolkit ofideas for the art student and a set of guiding principles for the artist. Complementing each of the101 succinct texts is an equally expressive drawing by the artist, often based on a historical orcontemporary work of art, offering a visual correlative to the written thought. "Art can beanything" is illustrated by a drawing of Duchamp's famous urinal; a description of chiaroscuroart is illuminated by an image "after Caravaggio"; a lesson on time and media isaccompanied by a view of a Jenny Holzer projection; advice about surviving a critique gainsresonance from Piero della Francesca's arrow-pierced Saint Sebastian. 101 Things to Learn in ArtSchool offers advice about the issues artists confront across all artistic media, but this is nosimple handbook to making art. It is a guide to understanding art as a description of the world welive in, and it is a guide to using art as a medium for thought. And so this book belongs on thereading list of art students, art teachers, and artists, but it also belongs in the library ofeveryone who cares about art as a way of understanding life.

Kit White is an artist and Professor of Painting at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. His work is in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Guggenheim Museum.