ILLUS228 IllusTools G:Visual Journlsm

When Courbet and friends walked out of the French Academy...when Robert Henri told his students to get out of their classrooms at the Art Students League and paint what they saw on the streets...and when Robert Weaver told his students at the School of Visual Arts to do the same, they did so because art had lost its relevance. It had become reductive pastiches of symbols that were without meaning. Outside of the academy these students discovered and documented a reality unknown to the formalism of their classes. Visual Journalism will continue the program initiated by Mr. Weaver at SVA. It will replace posterish conceptual iconography and high finish formalism with perceptive observation and spontaneous responses. It will use the recording medium of the artist's journal to gather raw material and avoid dependence on photography - while studying photography as evidence of the power of seeing.