Why are students who seek a classical art education marginalized?

Artist Colleen Barry's Cri de Coeur

People of a certain age will remember an iconic advertisement that ran in magazines and newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s for Maxell Cassette tapes.

In it, a guy (I think it’s a guy?) is seated in front of his stereo speaker and is holding on in the face of the blast of sound coming at him.

That’s how I felt on Saturday morning (in a good way) at the graduation ceremony at the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts as noted painter Colleen Barry bowled over those assembled with a passionate, personal and deeply moving address about her own education and the art she makes.

I’m the Chair of the Lyme Academy’s Board of Trustees and seldom have I heard a more compelling case made for the value of an arts education focused on the craft of drawing, painting and sculpting in the classical tradition.

I do think Colleen may have done her ideas a disservice with the tendentious and distracting reference to ‘Cultural Marxism’ in American universities in her opening. However, I’ve been around higher education enough, first as a student (at Trinity College, then Harvard) and now as an adjunct professor (for the last 12 years at NYU) to know that there is something deeply problematic and illiberal in the culture found on most university campuses in America.

I deeply admire Colleen Barry’s work and the courage with which she expresses her convictions; a copy of her remarks at Lyme Academy from last Saturday are below.

Good Afternoon. It’s an honor and a privilege to speak to you today. I want to firstly thank Jordan [Sokol] and Amaya [Gurpide] for this wonderful opportunity to share my thoughts about a subject I care deeply about: Art and Classical Art Education.

With the rise of Cultural Marxism in American universities—a long conversation we can’t fully unpack today—we’ve witnessed a shift in how art is approached and understood. Somewhere along the way, the human being was quietly removed from the center of the conversation. Theory, politics, and systems of power took its place. When God, or even the idea of a higher spiritual order, leaves art, a vacuum is created. I believe that High art, at its essence, is the product of a developed human soul—one capable of grappling with the full scope of human experience, including our relationship to the divine and the mysteries of creation. But under the lens of Marxist theory, there is no spiritual dimension. There is only material struggle, power dynamics, and a belief that the soul is hopelessly compromised by ideology. Art made from this place can become hollow—lacking the transcendent. We need to find our way back to a human-centered vision of art, like that of the Renaissance, where belief in the existence of God and man’s capacity for greatness were intertwined. When that connection is severed, look at what happens to the art: it becomes about commodities, spectacle, or mere critique—and we lose something essential. Something sacred.

So I want to congratulate you today. I hope you understand that you have accomplished something rare. You’ve committed yourselves to the kind of training that most young artists in America will never experience. You’ve chosen to learn how to observe the natural world and translate that vision through your hand with precision, clarity, and care. You’ve studied the craft of painting and drawing in a classical tradition. This is a tradition that has fostered eager young minds from the Renaissance, through the Baroque era, into the 18th and 19th century. You’ve committed yourselves not just to ideas, but to the rigorous, painstaking development of visual skill—the training of the eye, the mind, and the hand.

I want to talk to you about the value of that choice—not just from a personal perspective, but in a much broader cultural context as well. When I graduated high school in 1999, I struggled to find the right path to learn oil painting. I was accepted to Pratt with a scholarship, but something didn’t feel right.

The program leaned heavily conceptual, and the faculty’s work clashed with what I was seeking. I wanted to study the figure, draw from life, and engage with the art of the past—without irony or skepticism. I remember thinking, “I’m in New York City, the heart of culture—there must be artists here who will teach me.” And I found them.

I ended up committing to a ten-year journey of apprenticeship with various artists across New York City. And—this is my favorite part—I paid for the entire education in cash. Yes, cash. From painting sales, catering gigs, and barista jobs. No loans, no debt, just hard work and determination.

It was an outliers path. It was a path far less traveled by many of the young people I knew back then. And I’ll be honest many times I doubted my decision. At times I felt alone and marginalized in my pursuit. I felt that this path set me apart from the art establishment and from the concerns of the zeitgeist. But I had this crew of kids with me who were like minded and very devoted. My husband Will being one of them, and Jordan and Amaya too.

Why is it that artists who seek to study classical form are so often marginalized in today’s arts educational world? And why must art students take an alternative path simply to immerse themselves in the traditions that once formed the backbone of artistic education?

At the turn of the 20th century, a seismic shift occurred in the world of art education. The long-dominant Beaux-Arts tradition, which emphasized anatomical study, life drawing, copying from the masters, and compositional structure, began to be cast aside. In its place emerged a new approach—first modernism, then abstraction, and later conceptualism. This shift was necessary in some ways: it shook loose the rigidity and self-satisfaction of late academic art. But in the wake of that revolution, we lost something vital. Students were trained not to see, but to deconstruct.

The idea of beauty—as a meaningful pursuit, as a carrier of truth—was often scorned. The nude, the figure, the idealized human form—dismissed as regressive or problematic. Technique itself became taboo.

In the United States especially, the university system did not just move forward—it actively rejected the past.

As Camille Paglia wrote in her 2012 book Glittering Images,

“The problem with the Marxist approaches that now permeate academe (via post structuralism and the Frankfurt school) is that Marxism sees nothing beyond society. Marxism lacks a metaphysics – that is, an investigation of man’s relationship to the universe, including nature. Because it does not perceive a spiritual dimension of life, Marxism reflexively reduces art to ideology, as if the art object has no other purpose or meaning beyond the economic or political. Students are now taught to look skeptically at art for flaws, biases, omissions, and covert power plays. To admire and honor art, except when it conveys politically correct messages, is regarded as naïve and reactionary.”

Camille wrote that while law governs our behavior, art expresses the soul. She reminds us that Western civilization was built on the transmission of visual knowledge—cathedrals, sculptures, illuminated manuscripts—and that to cut ourselves off from that lineage is to drift anchor-less. And yet that’s exactly what most educational institutions have done.

Young artists today are often asked to define their “voice” before they’ve been given any tools to speak. They’re told to express themselves before they’ve learned how to observe, how to draw, how to construct. It’s like asking someone to write poetry before they’ve learned the alphabet.

You chose differently.

You chose to study at an institution that still believes in the eye, the hand, and the heart working together. You learned to build form, to think through structure, to look deeply and carefully. You have a foundation. You have a lineage. You are not behind the times—you are ahead of them. Today, classical artists may hold more power than you might think. For a long time, skill was dismissed as retrograde in the contemporary art world, but I believe that tide is rapidly turning. Audiences, galleries, and even institutions are rediscovering the value of craftsmanship—because skill is visible, undeniable, and increasingly rare. Unlike many MFA grads burdened with debt, classically trained artists often emerge from ateliers nimble, debt-free, and independent. With tools like Instagram, Patreon, and direct-to-collector platforms, they can build large audiences who genuinely care about their work. Their art isn’t propped up by theory—it stands on its own. And while they must be mindful not to cling too tightly to the past, the smart classical artist who adapts their palette and presentation to the times has the chance not just to succeed—but to lead. In a world overwhelmed with concept, clarity and craft may very well become the new avant-garde.

But you have to be smart. It’s easy—and sometimes seductive—to stay hidden within the tight structure of academic life. As students, you’re taught to listen closely, to follow principles, to emulate standards, and even to try to surpass them. This kind of obedience is essential in the early years of formation—it’s how skill is built and tradition is transmitted. But over time, that same obedience can become a trap. Artists are highly sensitive to their surroundings, and you can become shaped not just by your teachers, but by your peers—their opinions, their anxieties, their expectations. And if you’re not careful, those influences can linger long after graduation.Years can pass while you’re still measuring your work against a set of invisible academic standards that no longer serve your creative life. At some point, you must step beyond the confines of your first monastic house of learning.

I’m reminded of Edgar Degas—not just for the painter he became, but for the struggle it took to find his voice. As a young artist, he trained at the École des Beaux-Arts and tried earnestly to follow Ingres and become a classical history painter. In early works like Young Spartans Exercising, you can see his academic precision, but also his

frustration—the painting feels unresolved, as if he’s forcing himself into a mold that doesn’t fit. Eventually, Degas let go of that ideal. He began painting his own world—dancers, racetracks, cafés—drawing from photography and modern life.

He didn’t abandon his training; he built on it. And that’s the challenge for all of us: to carry our foundation with pride, but not let it limit us. Degas reminds us that real freedom in art isn’t the absence of discipline— it’s what discipline makes possible.

Like Degas, I had a similar moment after finishing my atelier training. I left the school, but not the mindset. That structure had given me so much—clarity, discipline, purpose—but I’d put on blinders. They helped me focus, but they also shut out the contemporary world. Eventually, I hit a wall. To grow, I had to cross a threshold: take in new ideas, try new tools, see what artists today were actually making. Once I did, something shifted. I felt more confident, more free—not because I let go of my training, but because I started building on it. Classical training is still my foundation, and it’s yours too. Your journey won’t look exactly like mine—but if you ever reach that threshold, don’t be afraid to cross it. You won’t lose what you’ve built—you’ll find out how much more it can hold.

So what did I paint? I started with what I like to call “the personal nude”. A nude that meant something to me not just to history. An autobiographical depiction of a mother and child, or a group of washing women, a protective she-wolf.

I tried to make it monumental, I tried to make it modern, I tried to made it personal. And I soon found out that the personal is the universal.

In the book The Nude by Kenneth Clark, Clark writes:

“The transforming power of the nude is that it elevates the subject to an idea. The body becomes a vehicle of meaning, not simply an object of observation.”

Clark didn’t see the nude merely as a genre or an exercise. He saw it as a pillar of civilization. He believed that through the idealized human form, we articulate our highest aspirations—balance, harmony, inner and outer truth.

That’s what classical training teaches us at its best—not just how to depict the body, but how to see it as a container for meaning. The idealized human form as a philosophical structure. As a bridge between the flesh and the eternal.

And yes—there is risk in choosing this path. When I first brought my classically trained work into contemporary galleries, I feared being dismissed. I thought people would see my skills as retrograde. But to my surprise, they were curious. Dealers and audiences were hungry for something with bones. As the market has shifted, as our culture begins to seek grounding in a fractured time, classical art has started to re-emerge—not as nostalgia, but as relevance. The hand made, hand crafted image is important now more than ever. As it turns out this is a fertile time to learn tradition.

And that’s where you come in.

You are part of a quiet, powerful countercurrent. You’ve studied the human form not to glorify the past, but to give shape to the present. You’ve learned to see—and to help others see. You are the zeitgeist. You have claimed classical art as relevant and others will follow.

As Paglia wrote, “Art is an obsessive quest for meaning, and its medium is form.” You’ve been given form. Now go find your meaning.

Congratulations, Class of 2025. You’re leading the way.