Not that this is a shocker to me, but the Times notes that some artists are raising the idea that one does not need to spend umpty-thousand dollars on a professional degree to be a professional artist.

The professionalization and academicization of the art world has been lamented for some years, but lately they have become epidemic. (Roberta Smith)

Unsurprisingly, some academics are affronted:

Her call for artists to go forth without credentials is na?ve at best and seems to assume that graduate programs fail to teach artists survival skills or encourage them to develop emotionally vivid works. (link via Art Vent) (Edit: direct link to the letter)

I’ll be over here, laughing my ass off. I’ll also put out the offer of pencils at dawn to any academic gatekeeper who thinks that a piece of dearly bought paper makes one artist inherently better trained, more authentic, or more more marketable than another. Better than 2/3 of the folks I knew in fine arts programs in school are doing anything but art professionally, as it is a very nearly impossible way to feed oneself, and always has been. I have lived my entire life surrounded by working artists. Some had degrees. Some did not. At the end of the day, it didn’t much matter either way.

And of course, none of this is new.