About the Programme
What does it mean to study in the painting speciality?
In parallel to other media, painting is one technical possibility in the modern artist’s toolbox. We don’t look at painting as merely a technical possibility but a type of thinking. The speciality focuses on developing each student’s personal artist’s position. Students work in their own studio space starting from the second half of the first year and focus on topics that specifically they consider important – be they personal, societal, technical or theoretical, modern or historical, romantic or realistic, narrative or abstract, etc. They receive individual feedback and supervision for their studio work from different teachers from the painting speciality and the Faculty of Fine Arts in general. In addition, they benefit from instruction from external teaching staff, both local and international. Supervisors include painters and sculptors, curators, theoreticians, writers and gallerists. We value multifaceted feedback, to allow students to learn to orient in the broader cultural space and make themselves understandable there. Meetings and discussions play an important role for developing critical thinking and conceptualising artworks.
Rott/Rat honours traditions as well as those who topple them
The goal of painting studies is to develop artistic practice while keeping the focus on the medium of painting, its history and meanings of technical solutions. A painting on canvas is one of modern painter’s tools that has meaning unto itself and places the work in a context, just like each brushstroke used. The surrounding context is no less important than the canvas. The painting is made up of its own substance (components and structure) and all of the operating mechanisms that remain outside the canvas.
Canvas need not be canvas in the ordinary sense; it could also be a grandmother’s old slipper or a potato purchased from Baltic Station Market. The selected material determines the meaning of the work. The canvas can also be the space itself, just like a painting can be an installation or video work, or sound or participatory performance.
We will view the art of painting historically and in practice. Hand in hand with working in the studio, each student will be able to choose from among specialized painting courses such as: portrait painting from models, studio nudes, fresco, mosaic and sgraffito.
In addition, students can take electives from the speciality of sculpture-installation and graphic art as well as from other departments within the Academy, such as ceramics, photography, textile and glass art, among others.
We will ask what makes a painting a painting and why one should paint in the present-day.
What are the advantages of studying this speciality?
The Rott/Rat painting department is a combination of critical thinking and traditional skills. Our strength is the ability to connect the two.
During both BA and MA studies, the focus is on artist’s practice and personal artwork, the ability to see, seek and highlight. Starting from the second semester of the first year of BA studies, each semester ends with an exhibition project – a real experience in a real space.
Students who complete the Rott/Rat painting programme will be artists who can orient in today’s cultural space, see the present moment, and also refer to historical aspects.