Can You Become an Artist Without an Art Degree? Where to Start in Contemporary Art

“I don’t have an art education. Can I build a career in the art world?” This is probably the question I am asked most often. And let me say straight away: the contemporary art world today places no restrictions on artists and does not divide them according to whether or not they have academic training.

There are artists with a solid academic grounding who have moved into contemporary art. There are wonderful, talented artists with no academic training who are very well established in the art world, and the lack of a degree has not held them back in any way. That said, both academic training and the absence of it have their pros and cons.

Academic training gives an artist technique

Academic training can be a good foundation. The artist knows how to convey a thought by hand, has technical training, and is able to carry out what they have conceived. In this sense, the school provides a tool that can be used from then on.

But in contemporary art, technique is secondary. A good command of painting or graphic art does not in itself answer the question of how strong the work in front of us is. The artist expresses an idea and is technically able to convey it, but what is judged is not virtuosity of execution in itself.

Academic schooling has another characteristic. It can limit an artist’s freedom of vision. A person spends a long time mastering a particular system and gets used to a notion of how one ought to see and how one ought to work.

A good example from my gallery practice is Rinat Voligamsi. He is an academically trained artist, but he did not stop at what his education gave him. He took his academic grounding as a tool and went in search of himself. Once you have seen his works, you will never mistake them for anyone else’s.

Without an academic grounding, you can look for a different medium

If there is no academic training, the artist has a different starting point. They may look for mediums that do not require years of training in painting or drawing.

Contemporary art works with video, digital formats, installation, ceramics and textiles. A videographer can move into video art. Someone who has worked in ceramics for a long time can stop making pieces to order and start creating independent works through clay.

By the same logic, you can come from illustration or another related creative field. The question here is not whether a person can draw an object in the academic manner. The idea becomes the starting point, and from there the artist looks for a way to express it.

That is why a self-taught artist does not necessarily have to retrace the academic artist’s path first. The lack of schooling may affect the choice of medium or the technical possibilities, but, on the other hand, the artist has no previously absorbed rules about how they are supposed to see.

Ten correct steps do not guarantee recognition

Academic training sometimes comes with an expectation that later becomes painful. A person has studied for a long time, can do a great deal technically, has tried very hard and has taken ten correct steps. It seems that the next step ought to be recognition.

In my view, this is the utopian idea behind academic education. The art market is built around meanings, artists’ messages and the cult of individuality. The number of hours invested in technique does not, in itself, turn into professional recognition.

That is why a strong academic artist and a strong artist with no art education face the same task at some point. You need to understand what exactly you are creating and how your art exists within contemporary art.

Technical training can be a great help here. But it remains a tool.

The art world runs on its own logic

There is another boundary, which I consider far more significant than a degree. The art world is, essentially, a separate room.

Someone may be a recognised watercolourist, an incredibly good illustrator or a very serious academic artist, but this will have no direct bearing on how they establish themselves in the art world. There is no direct route in from related fields.

The world of contemporary art is waiting for artists who make contemporary art. So professionalism in illustration, academic painting or another creative field should not be devalued, but nor should it be treated as an automatic pass into contemporary art.

Contemporary art, in my view, can be made by someone who meets several requirements. First, they know their way around the contemporary art world, because without that it is impossible to move forward. Second, they understand what contemporary art is.

And this is where having a degree decides very little. An academically trained artist also has to find their bearings in this system if they previously worked in a different professional environment.

What to write about education in your CV

In an artist’s documents a simple rule applies: if we do not have something, we do not add it. Just as in an ordinary job application. There is no need to explain the absence of an academic degree or to fill the empty space on purpose.

There is no stigma attached to an artist having no formal education. If the portfolio is strong and the CV is good, whether or not there is academic training will not play a decisive role.

The “Education” section itself, meanwhile, is broader than a degree from an art school. It can include study with a particular master or other training in the field of contemporary art. It needs to be recorded accurately. If you took part in a programme that included a module by a well-known artist, it is more correct to list the programme itself than to write that you studied directly under that artist.

Education in a related field can also work in favour of your professional story. Say an artist works on projects connected with psychology and has an education in psychology. For us, this means that the foundation of such art is serious and research-based. For the same reason, international portfolios sometimes include academic research related to the theme of the artistic practice.

Why artists still list their degree

There is another side to this. For the general public and many collectors, academic training still adds confidence that they are dealing with a professional artist. So if artists have it, they usually list it.

It is simply that the same biography can be read in different ways. A viewer may see the degree as confirmation of professional training. In the art world, people will look at the portfolio, the CV and the kind of art the artist makes.

That is why I would not reduce the question “is an art education necessary?” to a choice between a compulsory degree and giving up on education altogether. Academic training can provide a strong technical foundation. An artist without it can arrive at their medium by another route. And an understanding of contemporary art, and of the environment in which you want to work, will be needed in both cases.