COMMENCEMENT 2014
Naturally, our 2014 Commencement ceremony was filled with many cheers and tears. While the Class of 2014 looked forward to ushering in new phases of their promising careers, they also couldn't help looking back, reflecting upon time spent at the Academy. As words of praise and encouragement commemorated the festivities, perhaps, the most stirring was delivered by Honorary Doctorate recipient Walton Ford.
Walton, a powerful painter who often "meditates on
the violent and bizarre moments at the intersection of human
culture and the natural world," stormed the podium much like the primal
subjects of his monumental watercolors. Once front and center, he
revealed a vulnerability that captured the audience's attention. Throughout his speech, Walton conveyed the importance and rarity of "an education of
beauty" encouraging artists to take their time and stay inspired.
At
the end of the 20 minute address, the audience erupted with applause.
The response was a meaningful sign that Walton's words of wisdom had not
only resonated in that moment, but will also serve as an enduring source of inspiration over time.
Keep reading below for Walton Ford's full commencement speech. And to watch the video, please click here:
WALTON FORD’S
COMMENCEMENT SPEECH
5.22.14
Thank you Eileen, thanks
so much. Thank you Peter, David, Wade, all the Academy students. It's such an honor to be here. It's just a
great honor. You do know me because I came to the school. So I don't have that much
material. So you're going to hear some of it
again probably but some of it is maybe it's useful for you to hear it twice. I
don’t know.
You're my heroes, all
the graduates the Class of 2014. You’re
my heroes. It's like you're studying artists. I have so much respect for
you. You all had to fight to be here as Eileen said. It's heroic,
it really is. You had to convince your loved
ones, you had to borrow money, you had to overcome discouraging predictions of
failure, you have to cope with insane rents, all to study within a tradition
that many would argue is an anachronistic, obsolete, reactionary,
unnecessary.
And once you won the battle
to be here, and once you were accepted into this community, you were presented
with one of the most incredibly challenging tasks, an almost impossibly
difficult task. You started to train yourself to really see. To really see how the
human body moves. To really see the
luminosity of skin over muscle and blood and bone. To really see how warm
and cold light falls on our beautiful breathing world. But that's not all. You were challenged to communicate what you
saw to the rest of us. To communicate with ancient, lovely, sometimes
completely uncooperative stuff. Gliding, grimy charcoal,
smooth clay, creamy oil paint, the bony burning plaster. And you tried to use these materials to speak,
but the language is a hard one to learn.
So you felt clumsy, you felt awkward. You felt like your gifts
eluded you. Everyone who tries to master these materials feels this
way. But because of this intense concentrated effort, this effort to see
and then communicate, you can no longer look at the world the same way.
Because this kind of study switches something on inside of you that cannot be switched
off. You begin to rotate objects in
space in your head, the most advanced kind of computer program is in there
now. You begin to see patterns of light and shade. You begin to see structure and meaning. And in this concentrated seeing, you join a
great sisterhood and a great brotherhood of people through thousands of years
of history who tried to see in this exact same way. You join the
prehistoric genius drawing fluid bulls in the caves of Lascaux. You join Dürer,
training his super high-def renaissance eye on a tuft of meadow. You join
Alice Neel mixing blue and magenta and yellow tints to render the drum tight
skin of a woman's late term belly. This is a really great club to get into and
you're in. You know the doorman now.
So I just talked about
how hard it was to do what we do, and the struggle, and the challenge. So why
do it? Why take it on? Well it's all too daunting unless it's
play. And this is what I mean about
play. If you watch children at the beach building sandcastles you will
learn a lot about what you’ll need to do in your studio. There is no doubt
these kids are playing, but watch how they play. They are serious, they are
focused, they’re intensely concentrated. They use the tools at hand. They
don't complain about lack of materials. They
got cups, they got straws, they got seaweed, they got shells. They get
wet. They get gritty. If there are few of them, they argue. Somebody gets
bossy. The pale ones get burnt up in the
sun. And they keep at it until the tide comes
in and it washes it all away. It's urgent, serious, play that's not
wedded to an outcome.
It's not the same thing
as fun. People get killed playing-- skateboarders, boxers, skiers. People
get killed playing, it's serious business. So it's life or death this kind of
play I'm talking about. And it can get
frustrating. And it can seem futile, effort can get washed away with the
tides and yet this is the ideal place to be as an artist, in this playful
space.
This aspect of play in the studio is what makes great art. Sandcastles,
tree houses, homemade Halloween costumes, serious beautiful childlike play.
This is the energy you need to bring to everything you do as an
artist. So you go in the studio and you get playful. Highs stakes,
life or death, playful. Playful like Picasso, playful like Lina Wertmüller, playful like Andy Warhol, playful like Louise Bourgeois.
So now I named a few artists and since you're young artists you can start
beating up on yourselves. That's what you're
going to do. I just mentioned great artists and what comes to mind when I
mention such artists is work of the highest master. And when we look at
such work, it is easy to beat up on ourselves. We're young artists, we're
students, we're particularly good at beating up on ourselves for not creating
masterpieces right away. But that is not
your job quite yet. This is a time of gathering. You're gathering ingredients.
I want you to think of this time as the time at a farmers market. 
You have a basket. You
are looking around. What do you like to eat? What looks fresh? What’s
available? Just gather stuff. Put it in your basket. That's the first step and
in many ways, the most important step in making something delicious to eat
later. So don't rush it. Enjoy this process. Steal a grape,
you know? Look carefully, squeeze, taste, smell you know? While you're at the
market, does it make sense to beat yourself up for not being in the kitchen? For
not plating a completed meal? Common sense says it's not time yet.
You are gathering, pick up a nice tomato. It's not time to open a
restaurant. You are gathering. Smell
that melon. Is it ripe? It's not
time yet to write a cookbook.
Every artist has times of gathering and times of creation. The really great and fortunate artists
have several times of gathering and creating, alternating times of creating where
it all comes together and you have a body of work to do. But every single artist starts out with an
extended time of concentrated gathering. So take your time at this great
farmers market. You're going to museums,
galleries, book stores, searching the web, taking suggestions, watching films,
hitting the streets, catching live music, theater-- you're gathering, gathering.
Finding your heroes, finding your mentors, finding your nemeses.
And this is your job.
Cook it all up later and then you know.
You'll follow the recipes for a bit, but you don't need to write your
own recipes for a while. There is time for all that. Life is long.
But this advice to slow
down and enjoy the gathering time is not to diminish the urgency of what can be
done with your gifts. The education that you have begun, this intense
seeing, this mastery of these ancient mediums, this humanistic study of
nature, this process of gathering, this education of beauty, what a rare thing
in today's world.
And there is proof of
this rarity. Just get in the car and take a drive. If you drive up
or down the east coast on a major route and you look out the window at the
banality of the giant, urban, mega, strip mall that uber city that we call
Bos/Wash, Boston to Washington, look out the window it’s pretty banal. It’s a
wasteland. Beauty, craft, design, in short supply. There is plenty
of horror, ugliness, and banality out there. But here at the Academy, you have
touched on the cure. You’ve touched on an education that pushes back with
everything that makes humanity okay.
I remember as a student
at your age standing inside of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. I was surrounded by Lorenzetti murals depicting good
and bad government. All of medieval Italy
is painted on those walls. Beautiful women on horseback, pigs in the
street, falconers, sinners, saints and outside of Palazzo Pubblico is the medieval city of Siena spread out on its soft Tuscan Hill edged
by olive groves and vineyards. And
something in the moment of standing in that place changed inside me. I
didn't long for the primeval forest that was cleared to make way for the town
and I didn't think about the corruption of the Lords that financed the building
of it. I was simply overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. The murals, the
building, the town. I was an American suburban kid and I needed to see a Tuscan
Hill town to understand that not only nature, but also people could create
beautiful ravishing things.
And this education you
have begun connects you to all that. Yours is a school that a renaissance
master would recognize. He'd see the casts, the skeletons. He'd smell the paint, he’d see the
posing nudes. We need this beauty so desperately. And we need you to make things for us.
We need more eyes that have followed the swooping curves of the human
skull. We need more hands that have pushed and pulled clay until it looks
like and feels like human muscle. We need more minds that have puzzled out
the mixing of paint into the myriad tints of human skin. Because this is
an education in magnificent beauty. This is an education in the perfection
of design. This is an education in visual ravishment. I can only hope
that when you go out there some of it rubs off.
