The Postgraduate Course leading to a Doctorate of Art (Painting) at the Academy of Fine Arts

Introduction

Art courses in general, including the fine arts, do not, through the knowledge and competences acquired, direct students towards the labour market, because the area for such work is restricted to culture and education institutions, such as theatres, museums, galleries, and to the teaching of art subjects in the educational system.

Since the main precondition for entry into an art course is a marked talent, and because in turn of the limited distribution of talent in the human population, a relatively small number of students are able to enrol in art courses. A still small number of graduates will be able subsequently to subsist dealing entirely with the creative arts. The public reception of creative potential – the artistic product – the music, the acting, paintings or sculptures in the free market is an extraordinarily unpredictable category.

The art field is a field for the expression of strong personal motivations, but it is an area also replete with personal risks. The life space of art is an area of creative freedoms that finds it very hard to submit to any form of institutional tutelage. Hence the only sure partners when in the business of passing through art courses are the parents of students and the institutions that society has charged with caring for and coordinating the development of the activities of art and culture, their contents and agendas. These institutions in Croatia are the ministries of culture and of science and education.

Because of the fact that a course in art is based on rare and special talents, student mobility in the university can be provided only in the group of theoretical subjects (art history, sociology, philosophy, aesthetics, a few really narrow areas of technology, computer sciences and teaching theory and practice).

The purpose of a specialist post-graduate course in printmaking is to deepen artistic sensitivity, that is, all the components of the creative potentials of the young artist: the imagination, innovative capacities, creative courage and responsibility.

The postgraduate specialist course in printmaking is open to the individual interests of students in one of the standard graphic specialities, that is, in the areas of:

1. RELIEF PRINTING; 2. INTAGLIO PRINTING; 3. PLANOGRAPHIC PRINTING; 4. STENCIL PRINTING.

On the basis of the overall curriculum for postgraduate studies, and in agreement with his or her supervisor, a student will choose electives relevant to the speciality selected, that is, according to his or her aptitudes and artistic options, and according to the need for creating the dissertation.

Since the curriculum is aimed at the mastering of knowledge and skills inherent in the expressive potential of a given printmaking area (and this is the precondition for the attainment of artistic excellence), in the curriculum provided it is possible to enrol and major / specialise in only one printmaking region.

Please find Graphic Arts Doctoral studies curriculum here (PDF document).