The Yale School of Art’s Painting/Printmaking program approaches the medium as a discursive system that is shaped by history, convention, and debate. The curriculum places painting and printmaking within a global history of aesthetics and asks students to examine how mediums are defined, used, and changed over time. The program emphasizes the analysis of the relationships between form and content, practice and theory, research and embodied experiences, as well as language and its effects.
While our students primarily work within painting and/or printmaking, many of them engage the histories of these mediums through textiles, ceramics, video, sculpture, publishing, and other media. The program positions graduate study as a focused time to take risks and experiment through self and collective criticality, while building an art practice separate from the demands of an increasingly market-driven art world.
Core instruction includes individual and group critiques with faculty, visiting critics, and visiting artists, alongside seminars and studio electives. Across studio visits, critiques, town halls, and program decision-making, the formats of exchange are intentionally structured to support the ways artists contextualize their practice and to foster the free exchange of differing ideas.
