Since the beginnings of art history, the study of art has been rooted in expressing the form of the human figure. As far back as Michelangelo and the great artists of the Italian Renaissance, artists were forced to undergo rigorous apprenticeships, learning how to sketch from the nude human figure until their efforts approached perfect mimesis.
Today, the main features of classical art training include basic drawing, cast drawing, cast painting, life drawing and painting and reproductions of works by masters. Training in basic drawing revolves around exploring various drawing techniques, such as pen and ink, charcoal, silverpoint and pencil. With cast drawing, art students are instructed to apply these techniques to drawing plaster casts of famous sculptural works by masters such as Michelangelo.
From the 1970s, with the growth of fine art programs in colleges and universities throughout North America, combined with the popularization of new media such as conceptual art, performance and video art, art education began to shift away from the classical standards of the past and more toward theory.
The shift in art training from the practical/classical to the theoretical/contemporary has resulted in a recent proliferation of art that is more cerebral than visual--that is, geared more towards the mind rather than the eye. This has contributed to the notion that contemporary art is something that can only be enjoyed by a snobbish elite, as opposed to more popular forms, such as cinema and pop music, which are geared toward the masses. Some art schools, however, continue to base their studies on models of classical art training, despite current fads.
As critic Robert Hughes noted, with regards to the messy Abstract Expressionist painting of Willem de Kooning, "he brought with him something that very few of his colleagues in the New York School of the forties and fifties would turn out to have: a thorough, guild-based art training that centered on formal drawing of the figure." Hughes is one of the few art critics in recent years to constantly remind his readers of the necessity of a classical art education. For this reason, he is often rebuked as being conservative.