I liked this essay by James Elkins and his ongoing example of Monet. He makes a point in the essay that art is different to every person who paints, and therefore cannot be said to be a certain way. This must make art very difficult to teach.
I remember early on in school, when I was about 13 or 14, being set a task to copy Monet's waterlilies for an art project on impressionism. No matter how accurate the marks were it did not hold the vivality or movement Monet's did, which is exactly what Elkins is talking about in his essay. What it did do however, was make me aware of just how the paintings were built up, and made me really study a paiting in detail for the first time.
Because that artist created that picture from his head, it was his passion. Therefore no matter how passionate you are about Monet's own piece of work it will always be like a bad copy. The skills involved in creating that picture was that of building the picture up itself. Us copying it is simply that, and we are not intuitively placing marks as we know where they should be. This will always make a picture stale, even possibly unwittingly.
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