A smell of oil-paint and turpentine wafts through the corridors, a fragrance that fills artists with joy and lay-people with awe: the aroma of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The historical building on the eastern bank of the Rhine enjoys a high reputation worldwide: Paul Klee, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter are just a few of the great names who have been engaged here as professors. Today, too, the “masters” are from the elite of German art: Jörg Immendorff, Thomas Ruff, Rosemarie Trockel, A.R. Penck and the “artist prince” Markus Lüpertz, director of the academy. Once a year, the venerable building is open to the public, and on that occasion it simply overflows with works by the approximately 550 students of “free art”: objects from the sculpture and painting, photography and architecture classes. This year, that week in February attracted almost 30,000 visitors who, as curious spectators, gallerists or talent-spotters, wandered around the studios taking a closer look at the paintings, sculptures and installations. Young art from Germany is currently in demand. The prices are going up, and the art market is thriving. For the Düsseldorf students, however, that doesn’t count. They are concerned not so much with sales, as with the reputation of, and their final certificate from, the academy. And a certificate from Düsseldorf, a so-called “academy letter” – otherwise known as a “diploma” – really carries weight. Of Germany’s 25 art academies, Düsseldorf is the most famous.

Raindrops crawl like wandering snails across the lofty studio windows. In the background, Düsseldorf’s skyline emerges, dominated by insurance company and fashion store buildings. “Our academy is an island, far removed from the world,” says Johanna Rzepka, 28, as she looks out. This could even become a melancholic moment for her, as today is her last day at the academy, the day on which she will, hopefully, receive her “academy letter”. She is dressed completely in black: feminine black high-heeled shoes, knee-length skirt, her hair rolled up in a shining Spanish-style bun. She walks restlessly around the four-metre-high studio, three steps to the right, two straight ahead, and around part of the installation she has set up for the occasion: a television set showing her passionate video, Johanna in a motorcyclist’s outfit with goggles. In that video, the petite Pole, who was born in Krakow, smashes neon tubes until snow-white clouds, generated by the mercury, billow up. She admits that she did not know about the mercury effect, but she accepted it. “As Heraclitus says: War is the father of all things.” She laughs, somewhat nervously. She is waiting for the examining commission, and has another hour to go – an hour that will separate present and future, ordinary and bourgeois life, the creative from the qualified artist, or the genius, who always seems to live more intensely than other people. Tobias Berger has steered a middle course. He strides down the wide staircase as if setting off on an expedition: clad in a quilted coat over a leather jacket. The 33-year-old is an assistant doctor in a psychiatric clinic, and a passionate photographer. Will he give up his work as a doctor for art? “I enjoy my work too much for that,” he says and explains how he links his profession and his passion. He first worked for a year as a doctor in South Africa, before travelling the land photographing mine vehicles. And one of those giants is on exhibition, a precisely composed photograph which indicates that today Berger is a successful guest-student in the photography class of Thomas Ruff, the professor who studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher in Düsseldorf and is now himself as famous as those masterful photographers of industrial buildings. Markus Lüpertz paces the corridor. He is a person the students respect, even if, for an artistic spirit, respect is almost something contradictory. What does the director personally wish his graduates? The 64-year-old looks at the heavy gold rings on his fingers: “the experience of the love and admiration of their masters.”

Lüpertz enjoys making statements like that, and on festive occasions his students listen in silence to the poems he likes to recite: “For the sake of the future, I want students that are at home on the sea of the abstract, in the valley of the absurd and in the heaven of the ingenious,” he informs his future students in an introductory lecture. It is a wonderful statement, and an important one, too, a statement of the kind that are often hewn in stone, in the knowledge that in the long term stones are difficult to carry. Even though the professors are not always there, their presence is still always felt. A glance into the classrooms reveals that Immendorff’s students have certainly been inspired by the charisma and style of their master. Isn’t there a danger that the teachers will become gurus? Martin Breuer rejects this. The 25-year-old studies under Immendorff. He is standing in his bare feet, the same feet that are to take him to China next semester to gain new experiences. He believes: “What is important is interchange with others, the support in the classes, the discourse. In my quiet little garret at home I do not question as much and cannot develop as quickly.” And the influence of the professors? “It’s not all that great really. They come in one day a week and discuss things with us, but the real exchange of ideas takes place among us students.”

Can art actually be taught, can it be learnt? Admission to the academy is only granted to those who have been found to have artistic talent by a commission – on the basis of the 20 artworks they have submitted. The “academy letter” is awarded after seven semesters, at the earliest. And what happens in between? Albert Oehlen, who studied under the great Sigmar Polke, has been holding classes at the Kunstakademie for five years. “You can help to resolve an artist’s contradictions,” says the 55-year-old. Fifteen students attend his class and admire him because he is so dedicated, while at the same time remaining modest: “I don’t adhere to any philosophy,” he says, “I simply make all that I have to offer available.” Rita McBride also does this. The American artist from New York, famous for her objects and installations, was appointed to the academy two semesters ago and teaches a manageably small class. The 45-year-old sums up her concept concisely: “I don’t make judgements about my students, as that hinders their development. I make suggestions, try to find solutions with them.”

The corridors of the academy’s basement floor are filled with the sound of the music of the spheres. Three naked young muses are dancing around a fountain, and for a moment I am reminded of the provocative actions of the late 1960s. Will these Düsseldorf muses involve their audience in provocatively vivid action, as Valie Export once did? No, today’s muses scatter rose petals, then dress carefully again and go for a cup of tea in the college restaurant. On the second floor, the high double doors to Johanna’s studio open and out file the members of the examining commission, headed by Markus Lüpertz. She remains behind, an ecstatic expression still on her face: “I’m really so happy,” she says, her “academy letter” in her hands. But what now? “I’ve always wanted to open a small painting school,” she tells me. The video is still running in the background, with Johanna smashing those neon tubes for all she’s worth. She looks at the screen and says, laughing: “Professor Lüpertz advised me not to show it to a man.” She grins, “not before I’m married, that is.”