Page 35 - Studio International - September 1966

What kind of art education?

tenet of the Bauhaus and a misapplication of Montessori
in adult education. If Ulm has any interest for me it
is in this exclusion of self-expression from the education
of someone who is beyond the need of it. At Newcastle
the things we teach in the first year have this much in
common with Ulm; we try to prevent enjoyment in the
act of making marks for its own sake. I feel that a good
deal of effort should go into considering whether art at
the level we are talking about does overlap too much
with therapy.
V. W. If you were doing a basic course at a school of
`environmental design' do you think it would be the
same ?
R.H. Similar; it would work perfectly well because it is
a training of the mind and not a training in styles and
techniques. What puzzles me about Ulm though is that
it was initiated by artists—Maldonado, Bill, and others,
who were founders, came from the world of modern
abstraction, and then the principle was adopted that
fine art would have no place in their school of environ-
mental design. They denied that style was an important
Above An exercise in grouping: conflicting forces are implied by aspect of the production of consumer goods but the school
a linear means—the result is intended to be diagramatic, not evolved co-incidentally one of the strongest consumer
aesthetic
goods styles that has emerged in recent years. I would
have accepted this as one of the inevitable outcomes that
Above right 'An exercise in which the objective is to produce an ambiguous
image. It should be possible to read it as black forms on a white one might have looked forward to with some interest.
ground or vice versa with equal ease.'—Richard Hamilton Yet Maldonado thinks of this as a disaster that has be-
fallen Ulm.
V. W. The 'products' of an environmental design school,
builders and industrial designers, are involved in design
for the community. The Fine Art School does not have
traditionally a sense of responsibility to the community
in this way.
R.H. There is going to be a need to filter off people from
production. There are three possible solutions to the
problems that automation will bring. You can reduce
the number of working hours per man (this is happening
now). You can shorten the working life of each individual
by prolonging education and lengthening the retirement
span—with a short productive period in the middle.
There are limits to these means because a point of ineffi-
ciency is soon reached (and retired people aren't all that
happy.) You can also reduce the number of people en-
gaged in productive pursuits and stimulate guilt-free
non-productivity. One meaningful way of diverting pro-
ductive activity is to encourage people to work in useless
pursuits such as art and to make it possible for them to
contribute to the productive members of society some
enrichment of their leisure time. The art school is a very
good centre for thinking about this. We can distinguish
Above doing. Whereas someone in a physics department might between productive and non-productive units and let
Students in the first week not reveal it. them marry at some later stage than the pedagogic one.
of a basic design course
at Newcastle produce V. W. 'Self-expression', which has been for so long the V. W. That implies an art education which covers the
linear exercises avowed aim of art classes from infant to secondary edu- whole cultural development of the student.
cation, has often been most apparent alongside traditional R.H. Yes, his whole cultural development and the way he
Above right
Victor Pasmore speaking to teaching—perhaps thought of as a valuable release. I relates to society. At the moment art schools don't under-
the students at Newcastle; wonder if a high proportion of the casualties of traditional stand what they are doing—what their product is.
Richard Hamilton is seated education find their way into art schools? Art schools are Whether it is to produce artists, or designers, or teachers.
in the foreground.
not equipped for therapy, are they? What I am concerned with is producing people with
R.H. Tomas Maldonado's* main thesis about Ulm's good minds, who are capable of seeing society as a whole,
*Tomas Maldonado was
Rector of the Hochschule für pedagogical line is that it differs from the Bauhaus by re- trained to think constructively though not necessarily
Gestaltung until this year. jecting self-expression. He regards self-expression as a main productively. q
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