Page 38 - Studio International - September 1966

Interview with Herbert Read

'I think we would benefit from the abolition of art schools, but we do need design schools'

Victor Willing It is now more than twenty years since materials and invention. You can see how a student can
Education through Art appeared. have original ideas about the use or exploitation of
Herbert Read Yes, and it is, I suppose, the most influential material. This basic course which has been carried
book I have ever written. There is now an international through with great success by one or two teachers like
movement for Education through Art. Its last confer- Victor Pasmore at Newcastle, Harry Thubron and Tom
ence was in Japan; this year's will be held in Prague. Hudson, has not met with much approval officially.
So far this movement has had very little effect in this V. W. It is widely suggested that what we need now are
country on the official mind, which is, as you know, very schools of environmental design which would include
much bound to an examination system. I have always building, town planning, and industrial design.
believed that it was impossible to examine art on any H.R. The Ulm idea is a good one in principle and is
academic basis. If you are teaching design for a purpose, proving very successful; but again it would mean radical
functional design, that is another question. It is possible reorganization of art education, and one almost despairs
to have standards and tests in practical design. My own of getting reorganization of that radical kind.
feeling is that art schools should be design-oriented; at V. W. How could it be brought about if industrial de-
present the 'free' arts have a traditional prestige which is signers and architects are in favour?
reflected in the appointments. H.R. One could make a recommendation to the Depart-
V. W. It is part of the popular philosophy that the fine ment of Education and Science for such a reform.
artist has an overall grasp of art education not to' be V W: In a meeting of industrial designers in 1961 chaired
expected of designers. by Misha Black it was proposed that the Diploma in Art
H.R. The solution for this is to have what is called a basic and Design should become two diplomas—one for fine
design course, a first-year course which could separate arts and one for design. Though Misha Black had kind
people who had ability for design from those with an things to say about the role of the fine artist in a design
ability for expression. school, I think the designers did not want to be ridden
V. W. The basic design course is usually thought of as a by the fine artist.
way of cultivating the sense of form. H.R. I think that what Misha Black has in mind, and I
H.R. I think form is in some way fundamental. If a certainly have in mind, is that one does not want to fore-
student has not got an instinct for form he is not likely go the fine art principle, to arrive at a point where we
to be any good at anything in the arts, because even in regard the arts as merely utilitarian. That would be a
what I have been calling free art, or expressive art — that danger if we had a design-oriented art education.
is, painting as ordinarily understood, or engraving or V. W. 'Skills and disciplines' are mentioned in the Cold-
sculpture—it is still necessary to have a sense of form; stream report. Do they exist?
also, a basic course can test sensibility in handling H.R. Yes, they exist, but they are much misunderstood.
What we call discipline is not a very clear concept. There
is a discipline in the sense of something which has been
Note on Sir Herbert Read In his Education through Art, 1943, Her-
learnt until it is instinctive like 'forming fours' in drill,
bert Read proposed that 'Art should be the basis of education'.
He did not advise that this education be limited to 'art education' but I think there is another kind of discipline which is the
as such, 'which should more properly be called visual or plastic matching of the form to the emotion. This was the basis
education.'
of the free verse movement in poetry. The same discipline
.. I believe that what is wrong with our educational system is
is present in a movement so superficially undisciplined
precisely our habit of establishing separate territories and
as action painting; one soon learns to distinguish between
inviolable frontiers: and the system I propose ... has for its only
object the integration of all biologically useful faculties in a single those action painters who have this inner sense of disci-
organic activity. In the end I do not distinguish science and art, pline and those who merely splash about.
except as methods, and I believe that the opposition created
V. W. So discipline in this sense is philosophical ?
between them in the past has been due to a limited view of both
activities.' H.R. Or pyschological. There is such a thing as free
., each individual is born with certain potentialities which have expression, which has been talked about a lot, especially
a positive value for that individual and it is his proper destiny to in relation to children's art. In modern poetry and
develop these potentialities within the framework of a society painting there is a kind of permissiveness which seems to
liberal enough to allow for an infinite variation of types'. be undisciplined and might give the illusion that there
However:
is no discipline in fine arts. This is wrong. The poet or
.. education must be a process, not only of individuation, but
painter does not have freedom unless it is measured
also of integration which is the reconciliation of individual
uniqueness with social unity.' against some standard. This enables the artist to appre-
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