Page 39 - Studio International - March 1967

Words are a poor medium. I am not a word-man but a it takes more than one man to both create a new idiom
painter, and David Bomberg was my master. When he and place it before the public in the space of a life-time.
died in 1957, he was virtually unknown and forgotten. The group worked closely and intimately as a unit,
If one had asked Bomberg why he painted he would have exhibiting together, stimulating each other, often working
replied very simply: 'It is the life.' This simple answer from the same motif whether in London, the provinces,
covered a very deep conviction, a conviction which I will Scandinavia, France or Spain. We did many different
do my best to demonstrate, but one that is impossible to jobs to get money for paint. Some of us worked as models
present in any final form. If it were possible there would in art schools and in this way acted as a kind of fifth-
he nothing left to paint. column undermining the academic system of teaching.
I first met David Bomberg when he was a teacher of In this way hundreds of students passed through Born-
drawing; he taught not at a major art school, the Slade berg's hands, many gravitated towards the group, but
or the Royal College, but at the City Literary Institute; only a few remained.
there he was, patiently expounding his basic principles to Like Leger and Andre Lhote, Bomberg taught his prac-
middle-aged ladies. I'd been disillusioned with the curri- tice, but unlike them he did not teach a method and he
culum of modern art schools, and dissatisfied with being hadn't any complete aesthetic system. His methods were
taught by eclectic teachers; I mean by men who attempt dogmatic and contradictory. It was a sort of battle
the impossible task of interpreting the practice of others between a trinity of teacher, student and model, a fight
while involved in that merry-go-round of teacher teach- which could not take place away from the materials. In
ing teacher who will in turn produce teachers; I had been this fight he was anything but restrictive. If the student
consciously searching for a master. In 1946 under Born- was painting in a perpetual gloom he would be shown
berg's guidance a few of us founded the Borough Group. means of lightening his palette, if he was tentative he
In the beginning it was composed of only six students. would be encouraged to become more engaged with the
With the exception of one who quickly dropped out in materials and throw it on in shovelfuls, to walk on it, or
search of a commercial career, all of us were dedicated attack it with the knife—any means of making the mark
people, who had consciously, not accidentally, sought out was permissible. If the paint was getting thick so that the
Bomberg as the only hope of salvation in British painting student couldn't see the wood for the trees he would be
at the time. (The only related development we discovered asked to use coloured papers. If he was using thick lines
much later in 1952 was in Sweden's Evert Lundquist.) which impeded the flowering of the form he could then
One reason for the group was Bomberg's recognition that experiment with small dots of colour. But if the student
were facile, using an aesthetic line, then Bomberg would
give him a great lump of charcoal and cite Modigliani
and John as examples of men who would tie the tool to
The Slade Picnic, c. 1912. Back row third from left David Bomberg; fourth from left Prof. Frederick the big toe to escape the domination of a facile hand. On
Brown; fifth from left C. Coe Child; Third row, Isaac Rosenberg (kneeling); third woman from left the other hand he didn't allow any student to completely
Hon. Dorothy Brett; Second row, first woman (with stick) Dora Carrington; Front row, first man
(braces) C. R.W. Nevinson ; next Mark Gertler; man with dog, Adrian Allinson; next, Stanley Spencer, abandon himself to the line, to the paint, the texture, the
Courtesy Daily Mirror sensuality of the brush; and he had no respect for the
brute force of the blowlamp, the bicycle, or any other
medium which savoured of trickery.
So you can see that Bomberg's approach to teaching
was essentially empirical. In the old apprenticeship
system the student worked closely by the side of the
master for some ten or twenty years, absorbing every
aspect of the job from colour-grinding to the articulation
of the forms in the composition. But, once that system had
broken down there had to be a short cut to bring the
student to a quick maturity. The problems to be faced
were not technical. As Bomberg saw it, the difficulty lay
in the fact that a student's critical faculty develops more
slowly than his creative potential. The master's job was
to bring him into a consciousness of what he was doing.
The student for his part has to maintain his confidence
until he himself learns to preserve the image, however
curious it may appear. By image, I mean, of course, the
image of a concrete object like a tree. When one is young
one is apt to destroy one's vital image in favour of some
academic sterile thing. It is a question of truth to con-
sciousness; R. G. Collingwood has described it very well
by saying: 'First we direct our attention towards a certain
feeling, or become conscious of it. Then we take fright at
what we have recognized; but not because the feeling, as
an impression, is an alarming impression', he goes on,
`but because the idea into which we are converting it
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