Page 24 - Studio International - September 1969

Waiting for be equally open-minded; they go ahead with that the people on that Council, many of

what they want to, and lo! the Summerson them with personal knowledge of the peculiar
Coldstream Council's blessing goes with them. nature of art schools, actually welcomed initi-
Limitations? Of course. The Coldstream
ative and preferred hearing what schools
system had to be sold to people who had little wished to do to being asked what schools
thought of needing art schools, let alone of should be doing.
Norbert Lynton digging into their pockets for better buildings, Take this current demand for network struc-
better equipment and an exceptionally favour- tures. It would obviously be very nice if
able student/staff ratio. So it had to include a students in art schools could make free use of
few educational symbols which they would the facilities and know-how that schools have
The cover of the Penguin Education Special, recognize. Students have to prove that they (or should have). Students with a creative
The Hornsey Affair, shows manacled hands warrant this expensive process before they urge would no doubt achieve a great deal.
desperately reaching up to the white bird of start, and at the other end they have to go The less urgently creative ones would prob-
liberty. This just shows how ludicrous the through remarkably simple routines to show ably have a good time and might find some-
whole business has got. that they have done splendidly, averagely thing worthwhile en route. The timid ones
The troubles at Hornsey and at Guildford, or badly. Of course, neither the entrance might get less timid. The evasive ones would
and 90 per cent of the debates that ensued, requirements nor 'finals' have anything much be able to look busy. I have doubts about its
had nothing directly to do with the Cold- to do with creative talent. Yet the entrance educational virtue, believing that you learn
stream system—the 'notorious Coldstream requirements have opened the art schools to more from pushing one problem a long way
system' as ignorant outsiders are now bright boys and girls who would otherwise than from short-circuiting several. But of
licensed to call it. That system, in the person have been bullied into other, more measurably course the real argument against a free net-
of Sir John Summerson, chairman of the respectable, institutions. Anyway, there is the work is the obvious one: it is not feasible.
Council set up to implement it, accepted all famous loophole—and it's a comment on the You could do it if you multiplied equipment,
the kicks that were going with a willingness great majority of art school principals, not on specialist and technical staff, space, etc., and
that still seems to me culpable. They—those the system, that they have used it so rarely quartered student numbers. Governmental
members of the Coldstream committee and and so apologetically. pressure is in the opposite direction : schools
the Summerson Council who form the work- The NDD system was rotten. Good things are being told to bring in more students, do
ing party for whose pronouncements we are could happen within it, of course, but they with less staff, and to close down uncrowded
now waiting—stampeded themselves into de- could also be stopped from happening by out- courses and departments.
fensive positions. Yet the troubles and the side veto. I recall a whole year of sculpture The Coldstream system does not forbid a
debates, if we ignore most of the verbal mud, students failed because the external assessor painting student to make a film or a chair.
are to do with quite other things. With, first, appointed by the Ministry, an RA sculptor Around 1960 it was drawn up in broad area
local folly: unbalanced schools pushed in pur- whose affections do not stretch to anything terms, and the Summerson people have given
suit of improper goals, plus autocratic devious- post-Carpeaux, just did not like the work. every sign that they are willing to see them
ness in the face of protest. And, second, with There was no contact then between the interpreted even more broadly. But anything
the general position of the artist and designer external assessors and the schools: the work approaching the sort of mobility that a net-
in this country (or, for that matter, in this was sent to them and they pronounced on it; work system implies demands the maximum
world), and the third-grade position grud- there was no discussion, no appeal. of collaboration within art schools and here
gingly accorded to education, particularly This created a passionate demand for self- we meet the usual interdepartmental jealous-
non-technological education. direction which the Coldstream system was ies and suspicions. Coldstream never said the
I hesitate to say that the Coldstream system designed to meet. It explicitly invited schools area divisions weren't to be crossed but there are
is good. What I know is that it has hardly to steer themselves towards their own ideals. plenty of 'keep out' notices in the schools.
been tried. From personal experience I know To this day I am astonished that this invita- One of the 'impositions' Coldstream made is
that, compared with the NDD system that tion could be made and supported with public the art history and liberal studies element.
preceded it, it is liberal, optimistic, non- money. What the Coldstream people had not Coldstream said that about 15 per cent of a
authoritarian. The better Dip.AD schools in realized was how rare ideals are and how few student's time should be spent on non-studio
this country, meaning those not overly bur- people want to, let alone can, steer. Some or workshop activities, that art history should
dened with self-imposed fears, are the most schools seized the opportunity. To their great occupy a major part of this time, and that this
open-minded, open-ended places in the world credit, many local authorities helped—a part should be shown (through examination
(ask anyone who has studied art on the Conti- gesture of faith that some of them must be of some sort) to have been done satisfactorily.
nent or in America; compare notes with regretting now. Other schools imitated the There may have been a bit of phoneyness in
people in other sorts of education institutions). bold ones. The rest just fiddled about ner- this : it is certainly one of the reassuring sym-
They take the few limitations of the Dip.AD vously, reluctant to permit anything not al- bols run up for the outside world. But it also
system in their stride: they have their own ready tested elsewhere and bearing a stamp of reflected a demand from within art schools
ambitions and standards, their own character; approval from the Summerson Council. for studies of this sort. Coldstream recognized
they pick external assessors who are going to What these schools could not understand was this demand, suggested 15 per cent as a

Contributors STEPHEN BANN is a lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities SU BRADEN is a founder of 'Pavilions in the Parks'.
at the University of Kent. He has recently completed a
to this issue study of contemporary painting and is working on an JEAN CLAY, the French art critic, edits Robho, Paris.
anthology of Constructivist documents. ROBIN DENNY, the painter, is organizing the Biederman
GENE BARO is a frequent contributor to Studio Inter- retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, London, this
national. He also contributes to Art International, The autumn.
London Magazine and other periodicals. NAUM GABO, the constructive artist, has had retrospec-
tive at The Tate and the Moderna Museet and in the
JONATHAN BENTHALL is to read a paper on `symbiotic
art' at the International Congress of Cybernetics, United States.
Imperial College, London, 2-6 September. CHARLES HARRISON is assistant editor of Studio International.