Page 25 - Studio International - September 1969

reasonable share of the timetable, and left it What we want to encourage is intelligent examination. I am more interested in it as an
to the schools to make something of it. And attitudes to the past as a basis for handling experience than as a means of assessment.
again, ignorance and timidity took charge in the present, and it is only when the past, a Meanwhile we wait for Coldstream Mark
too many places. part of it, is studied in some detail that this Two. The working party, or whatever it is
Art students today can have little idea, and becomes possible. It is not the business of the called now, has received a great quantity of
others may have forgotten, how soft-headed art historian to serve the stylistic or dogmatic information and suggestions. The longer they
art schools used to be. Minimal libraries or inclinations of the moment, though he may take over formulating their report the greater
no libraries at all, no sort of information work with them in mind. the danger that the evidence before them,
service, verbal or visual. Those NDD 'theses' I fear that if art history ceases to be an obli- and the opinions sent to them in the hot month's
that students had to produce to get their gatory course in art schools it will wilt and die. of 1968, will be out of date. No doubt they
diplomas were often the worst sort of parish The better students, however much they may have their own ideas. Those of them who are
magazine chatter. Some schools were strug- say that art history is all right, will not be connected with art schools will be aware that
gling against this, bringing in liberal studies inclined to put down their brushes or their views have already changed a good deal. The
of various sorts and finding the feedback spray guns, or take off their rubber gloves, to events of 1968 gave priority and glamour to
profitable. Some were running art history go to a seminar or a lecture. It will be the less attitudes that existed before and will go on
courses, with specialist staff or by encouraging ambitious-minded students who will be will- existing but do not necessarily represent the
studio staff to build up and pass on their ing to attend, mostly those aiming at school minds of the majority nor even the active
special interests. There was a general hunger teaching. Alas—such is the status of teaching minority in the schools. But I fear the influence
for more thinking and more knowledge; in this country—these are rarely the more of those who do not really know what art
Coldstream made it possible for this to be met interesting students. Art history courses will schools are like.
and, by writing it into the system, forced local lose their momentum and become more Some local authorities, for example, are now
authorities to recognize the need and to schoolish, and art schools will cease to proposing more cumbersome boards of gover-
finance it properly. attract the better teachers of art history. nors, involving staff and students, as a way of
Art history gets most of the kicks, and not all One can imagine a compromise solution : a seeming to encourage democratic methods
of them are undeserved. But those schools pattern of studies with obligatory courses in and of actually forestalling future protest
which appointed narrowly academic art the first years (say, Foundation and Dip. 1) movements. I suppose in some very large
historians to the new teaching positions have that became voluntary thereafter. But this institutions this may be necessary, but really
only themselves to blame. Perhaps some of would weaken the whole thing too. The best do so many of us have to waste our time at
the external assessors in art history have been art history work, the work that suggests that meetings ? Are we not going to find that in fact
narrowly doctrinaire too, but a wise school will there has been real cross-fertilization between governors can do very little?
know how to avoid them. Again, Coldstream's art history and studio, comes with growing There are two major issues which the Cold-
regulations were minimal. maturity. It is in their last years that the better stream people are now presumably wrestling
It has been an odd life for art historians—first students (better, usually, in both activities) with, and one prays that they will come up
invited into the schools to establish courses make the connections and begin to feed their with the right answers. Foundation courses :
that would bring Dip.AD recognition and personal discoveries back into art history. I should they or should they not be integrated
get the students their diplomas, and then value very highly the kind of understanding of with Dip.AD courses? The present situation
suddenly rounded on and asked to justify art history that artists and art students can is certainly odd and wasteful, but the prin-
their presence. Even in schools that on the bring to it, and want more of it. ciple of a course of visual studies preceding
whole think art historical studies worthwhile The recent fuss over examinations is marginal specialization still holds good. And, connected
our position has been uncomfortable. We and childish. It started as an echo of with this, there is the other issue : has the
teach their students, take them out of their com-plaints in universities, from students who marriage of art and design failed? Should
studios, invade their timetables, and then, in found themselves, after years of study, there be a divorce or is reconciliation possible ?
the end, interfere with th eir evaluation of assessed exclusively on their performance in a I know that certain designers, in influential
their student. whole succession of three-hour written papers. positions, should like to see design taught in
There is no absolute reason for having art In art schools written examination have separate institutions. They may talk of want-
history in art schools at all (but then there is formed one part of the assessment of one part ing links with technology rather than with art
no absolute reason for having art schools, of their studies. Of course, examinations, like (some artists would rather have links with
either). I see virtues in having a structured the teaching, can be narrow and oppressive. technology than with design departments),
course amid studies that are more and more But as long as students go on disclosing but I fear that what they really want is inde-
individual and ad hoc, in courses that bring in a written test abilities of which they had pendent, undisturbed professional training in
students together from separate departments, given little or no inkling in essays, seminars or design. I suspect incestuous tendencies and
that get people using words in conjunction tutorials, as long as the special and unreal should be sad to see these people permitted to
with visual and aesthetic facts. I do not see conditions under which they take this test turn an education programme into a cannon
that it is necessary for art students to know the occasion them to find in themselves ideas fodder production line for Madison Avenue.
history of art in detail; there's no reason why and insights they had not found before, so long There is evidence that the students would
they should be interested in it for its own sake. do I continue to see positive values in the resist this. q

ANTHONY HILL is a plasticien and theorist. He edited associated with Biederman since the early 1950s. BARBARA REISE is a senior lecturer in the history of art
Data—directions in art theory and aesthetics, published by at Coventry College of Art. She is a regular contributor
Faber and Faber in 1968. He will be showing at the TERRY MEASHAM was lecturer in art history at Cardiff to Studio International.
Kasmin Gallery in October. College of Art until July 1969. He is now in charge of
art history and complementary studies at Stourbridge BRYAN ROBERTSON formerly Director of the Whitechapel
VERA LINDSAY has published interviews with Picasso, College of Art. Gallery, is art critic for the Spectator.
Henry Moore, Oskar Kokoshka, and Liliane Lijn.
RICHARD MORPHET, Assistant Keeper in the modern col- GILLIAN WISE has worked in the constructivist idiom since
NORBERT LYNTON, head of the Art History department lection at The Tate Gallery, is working on a Richard 1958. Her last one-man exhibition was at the Axiom
at Chelsea School of Art, is art critic on the Guardian.
Hamilton retrospective exhibition scheduled for March Gallery 1967. In 1968 she was awarded a UNESCO
KENNETH and MARY MARTIN'S kinetic works were repre- 1970. fellowship (Prague).
sented at the last Nurnburg Biennale. They have been