Page 54 - Studio International - December 1972

Contrasts: English and American art students

Michael Rothenstein

In considering American and English student It is the same with Lichtenstein. His work
contrasts one should note that London itself on the wall becomes a voice filling the
acts like a huge magnet; every art school surrounding space, creating a style of single
south of the Scottish border is drawn to some force, a jetstream of large and unmistakable
extent within this powerful magnetic field. ideas. Hence, unlike the English student, who
Inside the Greater London area, moreover, a entertains more qualified ideas, distinctions
group of very dominant art colleges are more finely drawn, his American counterpart
grouped together. Student competition to is apt to brood largely on the single meaning
enter these is intense, creating an elite of a of a single, 'loud voice', concept. He thinks
very special kind, creating also a close more about message than medium.
network of interrelated events: gallery and The UK student is involved in situations
museum private views, annual diploma shows of lower key. Whatever pressures are brought
and college parties, the activities of the to bear by changing aesthetic fashions are
ICA and Roundhouse together with somewhat palliated; softened by a more
numerous happenings, underground events, stable background, and one more richly
films, the still powerful attractions of rock furnished. Singleness of concept merges in
groups and so on. multiplicity: outlines become more varied,
While remaining the mecca of the looser, more tentative. The enormous record
ambitious student, New York can have no such of history stares back at him: he works closer
direct influence. America is too big. Day after to the presence of European masters.
day you can drive across the Midwest work of Jasper Johns, Dubuffet or Vasarely, an No doubt a given student, hot-foot to
flatlands until the sheer vastness of the country experience likely to exert some influence on the attain a clear and personal style, wishes
reduces the sense of self to a featureless speck. students' feelings with regard to these artists. to forget these presences; to leave
A day of boiling summer weather in New Hence the physical presence of sculpture and alone a backlog of achievement quite so
Mexico can be a day of bitter driving snow painting is largely withdrawn. Art as an object daunting. No doubt the more sensitive
along the Canadian border states. This to be directly inspected may be largely student is inclined to lower his voice unable to
enormous scale, deserts, mountains, cities, unknown. Sculpture is rarely scrutinized as forget this soaring line of achievement.
plains, forms the mosaic backdrop of all a construct viewed in many lights from many Certainly he is somewhat burdened with the
American life. This drives the more isolated angles; as something that can be touched with past and the most active and ambitious are
American universities to become largely the hand, or measured against the scale and the first to straighten their backs, happy to
self-sufficient: they are city states, with New balance of your own body. Painting and let a too heavy heritage loosen its hold.
York a distant dream beyond the horizon. sculpture become non-physical events: I have set similar projects in both American
Contrasts are offered of a special kind. At textureless, weightless, lacking in bodily and English colleges. The single-minded
higher staff levels, there may be much density. The way sculptures take the light, or attack of the Americans produced some striking
manoeuvering for power and position with a appear in some understood dialogue with a results. A student from New York took an old
president flying often to Washington DC 'real' situation is made difficult or impossible wooden desk to pieces, printed each part, and
in the capacity of fund raiser. Equally the to read. The work of art tends always to work reconstructed it as a 'printed object'. Others,
Professor or Dean may seek advancement by on the imagination in a state of divorce from from Chicago and Athens, Ohio, created three
frog-hopping to progressively larger direct tactile and optical experience. dimensional printed still-lifes from groups of
universities; hence the top surface may heave Turning to the student situation in the big packages and tins, or made printed objects
with movement; conflicting currents moving city, the style of advertising, too, must play its from collections of tools, spanners, hammers
in different directions, while at the lower part: the ad has an altogether larger presence and so on. Some of these prints had a very
faculty levels the opposite may be true. in the US than in the UK. It accelerates the remarkable presence: the best resulted from
Manned by whole-time staff, some art colour, pace and scale; the clangor of urban a very excited straightforward and direct
departments — with few outside visitors — may life; fostering a public style at once large and response to outside 'reality', and certainly, in a
develop a grass roots independence, an old somewhat loud. The big city encourages you control situation, the Americans proved
fashionedness — even a certain eccentricity — to raise your voice in order to be heard. Big altogether more ingenious, energetic and apt
a tendency now intensified by the cut-down in scale, big movement, clear strident colour, in these explorations than the English ones.
university funding. And though prevailing dramatic opposition of shape, may be one No doubt they found some reassurance in this
aesthetic modes still have dominant influence result. Another the dramatization of the uncomplicated activity, from which all
with a minority, the regional situation may aesthetic posture, the insistence on doing what aesthetic values had been withdrawn, and one
qualify that influence for a larger group. For you are doing in a well directed voice, with that offered a highly sensuous dialogue with
one thing exerted pressures are more likely single commitment, so the message is clear. both processes and materials. An antidote
to come through alienated channels, Rothko and Newman, for instance, expanded to the 'ideas confusion' that the unsorted
reproductions, books, colour slides, seminars, their fields of colour with telling simplicity: environment of the large state university so
films and occasional TV features. Audio- Rothko his fluffy colour blocks, Newman his quickly generates.
visual aids, such as video tapes, are used and single contrasting stripe, until the clearly Unlike the English student the American
the student may find himself sitting in a black directed energy of the message sinks very turns to craft as offering relief from the tensions
auditorium watching a quick-change series of deeply into our understanding, suffusing our of unsorted conceptual thought. You sense an
highly polychromatic interpretations of the imagination with a single and powerful glow. attitude to these studies quite different from
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