Page 52 - Studio International - May 1972

Educating good students—winners in a race for losers. exercise of taste (which is what formalist
Once armed with his diploma, or at the criticism—the 'ability' to discern what
artists termination of his post-graduate course, the Greenberg calls 'rightness of form' and what
typical fine-art student is cast adrift in a world Clive Bell called 'significant form'—must always
Charles Harrison for which his studies have in no way prepared reduce to).
him; as a producer of 'artworks' he becomes the The menace in the art-school situation is that
dummy in a sequence of evaluating processes the employment of modernist instant historicity
and market relations which he is not equipped —the product (and the prop) of 'educated
to understand or resist and over which he has sensibility' —in the critical-therapeutic 'teaching'
totally inadequate control (by contrast the young context, tends to create a climate of moral
American artist is usually nobody's fool when imperative for (i.e. in Skinner's term
it comes to making money); he is faced with an `reinforces') the production of commodities of a
exhibiting context in which there are no longer particular kind.
fellow students to share his (often ludicrously This is the irony of art education—in England
limited) concerns, only relatively uninformed at least: the art student is encouraged to see
and unsympathetic spectators; he may come to himself as blessed with a particular freedom,
miss and desperately need the 'benevolent' with the ability and opportunity to express
aggression formerly supplied by those adopting himself, and with the right to a form of
the teaching role in the art-therapeutic production entirely his own.
relationship, and out of this need may attempt There is another view: that art schools act as
to provoke an equivalent aggression in suitable institutions in which the educationally homeless,
candidates for the roles of 'teacher', 'critic', the destructive, the work-shy, the non-specialist
`hero' etc. Without finding a means to continue intellectual, the intelligent artisan and other
The kinds of critique which students have the therapeutic situation he cannot even work; potential threateners of the status quo are
formerly been encouraged to practise in the and such work as he does from within the incarcerated for a period of years and occupied
course of Dip AD fine-art 'studies' have been therapeutic situation may only be relevant to the `therapeutically' with the production of
largely aimed—to take the two predominant conditions which prevail there—in short, may essentially functionless commodities —the
alternatives—either at the discipline itself (this only be accessible in the wider context as a tokens of their 'individuality' and their
associates easily with the Greenbergian / testimony to the progress of a particular `freedom'.
modernist notion of the development of the condition: that diagnosed as `alienation'.1 A student is likely to fail his diploma (his
arts through self-criticism designed to isolate The impotence of conventional art-school behaviour goes 'un-reinforced') not if he
and cultivate each art-form's particular preserve), `art' is crystallised in the desperately ineffectual produces bad paintings or bad sculptures but
or at the quality of the student's 'self-expression' nature of student /tutor relationships. The only—however hard he may have been trying
in terms of his tutors' assessment of his potential intensity of these relationships is no real guide to win an education for himself according to the
creativity (this establishes the basis for a to their productivity. A 'commitment to terms in which he understood it to have been
relationship between student and tutor more teaching' is of precious little real efficacy unless offered—if he does not produce enough. External
easily characterized as psycho-therapeutic than it serves a wider commitment to a realistic view assessors are often given the word not to fail a
pedagogic). of the use (actual and / or potential) of the subject particular evidently untalented student if he or
These two forms of critique can come to taught. she has 'produced a lot of work'.
coincide with consequences which are The 'legitimacy' since the late fifties (in the The sheer purposelessness of the majority of
compelling (i.e. theatrical and apparently average school; much later in some) of 'abstract' work pursued in fine-art departments is
exhaustive) but perhaps hard to justify by painting and sculpture has created problems concealed under a dressing of fictions; the
reference to criteria outside a particular which few tutors are equipped or prepared to student is encouraged to believe that he will
art-school situation. The much-vaunted confront. 'Abstraction' itself is a complex leave college with an above-average degree of
teaching system of group criticism of work and enough concept, and there have been a plethora `visual intelligence' and with the power to
`tough' exposure of the individual to and by the of formal and 'ideological' variants on various `enhance the quality of life' etc. This
group, as practised in the sculpture department `abstract' themes. The instant historicity
at St Martin's School of Art in London during supplied by formalist /modernist criticism of
the late fifties and sixties, is one notable example post-war abstract painting has been compelling
of the coincidence of an 'evolutionary' approach for many artists and spectators, perhaps not so
to art with a 'group therapy' approach to art much because such criticism offers a valid
students. There is one obvious danger in this : as methodology and vocabulary for dealing with
a life-style/ working-situation it may suit some `meaning' and intention in abstract art, as
(it seems to have suited Anthony Caro, who was because it implicitly claims, in patrician terms,
largely responsible for establishing—however that that is what it does offer.2 In fact, it now
informally—and perpetuating this practice at St seems likely that the majority of 'conventional'
Martin's) and seems often to provide working means for disclosing 'meaning' in abstract art
conditions congenial to those who have the are built upon shaky foundations and vitiated
`teaching' role in the group situation; but the processes of evaluation.
effect on the student may be hard to assess and It's not hard to work out relationships
the results deceptive. between the kinds of value system applied to
I suspect that the situation outlined—like so post-war abstract painting and the kinds of
many established in so many art schools—merely value system which govern the market relations
provides for success in its own terms and within of those societies which support 'modernist'
its own limited context. The Skinnerian means art; nor is it hard to demonstrate how little
of 'reinforcement' and 'reward' which operate freedom there can be from the influence of
widely within the art schools may only produce socio-economic constraints in any public

222