Page 62 - Studio International - July August 1973

internal emigration from south to north, from came to dominate the annual showings, when so concept.of fashion. Dior had once defined the
country to city, from poverty and deprivation much else the Fashion School was doing difference between fashion and fancy dress.
to comparative well-being. The explosion of conformed to the requirements of clients like This show boldly declared that definition no
the middle class has generated the explosion of BEA. longer valid, and reinforced the boutique trends
art and design. The weakness of art and design, She starts off chapter seven of her established by so many of the ex-students who
in Italy as well as in England, is due to the autobiography with one of the most vexed had chosen 'private' practice rather than work
middle class not being a functioning class like subjects in contemporary British art education, for the trade. A year later, the RCA gear,
the peasantry or the proletariat, but - what at the RCA was referred to as general redraw% in Haight-Ashbury, swept out of San
mystification hiding its true class nature, made studies and in the DipAD colleges as Francisco, to New York, and then to London, at
up of renegades from the working classes complementary studies. 'I understood', she first heavily disguised, more of a declaration of
seeking the advantages capitalism affords, in the writes, 'and agreed that there was a need for identity, beads and flowers.. . . Now all dress
specialization that results from the division of students to be broad-minded and "all-round" became fancy. To dress has become a statement
labour. people, but I doubted that a few unwilling of fantasy, a substitute role. It may all end as the
The problems that are confronted in hours a week would achieve much in this similar experiment in Quattrocento Florence
Fossati's introductory essay and in some of the direction. A previously well-educated student did, a burning of the vanities; but let us hope
essays in Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, would regard the study of nineteenth-century that here Marx will prove once more to be right,
the ones dealing with the wider social social movements through the writings of the and history will repeat itself simply as farce.
significance that might be given to design, are, period as an unnecessary bore, and to the less Fashion as fancy dress will yield to fashion as
then, merely reflections in ideology and not of well-educated it meant memorizing enough to farce. The time seems appropriate. 0
ideology into reality which is the only basis of a write an essay.' She then cites the case of David TONI DEL RENZIO
revolutionary design practice. The designer as Hockney, who should have failed since he had
revolutionary is just a pretty piece of self- never attended a single general studies class nor
deception until he can so alienate his employer produced a single written word for them. With Midsville
that the production process is subverted and the guile that was even more ludicrous than the Art Students Observed by Charles Madge and
transformed; so that when asked to 'style' an failing of Hockney would have been, the Barbara Weinberger. 284 pp. Faber and Faber.
automobile the designer acts to determine that administration awarded him the gold medal. It £6.95.
production results in a means of transportation is little wonder that on the occasion, a short
that is not contributing to ecological disruption while ago, of some symposium or other on art Art Students Observed is a close study of the
or to private acquisitiveness. General Motors, education, David Hockney, advertised to speak, Fine Art students, and to a lesser extent, the
British Leyland, Fiat are not yet directed by remained silent. staff of Coventry College of Art, from the period
men likely to acquiesce. Janey Ironside's serious convictions about a year before the meteoric rise of the Art Theory
TONI DEL RENZIO art education were to lead to her final resignation course and its equally meteoric disappearance
from the professorship. It was the discrimination through to the merger into the Lanchester
against the fashion school over the award of Polytechnic.
Infantaside degrees. Her point was that if the rest of the Like most sociological studies of contained
Janey by Janey Ironside. 176 pp., illustrated. RCA awards were to become degrees, so, too, communities it employs the standard method of
Michael Joseph. should those of the fashion school. This would participant observation and attitude
£2.75 seem particularly just, since it was the fashion questionnaires. For the most part it aims at
school more than any other department of the `objective' description — to be an impartial and
This delightful autobiography of Janey Ironside College that had won it an international name. accurate account — with some minor attempt to
has a special interest for those of us concerned If it were true that the degree was merely a provide an analytical framework with which to
with the sort of education our art colleges give scrap of paper, why the discrimination ? evaluate the everyday practice of a specialist
and could give. Others will assess her Janey Ironside gives no explanation for this sub-world. Using a sociological mantle the
particular contribution to fashion; but here it incredible decision, and it appears none was authors attempt to document the responses of
suffices to say that she was the vital instrument ever given her. In a sense, of course, both the the students to the complex and contradictory
that enabled so much talent to find an outlet, Royal College degree and the diploma of the area of further education they have chosen to
that enabled art students to stamp their image other colleges (said to be degree equivalent pursue.
upon a whole decade, that enabled English except as a qualification for more money as a At the descriptive level the account will strike
fashion to define the visual life-style of a teacher) are scraps of paper. No one gets a show an accurate note to those familiar with
generation. It happened, too, when English art in a Bond Street gallery by producing one. No DipAD education. It may indeed be unnerving
schools and English artists made a decisive and one gets a job in an advertising agency, design for some to have their everyday processes
definitive impact upon the international art group or publisher's, by showing one. revealed so acutely in such a clinical way. For
scene; and Janey Ironside was very much a part If one is to single out any incident in her book those interested in further education in general,
of that time. that reveals her special quality, the special whose interest may include art education — and
One of the things that emerges from her quality that put her students in the position of with the art colleges going into the polytechnics,
account is that she herself was learning, that reacting and contributing to the redefinition of there are, I imagine, a number of people with a
fashion was not so much taught as learnt at the woman and woman's role which is fashion, vested interest in finding out — it provides a
Royal College. Of course she saw to it that her that unique blend of thing and symbol, that clear account of a bewildering area which has
students could acquire the skills they might particular case of coenotropism, it was the long been shrouded in mystique.
need, and she was able to anticipate these needs summer dress show of 1966. For one thing it So far I think the book is a positive
in a way a more 'professional' fashion expert marked the emergence of interest in Art Deco. contribution; from a new perspective of an area
might be denied by the blinkers of experience. It anticipated the interest in the late thirties and which has up until now elicited little interest
She reveals this, particularly, in her account of forties. Also it acted like a magnet drawing to it from educational sociologists.
undertaking with one of her students, at first, the right people to achieve the necessary effects. The picture which emerges from Charles
the research into moulded clothing, and also Finally it polarized people's attitudes, it Madge and Barbara Weinberger's document of
in her defence of her students' forays into the prepared the way for the end of fashion as it the Fine Art course at Coventry is, however, less
advanced and 'non-commercial' designs that had previously been known. It stated a new positive. It demonstrates the serious
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