Page 23 - Studio International - November 1974

ART EDUCATION AND SUCCESS

CLIVE ASHWIN

A belief frequently encountered within the art system of formal art education mounted the Mecca of European art, led to a situation in
educational community or society is the steadily over the first half of the nineteenth which supervision, where it existed, was often
ironically self-effacing one that art education century. Perhaps the most memorable assault on cursory; as one commentator has put it, 'the
has little or no connection with success as an record came from the arch-iconoclast Courbet twin results were half-trained artists and
artist. This hypothesis is often backed by the who, in answer to a request from a group of undamped sparks of novelty in the better
example of Francis Bacon who, it must be enthusiasts that he should open a school, students'. [6]
admitted, has attained what is probably the publically proclaimed in 1861 'I can not teach As an alternative to the academy ethos there
highest international reputation of any living my art, nor the art of any school, because I emerged the bohemian ethos according to
There can be no
which the ambience for the cultivation of the
British painter, without having enjoyed the deny that art can be taught
artist's creative identity became his often
Therefore I
supposed benefits of a formal higher art school, there are only painters
education. The conviction takes varying forms can not pretend to open a school in which to squalid domestic environment rather than the
and strengths, ranging from general and vague mould students'. [4] academy or the master's studio. This
scepticism as to the efficacy of art education to Courbet's contempt for the implied hierarchy conception was brilliantly depicted by Henri
complete and categorical denial of the concept of the student/teacher relationship reflects Murger in his best-seller Scenes de la Vie de
of art education as a logical possibility. his rejection of social hierarchies in general. Bohème, published serially between 1846 and
Consider, for example, the following piece of His criticisms are not peculiar to left-wing 1849.Puccini's adaptation of the novel fifty
'evidence' presented to the Select Committee social thinking. A disappointed art student years later has become perhaps the most popular
on Education and Science, 1969: 'Nobody can of an opposite political persuasion declared work in the operatic repertoire, guaranteeing
persuade me that they actually know what art thirty years ago that 'In a general way, the continuing survival of a dearly loved social
education is about; there is no authority on the academies have nothing to tell me myth. The myth is constantly revived and
art education. Nobody knows how you learn to that's worth listening to. In fact, the regenerated through novels like The Horse's
be a painter or how you teach somebody to be professors who are active there are either Mouth and films of a quasi-biographical nature
a painter. The best painters do not go to art failures, or else artists of talent (but who cannot such as those on the lives of Van Gogh and
colleges'. [1] The speaker on this occasion was give more than two hours a day to their Gauguin. These invariably present the artist as
no reactionary bent on a reduction of public teaching), or else weary old men who therefore a social aberrant or renegade, despising its values
expenditure, nor a philistine keen to denigrate have nothing else to give. Genuine artists and shunning its institutions. An important
cultural institutions in general, but a lecturer develop only by contact with other artists'. After detail in this broad picture of alienation is the
at a large college of art and design with a having failed to convince the Vienna Academy belief that the artist cannot and does not profit
national reputation and an extensive of his artistic potential the speaker, Adolf from that most ubiquitous of social
involvement in the apparently futile pursuit of Hitler, resigned himself to 'continuing my arrangements, education.
fine art teaching. Such a mania for self- efforts as a self-taught man, and I decided to How true are these popular assumptions in
effacement amounting almost to self-immolation go and settle in Germany. So I arrived, full of contemporary Britain? I recently set out to
must have struck the worthy Committee as enthusiasm, in Munich'. [5] attempt to define and quantify the relationship
curious, to say the least. Can one imagine A number of arguments have been advanced between art education and success as an artist
doctors, lawyers or plumbers insisting upon to explain the withering of the prestige of
similar generalizations about their respective formal art education during the nineteenth
occupational groups? century. An important factor was, no doubt,
The endemic scepticism manifested in such the radical simplification of technical
declarations has been remarked upon by a recent procedures brought about by the industrial
observer of art college society in the following revolution. For example, the introduction of
terms: 'half the tutors and approaching two- tubed paint in the 1830s short circuited a
thirds of the students of certain art colleges laborious cycle of preparation which had
agreed with the proposition that art cannot be previously necessitated an equally laborious
taught. In what sense, then, are the tutors period of technical training. Henceforth
tutors, the students students, and the colleges anyone who could get the lid off a tube (no
colleges?' [2] mean feat if it had been left on too long) was
The provenance of the conviction to which I in business as an artist, and could depend on a
refer is a long one, going back at least as far as ready source of canvases and accessories from
the late eighteenth century and the decline of the numerous suppliers who had sprung up to
confidence in human institutions which cater for the fever of leisure activities, ranging
preoccupied so much of the thinking of the from gold-prospecting to ballooning, which
Romantic movement. Not all artists of that era, gripped the middle and upper classes of the
however, were equally convinced of the self- nineteenth century.
sufficiency of the artist in solitary communion The rapid increase in the number of art
with nature. Although he frequently criticized aspirants during the nineteenth century served
social institutions, Constable declared that ironically to undermine and weaken even
'A self-taught artist is one taught by a very further the authority vested in the traditional
ignorant person'. [3] institutions of art training. The proliferation of
A general barrage of disapprobation of the private academies in Paris, long regarded as
181