Scottish Art Schools in the 1960s and ‘70s

Art Schools in Film and TV

Ghost World and Six Feet Under

London Art Schools in the ’60s and ‘70s: ‘engines of counter-culture’?

“Throughout 20th-century Scottish art there has been a tint of French Fauvism, a stroke of German Expressionism and a later dash of Abstract Expressionism […] this kind of work had a ‘stranglehold on the Royal Scottish Academy, the four Scottish art schools and the commercial gallery system.” - Bill Hare, Contemporary Painting in Scotland,

1992, p.9.

“The very foundation of radical avant-garde activity was absent. This absence was shaped by a tempramental disinclination for Scottish artists to engage in theory, and the all-encompassing dominance of art institutions in Scottish cultural life.” - Tom Normand, The Modern Scot, 2000, p.5.

ECA students Alexander Moffat and John Bellany, exhibiting paintings on railings outside the RSA in the mid 60s.

“Cordelia Oliver’s criticisms of the Art Schools (S.I. 10) have aroused more controversy about art education in Scotland than anything else for years. Responses to the criticisms have been very favourable from some quarters, from others hotly indignant. It is fair to report, however, that a number of people have seemed reluctant to make their views public. In her original piece Cordelia Oliver criticised the schools on a wide variety of grounds: size, insularity in attitudes, the nature of the ‘general course’. But at the core of her piece, she was complaining that the set-up in Scotland actually inhibits fresh thinking about the changing concepts and functions of art and artists in the twentieth century.”

- Robert Tait, Editor, Scottish International, Vol. 11, 1970,p.50).

Cordelia Oliver, Glasgow School of Art 1944

“Size, in my opinion, is at the root of the trouble; the result of a yen for empire-building on the part of those in power. In Scotland there are only four central art institutions, each growing larger every year; all bureaucratically run, since the Scottish Education Department holds the purse-strings and therefore, in effect, call the final tune.”

- Cordelia Oliver, ‘What is to be done about the art schools?’, Scottish International, Vol.10, 1970.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Patrick_Geddes_(1886).jpg

“At a time when painting and sculpture are practically indivisible, movement between the two departments is made no easier than it was before the war. Why, for that matter, is it necessary to draw these hard lines between departments? Here again size is greatly to blame; size of classes. It is obviously much easier, where a large number of young people are concerned, to have them working towards clearly recognisable-and common-goals; to train them for specific branches of art from an early stage; give them briefs to work to...”

“Too big, bureaucratic and authoritarian in the way they dole out work and “keep tabs” on people. The lists of governors and the staffing arrangements suggest inflexibility in every way.”

“The school of art […] is a typically nineteenth century conception, born of the same laudable brand of energy, initiative and will to propagate knowledge which conceived and carried through such projects as the Great Exhibition of 1851, and laid the foundations for the South Kensington complex of museums and colleges. But we live (though for the most part the governors and members of staff of our art schools act as though the fact had escaped them) within hailing distance of the twenty first century; more than fifty years after Picasso, Kandinsky, Gabo and the rest finally put paid to an already dying nineteenth century conception of art. It is significant, is it not, that the annual Diploma Exhibitions should show remarkably little awareness of this.”

“What I am denouncing is central policy: the wilful insularity on the part of those in power; the determined turning away from modern, late twentieth century art concepts and developments and an unwillingness to help students to the kinds of skill and technology which in 1970 plus, they will need as artists of they are to express the kind of world they live in.”

“It is wishful thinking to believe, as so many seem to do, that “all this untidiness, this unsettling anarchy” is no more than a temporary aberration in the peaceful flow of “progress”; that Art will come into its own again before long and that easel painting will once again reign supreme. “

Insularity, Arrogance, Inbreeding…

“Perhaps the greatest of the ills besetting the Scottish art schools is inbreeding. In Edinburgh and Glasgow, in some departments, newcomers to the staff are invariably old students – and some of these have never been away. Even now, the emphasis is decidedly on Scottish-trained staff.”

“A system in which members of staff, once appointed, are there for the rest of their working lives, is unlikely to result in evolutionary vitality, to put the matter as kindly as possible. It is criminal if the only new thing about an art school can be said to be its students.”

The End