Basic Design Edited by Elena Crippa and Beth Williamson with Additional Contributions by Alexander Massouras and Hester R
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Basic Design Edited by Elena Crippa and Beth Williamson With additional contributions by Alexander Massouras and Hester R. Westley First published 2013 on the occasion of the display Basic Design Curated by Elena Crippa and Beth Williamson Tate Britain, 25 March – 25 September 2013 Design by Tate Design Studio Cover image: Session of group criticism, Scarborough Summer School, Yorkshire, c.1956 Contents 6 Basic Design 14 A Chameleon and A Contradiction: From Pre-Diploma to Foundation 20 Basic Design and the Artist-Teacher 24 Basic Design and Exhibition-Making 28 Basic Colour 32 List of exhibited works 34 Further reading Basic Design Elena Crippa and Beth Williamson This display presents a turning point in the history of British art education. It explores the origins, influences and practice of ‘Basic Design’ training in British art schools through some of the artworks and artists it produced. At a time when approaches to art education are being reconsidered, it seems important to look back at historical developments such as Basic Design and review their significance both then and now. In the art schools of the 1950s in Britain, Basic Design emerged as a radical new artistic training. It emerged in response to already-existing teaching methods embodied within the skills-based National Diploma in Design and was the first attempt to create a formalised system of knowledge based on an anti-Romanticist, intuitive approach to art teaching. What actually constituted Basic Design was disputed at the time and continues to be debated now. Its contested nature is underscored by the fact that it was variously termed Basic Design, ‘Basic Form’, the ‘Basic Course’, ‘Basic Grammar’ or even ‘Basic Research’. Ultimately, Basic Design, as we shall call it here, was rooted in the German Bauhaus and its Vorkurs course, started by Johannes Itten (1888–1967) in the 1920s, a preliminary or foundation course that focused the art student’s attention on the manipulation and understanding of materials. Formal exercises were tempered by other much freer activities that aimed to develop students’ sense impressions of the world around them through nature studies and new forms of life drawing. In mid-20th-century Britain, Basic Design was taken up and taught by different art teachers in different ways. Therefore, Lowestoft School of Arts & Crafts, where Tom Hudson taught as painting master between 1951–55, 6 introducing a totally abstract, non-figurative training 7 each variation of Basic Design and its influences might be explored through the work and ideals of its key protagonists and their students. By contextualising these variants, the aim here is to provide a fresh narrative that explains the different approaches to the practice of Basic Design teaching in Britain during this period. Much of what constituted the origins of Basic Design training in Britain was rooted in the influential thinking of the artist and educator William Johnstone (1897–1981). Principal of Camberwell School of Art (1938–46) and then of the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1947–60) in London, he was interested in design and the ideas of the architect and founder of the German Bauhaus school, Student working on a panel for Walter Gropius (1883–1966). Johnstone had already credited a wall in polyester and polystyrene earlier beginnings in Basic Design teaching in Britain in realised by students from Leeds College of Art for the Branch College the 1930s to Jesse Collins and Albert E. Halliwell (1905–87) of Science, Leeds, c.1963 although their focus was on graphic and industrial design Wall panels installed at the Branch rather than fine art. College of Science, Leeds, c.1963 Johnstone claimed that ‘the battle for change in the whole of art teaching was fought and won at Camberwell, 1938–39’. But if the important groundwork was laid at Camberwell, it was from 1946 at the Central School of Arts and Crafts that Johnstone led the way in radical pedagogical reforms. Here with Harry Thubron (1915–85) and Tom Hudson (1922–97) from Leeds College of Art he assembled a group of young artists to teach part-time and Wendy Pasmore (b.1915) from Sunderland College of Art. The artist-teachers shared in new and experimental ways. The teaching and making their pedagogical views towards the development of a course that aimed to provide a of art informed and inflected each other and open-ended basic training in keeping with the demands of modern visual art. Rather than imparting experimental working was encouraged in the teaching knowledge on how to reproduce the appearance of nature, the course offered knowledge studio. William Turnbull (b.1922), Alan Davie (b.1920), of the causes by which these effects are produced. It provided opportunities for the Richard Hamilton (1922–2011) and Victor Pasmore (1908–98) exploration of the essential principles of space, form and colour through drawing, painting, were among those whom Johnstone recruited to teach at the carving, modelling and construction. This constituted a revolutionary approach to art Central School. Classes provided training in understanding teaching, whereby students were expected to formulate their own objective bases for the qualities of line, pattern and form and their interaction these principles, rather than finding them in nature and replicating them. Joining the group when freed of representational content. Tasks ranged from of teachers and broadening its scope of references were also the painter Alan Davie, with exercises in drawing in a relatively free manner to others his interest in the philosophy of the irrational, and artists Terry Frost (1915–2003) and calling for order and precision, with exercises acting simply Hubert Dalwood (1924–76). as a starting point from which students could develop their work and ideas. In broad terms, we might identify three themes common to Basic Design teaching, as it developed out of these first seminal exchanges: Rational Process, Science and Nature, Exchanges among innovative art teachers, through and Intuition. These themes are not mutually exclusive but might be said to identify key conferences and short courses, were central to the sentiments that were embodied in particular teaching programmes at particular schools. development of Basic Design teaching. From 1955–7, Basic Design teaching associated with the notion of an intuitive approach to making, while Pasmore directed the two-week Scarborough Summer still largely informed by Bauhaus pedagogy, was equally informed by child art and School, in Yorkshire, attended mainly by secondary school underpinned courses run by William Johnstone at the Central School and Harry Thubron at art teachers. In this setting, Pasmore worked together Leeds College of Art, for instance. 8 9 which was convened by Thubron with close colleagues Maurice de Sausmarez (1915–69), Hubert Dalwood and Terry Frost. Painter and filmmaker John Jones (1926–2010) filmed the course with selected commentary by Thubron and a backdrop of improvised jazz. The resulting 30-minute film, Drawing with the Figure 1963 captures something of the new freedoms brought to the studio with this kind of approach. Figuration was not abandoned, as in the case of Pasmore, but the static and contemplative relationship between the artist and the model was shaken up by the introduction of movement and sound. Thubron’s desire to ‘saturate the place with the nude’ shifted the dynamic of the studio and students were forced to engage with the life model in new ways. The point was to destroy habitual practices, make any preconceived solutions impossible, and encourage a creative response. Among those with whom Thubron taught at Leeds was Maurice de Sausmarez, whose book, Basic Design: The Students at work, Cardiff College of Art, Cardiff, where Tom Hudson was Director Dynamics of Visual Form 1964, set out his ideas on the subject. of Studies between 1964–77 De Sausmarez’s approach to Basic Design was focused on developing an inquisitive attitude within the artist and he called for an art education that would allow the student to develop emotionally and intellectually as well as intuitively. His hope was that, ‘out of it all might ultimately come a new Johnstone’s interest in child art informed his approach to Basic Design teaching and he had art academy pre-eminently fitted to educate and express previously set out his ideas in Child Art to Man Art 1941. His focus in this book was on the the consciousness of the age.’ education of the adolescent child and he was careful to define art education as one part of a larger holistic approach to education, which he understood as ‘not an end but a process’. The balance to be attained between the development of a Here he was indebted to his colleague and supporter R.R. Tomlinson, a Senior Inspector of rational process and nurturing students’ self-expression was Art for the London County Council (LCC). Johnstone’s ideas in Child Art to Man Art were also the subject of fierce debate, a debate that was first given a shaped in part by the thinking of earlier European child educators such as Friedrich Froebel public hearing at the conference ‘Adolescent Expression in (1782–1852) and Franz Cizek (1865–1946). art and Craft’, organised at Bretton Hall in 1956. During the conference, traditional and more innovative views clashed. Harry Thubron’s thinking stemmed from his engagement with the ideas of the poet and On one side, a child-centred model that emphasised critic Herbert Read (1893–1968), especially Read’s Education Through Art 1943. Thubron’s the expression of feelings and inner development was commitment to an intuitive process of making was evident in his teaching and in the work represented by educators such as Barclay Russell and he produced. It was unusual for Thubron to commit his ideas to print, but in a rare written Veronica Zabel.