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John Kissick: Good afternoon
good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.
My name is John Kissick and I'm the director of the School of Fine Art and Music
at the University of Guelph
and on behalf of the faculty, the staff and the students of the school and the
university
it gives me a great pleasure to welcome you to this our first the inaugural
Shenkman lecture in contemporary art.
The launching
of this important lecture series today
stands as yet another indicator
of the growing reputation of this school and this university
as one of canada's pre-eminent graduate
and indeed undergraduate institutions
for the visual arts.
In a remarkably short period of time
it was just over fourteen years ago
when Margaret Priest and Ron Shuebrook developed the MFA program
in that over just fourteen years
our nationally renowned MFA program has come to boast
one of the most competitive selection processes in any school in the
country
a growing faculty of celebrated artists and critics
and some of the most dynamic and ambitious young artists anywhere.
And if we are rightfully proud of our program
and of our students
then we are also extremely aware that our good fortune
is due in large measure
to those in the community
who have consistently shared
and supported our dream.
It is a simple formula
develop an exceptional faculty that
the best and brightest want to study with
keep the program small enough
to make for an extremely competitive field of applicants
pick the best young artists who are likely to have the greatest impact on
Canadian culture in the future
and then give them two years
of focused attention
extraordinary visual, visiting artists
intense public critiques
and incredible peer support.
And in the process of doing that
we have come to impact visual culture
at perhaps the most crucial stage in an artist`s development
these artists that we train
here in the School of Fine Art and Music
both at the undergraduate and the graduate level
are the future
of art and art-making in Canada.
And with the generous support of our donors
Dasha Shenkman,
the Musagetes Foundation,
Margaret Priest, Tony Scherman
and countless others
we have an opportunity here
to make real
a real measurable
and sustained contribution
to this country and this country`s culture.
It is a sizable goal
but with events such as the Shenkman lecture
and the generosity of our extraordinary donors
we continue to prove
as a school
and as a university
that we are more than up to the task.
Before handing the podium over to our president,
I would like to personally thank members of the Shenkman lecture committee
for their service and for their insights through this long process
Professor Emerita Margaret Priest
alumna Sara Angelucci
professors Robert Enright
and James Carl.
I would also like to acknowledge the tremendous work of the alumni
affairs and development
especially
Deborah Maskens,
Kathryn Elton
and Celeste Bannon Waterman
and from the president's office
Sue Bennett
whose tireless efforts on our behalf have made this possible.
If today's guest
Michael Craig-Martin
is any indication of the quality and reputation
of our future lecturers,
we are in
for a real treat.
And now, without further ado, I`d like to introduce President Alastair Summerlee,
the University of Guelph
to say a few words about the lecture today and our gracious donor. Alastair [applause]
Alastair Summerlee: If I speak here, are you able to hear me up in the gallery? Thank you.
I was going to actually extoll the virtues of the fine arts program here at Guelph.
But I don't need to do that, John's done that beautifully for you. I was going to extoll the virtues of the University of Guelph, but I do that every day and I hardly need to do that with an audience of people who know so much about the University of Guelph.
So I'd like to tell you a story. I'd like to tell you a story about the time that I was actually the dean of graduate studies at the University of Guelph and two people came to see me about the possibility of introducing an MFA.
They are of course the people that John has already talked about, Margaret Priest and Ron Shuebrook. Now together, I'm trying to find Margaret there she is, together we three fought our way through the processes of the university to see that this program was put in place.
I don't really know what a veterinarian was doing in that odd little group, but boy am I so pleased that I was able to be involved because it has blossomed into the most astonishing program with the most fantastic faculty and the most adoring administrator looking after the process.
And of course it has attracted some incredible attention, not least of which is from a lady who arrived at Guelph I think not really knowing what the University of Guelph had to offer, and beginning a journey herself that enabled her to appreciate what a jewel this was on the Canadian scene.
And I'm talking about Dasha Shenkman, of course. It has actually been a very relatively short period of time, I think, that we have been engaged in discourse about the ways in which this program could be authentic.
And I am absolutely delighted on behalf of the university and of the school and of the students who are going to be able to enjoy this series that Dasha was willing to support this lecture series so generously.
Thank you very much indeed for being willing to do that [applause]
There are all kinds of preconceptions that we have about powerful donors in society. Let me just say that in addition to being a benefactor, Dasha Shenkman is one of the nicest, most graceful, most poised individuals that I have had the provilege of working with.
And it really is a pleasure to have her here as part of the first Shenkman lecture. To introduce our most eminent speaker this evening, let me pass you to another eminent member of our community, Robert Enright. Robert needs very little introduction in the Canadian scene and in fact worldwide, and so it is my pleasure to ask Robert Enright to come forward and introduce our speaker tonight [applause].
Robert Enright: I shan't take Michael's seat. But I think it's a lovely irony that the
President of the University who's a former veterinarian and seems to be a present one
as well
stands up and extemporaneously delivers a speech, when I'm a
broadcaster for twenty five years and terrified of written speech.
So when Alastair wants to retire from the university, I know some people at
CBC we'll call and he'll certainly have work,
subsequent to
tomorrow.
We can call tonight if you want, I mean, you know, CBC people stay up late and
drink a lot generally.
So I've written an introduction to
to our distinguished guest's
career,
such as I perceive it
Michael Craig-Martin really knows how to take a painted line for a walk.
His ambitious mural on the third floor of the Kunsthaus Bregenz last summer
as part of an exhibition called "Signs of Life"
was his most dramatic and most delightful example of lingering linescaping.
The lines of course
form the shapes of a collection of everyday objects that we tend to undervalue
at the same time we overuse them.
But in Craig-Martin's placement, the lines overlap: pop cans intersect a
globe;
a mostly full glass is
filled by a stand-up bass;
a set of keys on the keychain
regulates a metronome on one side and a gentleman's shoe on the other.
This is a world where consumer objects are themselves consumed in
and by their own being.
Michael Craig-Martin's art is transparently clear and conceptually
complicated.
It plays inside a number of terrains: painting,
drawing,
installation, public art, and architecture.
In his employment
of everyday objects and objects from art history,
he seems equally enamored of the high and the low,
although his highs tend to come from the low end. Duchamp's urinals- [pause]
That was an accident by the way, the sign.
We can't choreograph everything.
Judd's rectangles and the ale cans of Jasper Johns.
But this inventory of objects and subjects is introduced through spaces
large enough to be considered architectural.
His neon tube light bulb, versions of which were installed
on the outside of the art gallery at Bregenz,
is the whole that stands in for all the parts of his practice:
it is the idea
lighting up in space.
Mr. Craig-Martin was able to pick what he wanted from the various art
movements that shuffled for attention in the early to mid sixties: abstraction,
pop,
minimalism, conceptualism, and installation art.
In "Abstract Painting," 1995,
a superb blue
and yellow work on which he has deftly located a step ladder and a paint roller,
you feel that he's combined Ellsworth Kelly's pallet with an acknowledgement
of the pop imagery of Patrick Caulfield.
Elsewhere,
Robert Mangold commingles with Agnes Martin.
In a piece called "Coming," he alludes to Magritte, Carl Andre and Sol LeWitt; all
of which references are suspended
on an orange background, the way images float in the imagination.
But Mr. Craig-Martin makes these borrowings his own,
producing paintings and installations that have about them a
resolute,
intelligent clarity and a flawless sense of organization.
For all of his use of strident color and large-scale, he remains a subtle artist
often rendering images in browns
in ways that make the former disappear into the latter.
These are conscious choices and very subtle ones indeed.
Michael Craig-Martin was born in Dublin, educated at Fordham and Yale, from which he
graduated with an MFA in 1966.
He now lives and works in London,
where he is also been an influential teacher,
and from which base he has participated in twenty four solo exhibitions
and as many group exhibitions over the last decade.
These exhibitions were held in England, Europe and New York
I'm especially delighted, as is the rest of the faculty, that he's decided to add
Guelph to his world map. Please join me in welcoming our distinguished first Shenkman
lecturer, Michael Craig-Martin [applause].
Michael Craig-Martin: Robert, thank you very much [pause].
Can you hear me? Can you hear me all right?
Good evening.
Many years ago, when I was in my early thirties,
I used to joke with my students that longevity, survival itself, was the one
sure route to success in the art world [laughter].
I told them that as they were in their early twenties, they were in the
unfortunate position of having tens of thousands of other artists their own age
but if they could hang on for another ten years, this figure would drop by at
least
seventy five percent [laughter], and their odds would become much better.
And as the drop away rate stays more or less the same
for each decade,
by the time they were old, there would be so few artist left that all survivors would
enjoy the success
that might have previously eluded them [laughter].
I have to say, however, that I never expected to become the living proof of
my own joke, but as you can see here I am [laughter].
I am very happy to have been invited to give this, the inaugural
Shenkman lecture in contemporary art
and I'd like to thank Dasha. Thank you very much.
Like most artists,
the only thing, the only subject on which I consider myself to be an expert is
my own work [pause].
I recently made a new animated video piece for a show in Tokyo.
Although there were hundreds of people at the opening,
there were only two I knew from London.
Reflecting on what an important work this was for me, it depressed me to think
how few people I knew would ever see it.
The thought made me realize that the only person on earth who has seen every
work I have ever made
and been to every one of my shows is me [laughter].
No wonder I consider myself the expert.
Naturally, therefore, when I'm asked to give a lecture, I usually show images
of my work and speak extemporaneously.
I've done this dozens of times over the years
and I hear myself saying the same things each time without meaning to.
I can't help but go onto automatic.
I decided I wanted this lecture to be different, but I wasn't sure what
it should be about.
I see myself as something of a survivor in the art world,
so I decided to try to talk about the things that have made my life, my work
and my survival possible.
Important things that I rarely talk about in public.
My art has always been in the foreground for me
but this talk is about the background,
the context.
I started working on this lecture months ago,
copying down fragments of thoughts on my computer as they came into my head,
not knowing exactly where they might be taking me.
Whenever I had a little time,
I'd write some more.
Every so often, I'd reread these fragments and try to find some sort of order in
them, and gradually this talk emerged.
I got my first small computer in the early nineties because of word
processing
and the ease I hoped it would bring to my fragmented way of writing,
which it did.
And I soon realized that I do my studio work in very much the same way as I
write.
I make individual drawings and then organize them,
I make individual drawings and then organize them to form particular pieces
or in response to specific places,
cut and paste.
I've done the preliminary stage for all my work on a computer ever since.
In fact,
almost none of the work I've done over the past ten years would have been
possible without my Mac.
Anyway, the talk that emerged is a mix
of reminiscence, personal philosophy, anecdote, self-justification and advice.
It is much more autobiographical than I had expected and I have taken this opportunity
to write down many of my thoughts on art education.
There are references to some of the ideas,
experiences and people that have influenced me
or the world around me,
that have influenced me and been part of the world around me.
As this will be a highly personal account,
I make no claims for historical accuracy.
I apologize for reading this overly-dense prepared text, but I could never
have done this off the top of my head,
unlike the president.
There will be some images of my work
dispersed intermittently through the text.
The images are meant to parallel the text,
not illustrate.
Occasionally they may seem directly related to it,
mostly not.
They can speak for themselves.
Amazingly, my story starts here in Canada.
It is 1945,
the year the war in Europe has just ended.
I am three years old, and with my mother and infant sister,
I am sailing up the Saint Lawrence to Montreal on an old steamship
having just survived a rough passage across the North Atlantic from Britain.
It is night and we are on deck, sailing under a brightly lit bridge.
Having so far known only a life
of London blackouts and bomb shelters,
I have never seen anything brightly lit before and I am stunned.
This is my earliest memory.
Out modest arrival in Canada marked the beginning of my family's American life.
We traveled that night by train from Montreal to New York, and then on to join
my father in Washington, DC,
where I was to grow up.
I was fortunate to spend my childhood cushioned by the affluence and optimism
of suburban nineteen fifties America,
truly America's golden age,
rather than in the bleak and impoverishment of post-war Britain
that would otherwise have been my fate.
However, by the time I was in my teens,
I was already formulating a dream of escape
from the bourgeois conformism of my comfortable suburban life
into a vividly imagined dissolute, if impoverished, bohemian life
of drink, drugs and sex in the big city.
New York, London
Paris, those well-known cradles of decadence.
I discovered modern art as a teenager,
first impressionism, then post-impressionism,
and finally the art of the early twentieth century.
I was fascinated by what I saw
and loved the secret world it opened up for me.
I instinctively sensed the infinite elusiveness of art,
which I found appealing and reassuring.
I knew I didn't understand what art was
but I knew it was more than pretty pictures.
I was hooked and determined to become an artist.
I never considered for a single minute
any other role in art
except that of artist.
I had no idea how to go about becoming an artist.
In the late nineteen fifties in Washington, DC,
it wasn't easy to even find a book on modern art, Picasso or Matisse,
let alone anything more contemporary.
To announce that you wanted to become an artist at that time
did not so much invite derision as blank incomprehension.
No one in my family or amongst my friends at school had ever had such an
interest.
Although I had done evening life drawing classes at various adult
education centers,
I knew they were for amateurs, Sunday painters;
but I had only the vaguest idea that there were such things
as professional art schools.
I was determined to go to the best place possible.
Frustrated in my desire to find an art school, I did what I thought was the next
best thing: I got myself to New York city,
which I did by applying to study history Fordham University.
Though I loved being in New York, arriving at Fordham, I quickly knew I'd
made a big mistake.
Halfway through a confusing and frustrating year,
I applied to
transfer to study history at Yale.
I was interviewed there by a little old New England lady with her gray hair in
a bun,
wearing a black skirt, white blouse and sensible shoes.
When she said, "I can see why you want to leave Fordham,
but I can't see why we would want to have you here," [laughter]
I knew I was doomed [laughter].
I slunk back to Fordham
and accepted my fate for a second year.
However, I found a disused room and secretly started to paint and draw again.
Almost immediately, it was obvious why I had been feeling lost and frustrated,
and I knew I had to find some place to study art
or I'd go crazy.
Still, with no one to turn to for advice,
I decided to go back to see that wise little old admissions lady at Yale,
not in order to apply again
but because I was convinced she would be able to tell me where best to study art.
When I explained why I was there,
she asked, "have you considered our art school here?"
I was amazed. I had no idea they had one
and it hadn't occurred to me to ask.
I said, "but you turned me down last year."
She said, "last year, you didn't say you wanted to be an artist."
The minute I stepped through the door of the old art school building on Chapel street,
I knew I'd found exactly what I'd been looking for.
The Yale School of Art was a graduate school for students seeking
MFA degrees
in painting, sculpture, printmaking and graphic design.
I, however, was an undergraduate majoring, as they say in America, in painting;
one of only half a dozen such students.
Because we were so few, there was no undergraduate
painting course and we were simply mixed in with the graduate students to
cope as best we could.
On my first innocent day,
arriving with my box of Winsor and Newton oils,
you know the kind with the leather handle and the palettes stored slotted
inside,
I was given a space and an easel in a studio with a number of graduate
students,
all at least three or four years older
than myself, all with years of art school behind them,
and all to my eyes
fearfully sophisticated.
I was not wrong.
Amongst those graduate students was Brice Marden,
Chuck Close
and Richard Serra [laughter].
All were highly regarded by their fellow students,
but none of us imagined that within a few years these three would attract
international recognition and success.
Having no basis for comparison,
I thought of them simply as very good fellow students.
I assumed that their level of commitment,
energy, ambition and achievement was normal.
They showed a supportive and sympathetic
interest in my floundering efforts.
Thus,
after my haphazard and drawn out search for a school, my career as an artist got
off the best possible start.
The quality of my fellow students was not my only stroke of luck at Yale.
I had no idea that the arts school was undoubtedly the most important in
America at the time and that I had stumbled in at possibly its most golden
moment.
When I arrived at Yale, I had never heard of the artist and educator Josef Albers,
who had been director of the school throughout the fifties, and I was not
aware of his long association
first with the Bauhaus in Germany in the twenties and thirties
and later with Black Mountain College in North Carolina,
two of the most innovative and influential art schools of the century.
At Yale, he had developed a unique set of basic courses,
color, design, drawing and sculpture;
all both practical and provocative,
which formed the foundation of the curriculum.
I now realize
that these courses must have represented the summit of high modernism in
art education.
Albers himself had retired two years before my arrival at Yale,
but his ideas and the courses he had devised,
taught by artists he had trained as his assistants and collaborators, still
dominated the school and I took them all.
I believe that in education, the most important thing one learns is not the
subject matter
but the structure of thought implicit in the teaching method.
One may never have much use of the subject matter,
may even forget most of it,
but one internalizes the structure,
often without realizing.
It can influence the way you approach whatever you do in life
and can stay with you forever.
Albers made it clear in his teaching
that he believed genuine visual expression to be dependent on
intelligence, as well as emotion, experience, instinct and discipline;
he did not separate practice and theory.
His courses, like his paintings, emphasized the critical role of direct individual
experience.
Everything he did in his work and everything he said in his teaching
was entirely consistent,
every part reinforcing the whole.
To come across a single drawing or a single written statement by him is to be
put directly in touch
with the heart of his thinking.
I see now that this attitude of thought had a lasting influence on me.
I have always sought a similar consistency and clarity in my work and
thinking.
I am fascinated by the basic principles of art,
and the more basic the better.
I have always sought an understanding of art that was inclusive
and as comprehensive as possible.
I learned at Yale
that art could be talked about in straightforward and understandable terms,
that the best art was rooted in the experience of ordinary life,
and that contemporary art existed in a context as demanding
and complex as that of any earlier historical period.
I learned that for an artist, art needed to be approached as work.
I discovered something else
that would later deeply affect my own approach to art teaching.
In my previous educational experience, it had always been pretty clear who the
brightest students were, the most intelligent,
and invariably they were the ones who did best in school.
However, on the art courses, the obviously brightest often floundered,
unable to act with sufficient flexibility
to respond to the demands of art-making.
Their practiced ways of thinking that had served them so well academically
were here an impediment rather than an advantage.
On the other hand, students who had previously suffered with obvious
educational or other disadvantages often flourished,
responding quickly to complex new challenges.
It was clear that in art, the normal hierarchies of societies could be turned
upside down.
The first half of the sixties
was one of the most exciting for American art.
Because Yale was so close to New York,
we went to see shows at least once a month.
I saw many of the first op, pop and minimal shows.
When my fellow students and I were discussing these movements,
even as they were still unfolding,
we thought of them as being, from our own creative point of view,
already historically established
as much so as cubism or surrealism.
It never occurred to us that we might become a pop artist
or a minimalist
anymore than a cubist or a surrealist;
it was too late.
As soon as a movement was identified and named,
we considered that its membership list had closed.
Our job was to create what it was that would come next.
When I finished my undergraduate course, I took a year off and then returned to Yale
as an MFA student for two years.
I started to recognize myself as an artist of my own generation.
This time, amongst my fellow students and closest friends were John Borofsky,
Victor Burgin
and Jennifer Bartlett.
Amongst the teachers who meant most to me
were Al Held, Alex Katz,
Neil Welliver and Jack Tworkov.
Many artists of my generation start as painters
and then rejected painting as a medium for their work.
I was one of them.
This rejection is often
recognized as the late triumph
of Duchamp's critique of painting as a non-intellectual, primarily optical
activity, "dumb like a painter,"
in favor of an art of ideas.
This was true but not the whole story.
It is now often forgotten that up until the mid-sixties
when one talked about art,
one was essentially talking about painting.
Painting dominated Western art as it had for centuries,
the history of art was in reality a history of painting
with the occasional reference to sculpture thrown in.
Largely through the stranglehold of the historically determined ideas of the
critic Clement Greenberg,
critically acceptable painting had become absurdly narrowly defined.
Success in art meant following a certain trajectory in painting.
For those who could not follow, who resisted,
in fact the great majority of artists,
ultimate failure was virtually guaranteed.
Painting
did become
the symbol of everything wrong in art,
though the later rumours of its demise proved to be unfounded.
These widely agreed orthodoxies dominated contemporary art. In such
circumstances, to be an art student was to feel hopelessly boxed in
with little creative room for maneuver or to make ones,
to make a claim for one's own territory.
It was in the art schools that the pressures built to breaking.
This was an explosion waiting to happen
and when it did, it resounded quickly around the world.
A revolution of new ideas, materials, processes and media:
photography, text, film, video, performance installation.
It was a wonderful period of exploration and discovery in art.
For the first time, the common ground of new art was not in the appearance of the
work, not a style,
but in the thinking of the artist.
Among the characteristics of this work were explicit ideas,
modest materials and processes,
ready-mades,
work made on site,
easy portability
disposablility,
ironic humour,
debunking of pomposity and pretension,
deliberate resistance to easy marketing or collecting.
It became possible to organize international exhibitions of young
artists in modest venues for modest amounts of money
anywhere in the world.
I moved to England in the late summer of 1966, immediately on
leaving Yale.
I am often asked why did it.
The most obvious reason was that I had a young family and needed a teaching job
in order to survive and continue to make my work,
and I was offered one in Britain.
But the full answer is deeper and more complicated.
I was born in Ireland
and throughout my childhood, my family referred to London and Dublin as home.
This is not my house [laughter],
it's a still from a student film.
Not having an American passport, I never felt properly American,
despite appearances.
I nurtured a deep curiosity about the European life I never had,
the other side of the Atlantic seemed both familiar and exotic.
There must be many young Canadians who feel the same way about the
land of their parents.
I wanted to find out, to give it a try.
As graduate students at Yale, we all understood that our MFA degree
could be a ticket to a secure teaching job in a college art school.
However, as my work could no longer be categorized
as either painting or sculpture,
I found I couldn't get a job in any part of urban America where I could imagine
living.
My British friend at Yale, Victor Burgin, suggested I try art schools in England
and gave me addresses to write to.
To my amazement, one wrote back
offering me a job: the Bath Academy of Art.
I thought I would stay a year or two.
That was forty years ago.
Was it a mad thing to leave America when I did?
Was it a mistake?
In the short and middle term, it probably was.
I certainly gave myself a much more difficult life
than I might have had.
From my present vantage point, however,
having had an extraordinary life in Britain,
I count my blessings every day.
I would recommend caution to anyone considering living for an extended time
in
another country.
I believe that after five years, one is already passing the point of no return,
slipping back into the life one left behind becomes more difficult each year.
During those five years, your life has been fundamentally different
from that of those back home,
while they in turn have lived a life you have not shared.
The real time difference, therefore, is closer to ten years than five.
On the other hand, nothing gives one a better sense of perspective about one's
home country
and one's own stereotypical assumptions
than an extended period of living abroad.
And making a life in another country can put one in a privileged position.
Having grown up in the United States, but then spending my whole adult and
professional life in Britain,
I found myself in the unique position of both witness to
and participant in the immense social and cultural upheaval
that has unfolded there over the past forty years.
Outsider and insider.
By far, my greatest problem arose because I failed to understand to what
extent my work and my ideas about art were American
and depended on an American context for their meaning and development.
Despite the intelligence, sophistication and warmth of the British
artists I met,
and their passion for American art,
initially they knew little or nothing
of the new work and ideas that were animating me.
I had not realized how close to the cutting edge my experience at Yale and
New York had placed me.
I did not realize it was such a key moment,
nor the importance of my being present.
I had assumed the new emerging art world to be internationally seamless,
I had as yet little understanding of how much national history and national
art history
impacts an artist sense of themselves and their ideas of art.
The sixties were experienced differently in Berlin,
London, New York and Toronto,
and that period looks different in retrospect.
To a British artist,
American art looked exotic,
while to an American, it looked like home.
By 1969, British artists of my generation like Richard Long,
Gilbert and George,
John Hilliard, Art & Language, Bruce McLean,
were emerging principally from Saint Martin's Art School.
We shared many fundamental beliefs and values, but for many years I felt
adrift from the true sense of context as I gradually found a new one in my
adopted country.
I maintained a sense of connectedness
to my American roots, largely through the pages of "Art Forum,"
something I doubt "Art Forum" could provide for anyone today.
I don't want to give you the wrong impression.
I loved being in England
from the moment I got there or I would have found a way of leaving,
and I was immediately welcomed and accepted by the British art world.
There was a curiosity about me coming from America and I was quickly introduced
to all the well-known artists of the day.
I had my first solo show in London three years after I arrived,
and from then on I was regularly included in British council shows abroad.
I thus became a British artist by default.
I did some of my best worked over those years,
I had some success and some recognition.
Would my work have developed very differently if I had stayed in America?
The answer is yes,
definitely yes.
But I cannot, of course, say exactly how.
The Bath Academy of Art, which had so rashly hired me turned out to be
one of the best art schools in Britain, with many good artists on the staff
and an unusually international agenda.
I am certain that today no art school in Britain
with risk
hiring
a foreigner straight from art school with no track record.
Because I had nothing and knew no one when I arrived,
I was forced to survive like any other young artist in Britain.
I paid my dues, as they say,
during those many difficult years.
Coming from the richest country on Earth to one that was still recovering from
the war was quite a shock.
It may surprise you to learn to Britain only made its final repayment to
the United States for its World War Two debt last year,
sixty years after the war ended.
No longer the well-off foreign tourist for whom everything was a bargain,
I now had to survive on a British income.
it did not take long to discover that I had become the poorest person I had
ever met [laughter].
Ironically, as most of my students received full government grants,
they had a very similar level of income.
These grants coverage for tuition,
room and board, even pocket money for beer and cigarettes,
and all but the very well-heeled received them.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the Britain I went to in 1966
has today disappeared more or less without a trace.
I am not talking about the normal changes one can see to have occurred virtually
everywhere in the world over the past forty years, but profound and pervasive
social, cultural, political and economic revolution.
People in Britain today think differently, behave differently, speak
differently, relate to each other differently,
value different things.
The character of the country
and its self-image
have changed fundamentally.
By contrast, when I visit New York today
it is in every important aspect the same city I knew in the early sixties as
a student,
and the underlying attitudes, values and behavior of its people are much as they
were then.
With the still shocking absence of the Twin Towers,
the skyline looks almost unchanged.
Sometimes now, New York seems older to me than any city in Europe.
Britain in the late sixties was a gentle, modest, semi-socialist country,
an economically vulnerable country where few people have much money and the
income differentiation between a doctor and a truck driver was surprisingly
marginal.
The cost of living was so low
that with care it was possible to live on almost nothing.
For years, many ex-art students survived on the dole.
There was no begging on the street and little homelessness.
It was the land of just enough.
The welfare state,
England's green and pleasant land.
On the other hand,
there was an acceptance of continuing national decline
a world-weariness,
an ambivalence about ambition and initiative,
an exasperating
complacency and lethargy,
a sense that making too much effort was a fool's game,
why bother,
a strange country that educated it's young so well and offer them so
little.
Today, Britain is one of the world's wealthiest countries
but the disparity in wealth between the richest and poorest has never been
greater.
Anyone who has visited Britain in the last fifteen years will rightly wonder
how we survive the cost of living;
we wonder ourselves.
There are now beggars where there were none
and there is a crisis of homelessness.
But it is also if true to say that the country has thrived
in its renewed sense of ambition and purpose,
and London has become probably the most dynamic cosmopolitan and culturally
diverse city in the world,
even more so the New York.
In London, in the late-sixties and early-seventies,
there were few contemporary commercial galleries, few collectors and a tiny
audience for advanced contemporary art,
consisting mostly of students and artists.
Dispersed as artist studios were across the immensity of the city,
there was no part of London with a significant concentration of artists,
no regular gathering places,
no artists bar.
For many, the best hope of having a career as an artist
meant finding a gallery abroad,
in Europe or America.
In these straightened circumstances,
teaching provided a lifeline for many British artists,
including me.
The questioning of the authority of all institutions exercising social
power that had been initiated in the sixties
resulted, in the seventies, in a loss of institutional self-confidence
that ironically produced in British education a decade of unprecedented
academic freedom that is unlikely ever to be repeated.
In every field, but particularly in art schools,
those like myself interested in educational reform and experiment were happy to
exploit these new freedoms.
Because there was so little sense of an actual art world or even an art scene
in London,
the art schools in this period played an unusually critical role.
Many important and influential artists were engaged in teaching.
The schools were the places where artists could meet and discuss ideas.
eats art school particularly those in london
developed a very specific character and and and tended to attract like-minded
artists
to say where one part indicates a lot about one's ideas and values
there were schools i would never have wanted to teach at
and they in turn would never have offered me a job
although close the school of art only came to public attention
at the end of the eighties
it was in fact the creation of the early seventies
john thompson
uh... undoubtedly the most original and gifted art education is in britain over
this period
was dean of the school in nineteen seventy three
when he invited me to join the staff
i will continue teacher costner's almost continuously until nineteen eighty eight
it is usually assumed that i was at some point
head of department
but in fact i never held back or any other administrative role
i was convinced
that if i accepted such a position i would not be able to have to career as
an artist but i wanted
unlike the other great london articles the royal college displayed chelsea said
martin's in central
goals was was not located in the heart of the city
but in the blighted inner city lots south london backwater of new cross
josie of you who have visited recently will know that you cross has remained
remarkably immune to the transformation that has swept across most of london
and remains locked in a bully
time work
back then
been marginal and ignored allowed goals was to develop alarm it's own mines
out of the spotlight
with little league knowledge mantra for interference
john thompson wanted the school trip to principle aims
to encourage the most radical inspection of student artwork possible
and to do this in an atmosphere of intellectual stimulation
these concepts directly challenged behind minded waffle
of domesticated modernism and amp intellectualism probaly in much of
british participation at the time
john told me once that you just hired another tutor someone of exceptional
intelligence
he said he may be too much for the students but i thought it would be good
for the staff
those seles was the first part will be my experience that was clearly the
product of my own generation
the generation educated in the sixties
the conceptual generation
whose ideas and values expressed about work
implied the necessity of new and medical
propositions for art education
those of us who wanted to teach their went to teach there in the early
seventies
role comparatively young more late twenty's and early thirties
all active artists
most like john thompson were disappointed in the inadequacy of their
own at art education
i was fortunate in having had an education but it's certainly well
and that's had a model of what might be possible
but i was also aware that the extrication along the lines of mine
was no longer viable
the screw the school grew out of an intense speculation about the nature of
art and the possibility of a new approach art education
we decided that the principal role of art education should
be to try to prepare students
to be able to cope with the past
of individual creative responsibilities that would confront them as artists and
leave you know it's cool
and continued throughout their lives
we used as our model the reality of the world we knew as artists
the courses organized to encompass the freedoms and difficulties of the
contemporary artist
innocent they structured and supportive environment
whereas most art schools sought to accommodate the new areas of creative
activity
photography film and video installations performance text-based works
by establishing third area courses alongside painting sculpture
are responsible for the first merge all the years a creative expression
including painting and sculpture
into a single fine art course
with in bridge students could move freely throughout their course
the central and radical premise of the undergraduate course
was to expect all students to take full responsibility for their work
from the day they arrive
this meant redeemed b_a_ students
despite their next
areas like graduates
there was in fact no graduate courses posters until nineteen eighty
students were given a studio space in a tutor and expected to make their own
work
renault projects and no required courses
teaching took place
in individual tutorials and group seminars and was based on the
retrospective critical consideration and discussing of student work
the work that their workers fueled formal assessment as possible except at
the end of third-year co of the third year of the course
and no looming threat probation
failure or expulsion
a poorly performing student was invited to take a year
i don't want to get the impression of relentlessly high-minded nism worthiness
of doses
to the contrary the atmosphere was relaxing positive as many of the factors
that usually gives students and teachers anxiety have been moderated were removed
there was a feeling of open of trust and openness
for those of us teaching it was interesting often surprising going there
stimulating in a way off the compound
by visiting artist
this atmosphere was essential for the development of the independence
confidence outspokenness and gary
became too
characterized
of our students
this was the undergraduate course
taken by juliano p
a piece in the rowing damien hirst
as serra lucas lee until they can you go out show
gary hume center would fiona rae
and many others in the eighties
none of them went on to take a minute records
the sense of openness a closeness
in those years provided a context in which i was able to develop my own
approach to teaching
like everyone else there i was not expected twists to fill the role
but simply to be myself as an artist
uh... to be able to teach without frustration and resentment
i needed to make it both enjoyable and useful to myself
i was a sympathetic but not an unselfish teacher
in order to practice medicine or long you need to study for many years to gain
by degree or certificate and what you have when you are a doctor or lawyer
and you can set up your practice
you can study art for the same length of time and date in equivalent degree was
certificate
but it will cost rushing to be an artist
no one from north russia to be an artist you don't even need the certificate
there's none is required
there is no template for an artist
teaching art is difficult because making art personal personal
over many years of teaching i've tried to discover ways of addressing this
crucial problem
i thought i was always the term to teach in the way
that would not encourage anyone to make it work that looked like
or deliberately emulated mine
what interested me was in influencing how students thought about that work
how they approached it
not what it looked like note what its content might be
i want to be as non prescriptive as possible
to acknowledge the infinite diversity of art
by far the most important characteristic for anyone wanting to be an artist
desire
the passionate inexplicable desire to make art
this desire is more important than talent
ted enviable talent but qualified designer is not enough
to have that little obvious counts but overwhelming desire may will succeed
designer can be encouraged but not talk
in my experience apart up crispin
lacking any recognizable talent
make out of necessity incentive way to work which they excel
this is what is sometimes called originality
i came to believe that the key to success in blood and papa student was
doing when not in the work itself
but in the relationship between the student in the works
my homework has the car trip does
look says it does deals with the issues that does
not just because of decisions i've made
but because it comes naturally to me
and though if i a m not it subject is a manifestation of me
if someone seeks to make work like mine
my work will always be better
as the each of us these unique the closer our work is to our deepest south
the more special it can be
because the sense of self is buried so deep in each of us
not hittin
but in a preferred sway invisible
because i've been so familiar and seemingly obvious
is often difficult for us to recognize and therefore value properly
well be assumed to be on most popular to be most commonplace
about our own perception
or thinking or feeling
may in fact
the are most unique characteristic
but seems ordinary to us
maybe a revelation to others
i am not talking about what is usually refer to the self-expression
a concept i consider misleading president plies that's what's important
is having something to express
i'm talking about people deeper level expression
the level of those things one and help express
that one cannot suppress even when the monster
it is not only necessary to recognize and use one strengths
whatever they may be
but also ones weaknesses and limitations
i have watched many students turned bludgeoned other circumstances would be
considered disadvantage into an advantage in their art
art gives his permission to turn the tables
students often feel under pressure to work in a certain way
sometimes this pressure comes from outside
to do with a teacher or a parent were appear
more often
it comes from within
in a form of self-censorship
anxiety about self image
students worry that what they've really want to do was to banal
to obvious
to weird
to unexplainable to on cool
i have had floundering students admit that they did secret work at home but
they didn't bring to school or show anybody
because the embarrassment
invariably this work is better than the serious work of school
because it is born from the passionate inpatient the other work relax
the nature of the relationship between the artist in the work is always
expressed in the work
expressive power
are of art should never be underestimated
pleasure in doing
is the essential basis for making art
when you look what you do no effort is too great no time to long
we are all capable of doing lots of things for while
but not for long
arken only come from what we are able to sustain
there is nothing
good or bad no matter how dramatically important or how apparently trivial
that happens in an artist's life that it cannot be turned to good use and their
art
anne crummy part-time job
any minor incident
any childhood memory
other people can read a book for pleasure and like mint
an artist and read a book
and have it all sort of
hole course of their life's work
artists are unusually vulnerable to the world
and they in turn use their work to seduce others
into value and what they found
the relentless political economic crises of the nineteen seventies in britain
culminated in the election of margaret thatcher as prime minister in nineteen
seventy nine
over the next ten years she more or less
s turned the country upside-down she privatized the nationalized industries
broke the power of the unions
challenged the vested interests of the profession's education
medicine and lol
much of this was done
in a dangerously clumsy and needless to crew an insensitive way
but the consequence was to re-energize the middle class amake aggressive
individualism
socially acceptable
the change in the possibility of making money change britain's attitude towards
money
rapid increase in wealth seems to offer society more significantly that anything
else
perhaps this is the reason why i say britain having changed so dramatically
and the united states so little
america has remained rich
britain has become rich
and the summer of nineteen eighty eight
damien hirst
a second-year students
goldsmith's curated freeze
an exhibition of his fellow students and recent graduates
he found a sponsor
got free use of the striking derelict building do for demolition in london's
docklands
printed a catalog with a cold comfort
and invited everybody in the art world
this was a student are choked it didn't look like a student wrote
is often assumes this mission success depended solely on damien star for p_r_
but what really separated from those students shows with the quality of the
work
and the confidence of the very young artists
they were the first truly postwar generation britain
precocious ambitious self-confident
impatient
fractures children
and they caught the mood at the moment
freeze is now part of an endlessly in the photo i_d_ story of the period but
this show did signaled the beginning of the transformation of the month in our
world
the rise of the power of the young
and the dramatic change in the relationship of contemporary art to the
larger culture
the general population but has taken place
over the past fifteen years
and the late eighties mrs thatcher altered the terms of reference for all
higher education in britain
an act of extraordinary political expediency
she simply announced all institutions of higher education were to become
universities
the independent but equipment status of the articles
at a given the country generations of creative people
was casually abolished
in the new academic order that emerge
the middle managers mccann tripled accountants took over the ship
and introduce the regulations mom train quality controls league tables bookmark
this ad and of the old order of academic freedom
post let's approach to education
grew out of the values and criteria of the sixties and seventies
naturally now as that
their artists reinventing artist www art education
in a way that is responsive their current social and cultural values
without compromising hearts great promise
when i was a student protest in the studio
an impassioned angry
student past
but to be done to save art from the degrading menace of pop
dustin replied
beware of anyone who announces they're seeking to save art
ought to take care of itself
in nineteen eighty eight
near a freeze
i left the listeners because for the first time i could live from my work
ironically by became well known for teaching post at that precise in time i
was wrong longer doing something
although i returned there is no art professor for several years in the late
nineties
it is no longer possible for me to sustain the kind of involvement that i
had taken for granted for the world changed
and so that i
to work pretty partisan my generation did in the sixties and seventies
laid the groundwork for much of the art been done today
but the ideas and pictures
that motivated us then
no longer have their provocative boris
have only limited relevance to into into living presence
that period like every other is now historically bounded and of interest i
assume
to the young
principally when researching
to write essays
the younger always instinctively it likes cutting edge
and are in fact in inevitably animated by the realities of the only world they
know
the reason my generation's conte's
sharon's are such limited contemporary interest
is not because they failed but because they succeeded
they've become part of the fabric of the general assumption about the nature and
scope of art
they're taken for granted
today it is impossible to understand art without them
it is sometimes said
but most artist
just one idea
in my work today
i believe i a m during a century the same thing i was forty years ago
at no stage did i ever want to become the simply because you go to unify own
best past
i had to change the character of my work over the years
in order to keep
my relationship my work the same
my practice start in the sixties with constructions
and gradually move
moved on
to working with reading maids
i became interested in trying to identify the most basic defining
characteristic the scenic pond on the poll works of art
this culminated my nineteen seventy work seventy-three work titled an oak tree
in the years that followed
i decided to see what would happen
if i approached images of objects
in the same way i had the objects themselves
i start to make a line drawings of individual object sedately in the least
personal style i could
to make drawings that could be seen as ready maids
these became the building blocks first applied warplanes and release in the
eighties
and then of virtually all myself subs convert to this day
in the nineties i start to make highly colored site-specific installations
uh... guesswork brought me the opportunity to work
in extraordinary spaces
and sometimes with brilliant are architects
these installations let me back to painting
where i have begun as a student
painting is now of course
just born different artists many options
position of art in relation content purses side he has completed alter-ego
for my lifetime
art has gone from
marginalize sometimes alienated activity engaging
small numbers of committed and knowledgeable supporters
into a creative activity
that seems able to speak directly to a large audience about the nature of
contemporary life
the existence of a sizable intrested content they all insist now one of the
assumptions of the young
the best we could hope for in the past wasn't audience in some ethics future
in this new situation
artist of opportunities for engagement with the public
that have not existed for centuries
the art world has become dominated by commercial speculation in the way it has
never seen before
when there was little money in art there was little speculation
freeze the exhibition has given way to freeze the art fair
i am very fortunate to have enjoyed
varying degrees of success in recognition
since my first child in nineteen sixty nine
but for many years my situation felt very prescribed proscribed limited
largely to britain
uh... constrained by the requirements of teaching
over the past fifteen years however
i have enjoyed opportunities and freedoms of choice
i did not know previously
artist off something their latest work is their best
orphans bacon
but i have to tell you i really do
is ironic that through teaching
i am associate with the phenomenon of youthful and early success
but my personal experience feels more the opposite
i feel i have saved the best to last
of course
any young artist with the possibility of early success
should grasp it with both hands and run
but is not the end of the world that doesn't happen like that
if it takes a long time
matter how long
it is now clear to me that the most challenging aspect of being an artist is
maintaining the life and one's work over a lifetime
not just once career but the work itself
the joke i told you about longevity at the beginning of this talk
wasn't a joke after all
i would like to conclude by reading to you
the order auto interview text
that's forms part
of adultery
to begin with could you describe this work
yes of course
but i've done is changeable asif water into a full grown oak tree
without altering
the accidents of the class of water
the accidents
yes the color field weight size
do you mean that the glass of water is a symbol of adultery
no it's not a simple
i've changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that as an oak
tree
it looks like a glass of water
of course it does i didn't change its appearance
that's not a glass of water
it's an oak tree
can you prove what you claim to have done
well yes no
i claim to have maintained the physical forms a glass of water and as you can
see i have
however as one
normally look for evidence of physical change in terms of altered form
no such proof exists
haven't you simply called this class of water and oak tree
absolutely not
it is not a glass of water anymore
i've changed its actual substance
it would no longer be accurate to call to cross border
but the content and wished but that would not elizabeth
fact that it is an oak tree
isn't this just a case of the emperor's new clothes
with the emperor's new clothes people claim to see something which wasn't
there because they felt they should
i would be very surprised if any went on the base on oak tree
lausic difficult to effect the change
no effort at all
but it took me
years of work before i realized i could do it
when precisely did the glass of water per comino cream
when i put the water in the class
does this happen every time you from a class with water
no of course not
only when i intend to change it int went below three
than intention close with the change
i would say precipitates the change
how you do it
it contradicts what i feel you know about the cause of the fact
it seems to me your claim to have worked a miracle
is not the case
i'm flattered that you think so
onto the only person who could do something like this
how could i know
could you teach others to do it
note that's not something one can teach
do you consider changing the glass of water into adultery
constitutes an artwork
yes
what precisely is the artwork glass of water
there is no glass of water anymore
the closest of change
there is no process involved in the change
people pretty yes the oak tree
but the oak tree only exists in the mind
note
the actual oak trees physically present but in the form of the class of water
as the glass of water was a particular glass of water
guilty is also particular
to conceive the category oak tree put a picture of particular appears not to
understand experience what appears to be a glass of water as an oak tree
just as in perceive a bull is also inconceivable
did this particular a pre-existing whales before to perform of across a
border
no
this particular oak tree did not exist previously
hi should also point out that it does not and will not therefore has any other
form but that of a glass of water
how long will it continue to be an oak tree
and collection ***
thank you very much
and
he act by post retransmitted questions about what could be a your in case you
can't hear them although anniversaries of microphones technology
extensively as an outside so anyone who'd like to ask questions
by political overtones
the proposal about it
willing to take a minute if there's a very funny bring about
britain's might like to place such crap
ari did albers going classes and i also develop a scholar course
and when in the albers drawing classes
they were unbearably difficult
because you were given newsprint
pretty paper defeatist paper possible
you were america four eight and some of the sharp point
you no salt no salt pencils
no great system
and what we were given birth flower pot
we were each given a flower pot you're looking for the flower pot
and going to flower pot involved foreign opal's
like six different locals to get all those current right
freehand but for expense another racer
well when i look at my phones because they don't have the markup
but they do line drawings that or not
respond when from that
and when i started to use color
i was very tried and if you can see the whole first political news lol
i tentatively use a little bit in the eighties but i'm very little tentative
nervous about it
suddenly i had personal
big discovery about it which we had to do with pain involved
he was only when i start to paint walls
i realize
the types of planes that had to play with it like a big element
and
but as soon as they did that the blues i'm remembered everything i have learned
of the office toward courts dole have taken high in the living proof that
uh... alberto for color approach to keeping the really seriously and i think
i popped up very sad that than almost anybody i know who was a student of this
like everybody else is it better
uh... unite a look at you know price mustard
transcript s
but what i what i was trying to implying today met that bus that
i have seen everything i've done this kind of saints
i mean right i've thought about making i've tried to make her critical clear
that for select the lecturers artist made another work and i just use words
today
and i did exactly what i do want to make your drawing that's exactly the same
thing
and teaching i think that you can more or less the same like you
and i needed to unneeded all to make sense to me in a coherent way worldwide
couldn't really do it
and i can't do that in mind whether boorda pain dinner installation i can't
do it account talk so that but i was thinking about the relationship of an
artist to their work
i'd on acting out for you
what it is that i by speaking to them acting that out
but i was talking about the uh... you know the things that are
hidden about oneself
i've told him
more that article anybody about myself today
and but at the same time you've learned lots that i didn't tell you and that's
because of me being here need the rest and the rest fake
what i'm saying to you that i don't understand that i'm reviewing
i'm revealing loads and that's
the fingerprint
well as they sit anything that happens in your life to be useful to a modest
and
uh... it employment as a catholic
and and not being attempted to kind of two thousand was very useful because it
gave me the oak tree because i would never have known veteran substantiation
for didn't attach it
so that was very upset and very useful
uh...
and i i i
aidid
circulation to uh... it was a of spin it was a at that dollar it's not clear what
tricky *** complications it's an architect archaeological site
and uh...
uh... once a year they commissioned corps contributes to do something in the
church and that i said that's what i want to do
that because i nine always smile an idea of making and installation is too
the clinton places that
have such a peculiarly split
uh... peculiar sense of themselves like that
is to bring back the life that you should come from
so the world my world is about bringing line
and an island
brought religious live but that's not simply put it on
mobile homes and
they did but i did
and it was very interesting because
almost religious people within time
then and simple clean
deal
depression
isn't there's not enough to matter
was had
are are
the placed into the place for your educators the place that
most inferences u
because it increases your you'd think you'd also stays with you as a reference
point i've spent twice as much of my life in britain
have been viewed in the president in the united states
but aren't
the things about that night will never understand
and and i can go quite like this book into america
and and i understand everything
you not expand and to try and have a bynoe every stupid nuance of the whole
place easy because that's where i grew up and that doesn't go away
uh... i don't but it's interesting i don't feel at home
i don't want to be there
i'd i'd want to leave the report put people together
but i uh... i get the best part of me thats
definitely comes from that and when i was in my who am i stages a student
uh... i did look a lot or was it was the very least look to are smart because
bursts of that one could look to but i was very interested in the pin
irish literature written
uh... chores are particularly beckett that interests me a great deal
but i could say united to just new grad
you know i think uh... i twenty-third didn't say no i think
uh... artistically history or all of history as a kind of grabbed
marketed
you know you can't believe that they don't believe to referential you want to
speak and *** if you want