Is the Golden Age of Art Schools Over?

NO

The question begs another one: when was the Golden Age? The Renaissance Academy? The Parisian Beaux Arts? The Victorian Atelier? … My own heart lies with the 180 art schools that were spread around UK provincial towns in the early 20th century, acting as centres of cultural and artistic life.

But the timing of a golden age tends to coincide with the youth of the people who fetishise it, so I guess we must be talking about the 1960s and 1970s, that time of presumed freedom, hedonism and pure creativity. This age must be golden, goes the logic, because their graduates are now famous and leading the art world (or at least the famous ones are famous). And then, the narrative goes, all this has been lost. Art schools have become professionalised. They are run by managers as businesses. They have closed down craft workshops. They don’t let in working class people. And, worst of all, they have shut out creativity.

This was the narrative constructed in a recent BBC Radio 4 programme, Art School, Smart School, but it is full of falsehoods and misplaced nostalgia. Yes, art schools have become more professionalised, and we should be thankful for that: the previous versions were shot through with favouritism and misogyny, with self-appointed gatekeepers determining who and what had worth. Although there were of course some inspiring and important teachers, sexism and patriarchy tended to influence judgments, not just in fine art but across most creative disciplines. But no, this professionalisation does not mean we have got rid of practising artists as teachers – they remain at the core of our teaching. And yes, art schools have had to adopt the methods of business, because that is what government policy has demanded. But no, workshops have not been shut down: for example University of the Arts London expanded workshop provision at Central Saint Martins when we moved to new buildings at Kings Cross. The same was true following the Royal College of Art’s expansion into Battersea. In both cases traditional media and technologies were retained alongside new digital facilities.

And no, we haven’t become exclusive zones: arts schools now cater for a far broader and bigger community of students than they did in the 1960s and 1970s. Against expectations and fears, participation from lower socio-economic groups has risen over the past 10 years at institutions such as UAL, mainly due to large investments in widening participation schemes that were barely existent in the 1970s.

The most serious charge appears to be that art schools have lost their creative urge and the freedom to express. I simply do not see the evidence for this, indeed quite the opposite. With a few brilliant exceptions, the earlier art schools worked within a received canon, and those gatekeepers ensured that the canon was perpetuated through the gallery, publication and awards system; those chosen to pass through the gates became famous. Now art and art education work in a radically expanded field, culturally, materially and politically. It is simple romanticism to cling to versions of the past that deny these changes. I see art students embracing these multiple contexts, and finding space within them to pursue their individual and collective creativity. I am humbled by their ability to negotiate the complexity of these contingent forces and make sense of them through their work. And I see them engaging with the external world through their art in a manner that challenges the internalised obsessions of aesthetics and process that dominated earlier art school education.

As for the golden crop of alumni produced from the ‘golden’ generation, it is true to say that every era produces its enfants terribles and sacred monsters, and that myths form around them and their education. The great advantage of teaching is that I don’t need to hark back or fetishise experience and fame: I see the brilliance of the generation now at art school on a daily basis.

But I do agree with one thing lost from the ‘golden age’. Money. Grants and free education are now a thing of the past, and students are increasingly likely to be squeezed, excluded and compromised. So rather than the art world turning in on itself through false narratives of a gilded past, we should stand together, and make the case for a student funding system that is fit for the purpose of supporting art and design students through the specific demands of their courses. And we should all argue long and hard for the critical role that art schools play in the future culture of our society.