Art school, art school, things fall apart-school

(Ad from 'Man' Magazine, December 1965) 

I was delighted to run into some old acquaintances from art school at one of the Stupid Season's Christmas parties. It was one of those fortuitous conversations that lit up just before we planned to leave the party and made me reluctant to leave, despite having already said our goodbyes.

As we congregated in the late afternoon sunshine on the deck of a nicely renovated suburban house, we felt a bit like refugees from another, more fanciful time and place. We huddled there, heads together, wondering that our lives had taken such a conventional turn.

We initially swapped stories about how we struggled to make ends meet in those days - living off a sack of rice for months, being fed weeds from the garden by a medievalist housemate, washing clothes with dishwashing detergent in the bath and the like. We all nodded in sage agreement that the Young Folks these days would not necessarily know about such things.

We laughed about lecturers both sleazy and eccentric, living and dead. We touched on a student who was known in our circles as The Photography Slut (uncharacteristically, I kept that nickname to myself. I must be getting old and circumspect) and other glorious grifters who would attend artschool for a week each semester and somehow manage to pass their assessments. We chortled about a dreaded project wherein a bunch of pale, skinny and serious black-clad art students were coralled into a dance studio and, quite mortifyingly, forced to to participate in the worst type of interpretative dance. To add insult to injuries (both to our feeble bodies and to our pride), we then had to reinterpret our physical experience on the dancefloor as an art piece. In dowelling. It was, rather sinisterly, called "The Dowelling Project". The very mention of that title now can be known to induce fits and vomiting in survivors.

Once our horrified giggles subsided, our talk turned to the Printmaking department. The dear, genteel Printmaking department which was a safe haven for those of us who found post-modern theory too dense or ridiculous. One of the women mentioned that she was the only person in the artschool's history to have managed to break a lithogaphy stone. I informed her that one of my friends shared that dubious honour. The point was, the lecturers could not impress on us enough just how rare, expensive and precious those stones actually were. They apparently could only be found in one place in the world (Italy, if I recall correctly). In my mind, those lithography stones slid out of the side of a mountain, all pristine and ready to use. And then somehow, some time in the distant past, found their way to the wilds of South Australia. The Lecturers also reassured us that those stones were almost impossible to break. So knowing two people who have managed to break them is a bit like meeting, I don't know, Bonnie and Clyde or something. Such people are not to be trifled with.

I then recounted how I ran into the head of Printmaking a few years ago and was shocked to hear that all of those stones have since been sold off by the artschool. Yes, it was felt that there was no longer a need for those beautiful, smooth, ultra-impressionable, super-sensitive, rarest of stones. Apparently none of the Young Folks are foolhardy enough to attempt lithography these days. There is a part of me that does not blame them. It is a process with much scope for disaster. I always gritted my teeth, screwed my eyes shut and hurled myself at it, hoping for the best. It was nerve-wracking, to say the least, for a sensitive soul like mine. I was always at war with the medium.

And, what is more, the artschool itself has been moved to another location. That much-maligned 1970s rabbit warren with its pebbledashed surfaces, bleak industrial-style workshops and deliberately riot-proofed design has been razed to the ground. And since replaced with an estate of Tuscan-style McMansions. Even the relatively new buildings, those built during our time there in the early 1990s, have gone.

It is as if the place never existed. It is as if our experiences there were nothing more than a slightly wacky collective hallucination. But I could sense that I was not the only one in our little group on that nice suburban deck in the late afternoon sunshine who was so darn thankful that I had been a part of that particular brand of madness.

But, oh, those stones.

Comments

[Ralphie]

It is a shame that the art form is not longer taught there (or wherever it is now). I'm glad though that you no longer have to eat weeds and wash your clothes in the bathtub with detergent. Still, it has made you the person you are now!

[Elizabeth]

I had no idea about lithography stones being such rare things! I hope those old stones are being treasured somewhere in the world.

And the Dowell Dance! Oh, if only Youtube had existed then!!! You in black doing interpretive dance with a dowell? Please please recreate, film, and post. Please.

[Lizzy]

The limestone for litho stones came from Bohemia, or modern Germany, and no I NEVER heard of somebody managing to break one (only stories of how people had broken themselves by way of a litho stone).

It was a tricky medium. They taught it at my school, the old way. But I had some trendy friends who taught me how to do it using metal plates, or (even better) thin sheets of plastic that came in ten packs and could be drawn on with a sharpie (cool no?).

Well, glad to hear that you at least found a safe-haven in printmaking. Even there there were kids that created "monoprints" that were essentially rolled out, day of, with a giant relief roller and a single, solid color of ink. I mean, honestly?

For me the print shop was a place where I could not talk to all the other goofs and NOT be personally insulted to be counted amongst (some of) them. I once had to sit through a performance piece entitled "Starbucks Fucks Paris." I'm not sure if words can come to terms with my reaction to the piece.

Granted, no dowells were involved. Only a blindfold, glue, a giant pinata, a mermaid suit, and black plastic bags.

Conceptualize that.

I suppose there are some things that we wish we could forget, and other things that will never go away...

That said, ditto to Elizabeth on the retroactive Youtube fantasy--perhaps an on-site civil-war-style reenactment is in store?

[a thousand shades of twilight]

Ralphie: Oh, I get nostalgic for weeds-a-la-medievalist from time to time. Not really!
Elizabeth: It could be that they just promulgated that myth so we would look after the stones? Anyway, I fell for it, and treated those stones with unadulterated reverence and a degree of trepidation. As for the dowell dance, as much as I would love to recreate it, I fear I might do myself a permanent injury. M and I were just watching Ken Burns' Jazz documentary and were laughing at the thought of two ornery old timers like us attempting something as energetic as a jitterbug. I fear we would have to strip it down to a few "essential" moves..
Lizzie: It was a tricky medium wasn't it? I only ever did it the old way, but was partial to transferring collages with turpentine and drawing into them. Unfortunately I was fairly ham fisted with my drawing!
I suffered through some unfortunate performance pieces too. One woman writhed around casting shadows on a paper screen with horses drawn on it and then burst through it at the end. She said it represented how she felt at art school. As much as I could relate to the sentiment, I always get the giggles in solemn situations (probably due to a childhood misspent in church). I spent the whole time thinking "don't laugh, the last thing you should do is laugh because that would just be mean" which is of course a recipe for disaster in those circumstances.

[Lizzy]

Haha yes--I, too get the most uncontrollable church giggles for exactly the same reason I'm sure. I'm laughing just imagining you laughing in that situation....haha ohh my.