Future of the Humanities – The Relevance of Art History

well let's start by saying thank you to to the director and and the trustees and the staff at the gala for allowing us to hold this conference here today I'm I'm Mike Scott I'm a fellow Blackfriars Hall in Oxford and I'm also the senior adviser to the president of Georgetown University and director of the Georgetown University future of the humanities project what is this project about it's about the future of the humanities and the arts that's what it's about why should we have it well on both sides of the Atlantic we are facing a situation whereby utilitarianism and materialism and the desire for wealth creation is actually forcing a pressure on the humanities and forcing the humanities out of education so we decided that it's about time that some of us on both sides of the Atlantic started to say actually the arts and the humanities are essential for the development and the education of our people I remember when I first came into the university education back in 1974 so the mathematicians start to work out how old I am but back in 1974 Sir Charles Grows made of speech in which he said to government you neglect the arts at your peril and that is what we do we neglect the arts at our peril the arts and the humanities are a civilizing force within our world of course other subjects are as well but we mustn't let the Arts and Humanities be put in a situation where by money the desire for wealth starts to squeeze out the arts and humanities from our educational programs and no more is this important so important as with art and art history you'll probably have read about the attack on art history as a a level subject within the UK if I'm afraid that I have to say that Professor Martin Kemp has been taken ill overnight and can't be with us today but if he had been here he was going to talk about the way that it was in danger at the universities itself I hope you'll may hope to make that up as some future date but I heard early this morning that he was he was unwell so that's what so that is what we're about we're trying to promote on both sides of the Atlantic this whole issue of putting the humanities and putting the Arts on the agenda and Georgetown University and I'm delighted that dr. Tom Bankoff is here is the vice president of Georgetown University and other members of Georgetown University but a faculty and also alumni here in the UK are present with us today Georgetown have been absolutely so generous in sponsoring the whole project and indeed in it initiating it so that's what what the project is about and we're going to talk today about art history and about art and we have with us some wonderful figures in the world of art both in terms of curating and in terms of making art and they're chaired by Steven farthing fellow the Royal Academy such a distinguished artist in his own right known throughout the country as one one of our leading leading artists and he's going to chair the whole of the afternoon and the discussions so I'm going to hand over to him and then he will introduce our wonderful panel as well thank you very much thank you for coming thank you [Applause] now as mike has already said that the Martin won't be with us which slightly unbalanced is our aim which was to have some makers and some curators and they the the the makers and curators thing is quite important I think in terms of understanding what art might be in that every now and then people are moved to ask what art is and Andre Malraux the I believe he was the first-ever Minister of Culture in France during the mid 20th century when asked this question said it's what you find in galleries and museums from which I only have deduced that curators and museum keepers and art historians decide what art is because they're the people who decides what what goes into museums it's seldom the audience and it's seldom the artists all artists want to be museums looking at it from the other direction but coming up with a very similar result first page or two of Gombrich story of art he asks himself the question what is art and he says it's what it is what artists make so this panel is structured such that we take both guys into consideration I don't know whether they're right or not but they're operating in a area that is plausible I think so no Martin Kemp unfortunately but Daphne who is a portrait painter an eminent portrait painter and I think that the important thing about that's neat odd to me as an artist is that she is a professional portrait painter and artist she paints fantastic pictures go online and have a look it's got a great website with tons and tons of paintings that she's made over a period of time some of people's even I recognize because they're mostly rich and very important and so Daphne is going to start the proceedings and talk about I the relevance of portrait painting now and then after Daphne is still Thompson who is again a distinguished artist who I think we studied at the Royal College of Art around about the same time maybe not totally but certainly our paths crossed at the Royal College and Estelle is going to talk about the well the title of her talk is analog art works in a digital age which I suspect will cover a very very important area today which is that I can almost give you the exact date 1995 computers turned up in art schools in a big way the internet reared its head the moving image became accessible to everyone at home and the editing of moving images was possible on computers using software that you could go and buy in your local Dixon's or somewhere and so the our ability to interface with the making of visual stuff was totally changed as from about 1995-96 at that point nobody knew how to teach digital imaging in art schools there were very few computers there were golf ball typewriters that we were all very proud of that could rethink second sentences and you could change the typeface by taking an enormous lump of metal out of them and putting them in and so it absolutely central to what is happening or what has happened over the last 20 or 30 years is the area that I still will talk about and then finally Kathleen who kicks off with a quote from an American I'll leave it to her to tell you what the quote is but she's going to talk about truth and beauty in a troubled time which seems entirely appropriate to me my job is to smile listen take copious notes and try and ask some interesting questions to get the second of the proceedings in place so like you you should be doing the same job as me taking copious notes and getting ready for the open discussion so definitely thank you very much could you I'm quite clearly here under false pretences the title for this I was told was the relevance of art history everyone is extremely academic I am NOT I'm a practitioner so I suspect I've been invited because I'm living history not just my age which is over 70 but the fact that I am still practicing an archaic practice if you like I hate that word actually but an archaic way of going about making art in other words I and many of my colleagues at the Royal Society portrait painters still work from observation directly in front of the subject many people have said and amazingly to me still say that you don't need portrait painters ever since photography was invented and you can take selfies and you just don't need a painter to record appearances but what is the difference between painting from photographs as some people do there's a point to that up to a very small point to that because paintings will last paint will last for hundreds if not thousands of years we don't quite know what's going to happen to photographs and everything digital they no doubt they'll find a way of preserving the goodness but there's so much of it so what is the difference a camera sees things in ways that we do not if you take a snap of a friend in on holiday and you bring it home and weeks later you have a look at it there'll be all sorts of things in that photograph that you have see it's a rubbish flowing around behind mountains that you didn't notice with there someone sneaking in behind someone else that you didn't notice was there you know the camera has recorded an instant and we don't see like that our relationship when we're looking at something is a dynamic one it's active we have a visceral response and it may be you know between the legs it may be in the heart it may be in the head but it's orderly so there's a bodily thing happening when we're looking at something directly our eyes are accommodating they're peering into the farther reaches their rear comma dating if they go into a light area or that dark area so they can see different things in different illuminations and that experience is what informs a painter that paints from life now the problems of painting from life of course is that life is three-dimensional and happens throughout time and a painter is merely making something that's flat and fixed and and and fixed in time so what is this painting what is it that we're picking out we're picking out various details that seemed to us to be important it's a much much richer experience than working from anything that's dead or flat it's richer actually than painting than working from drawings even though the exhibition that many of you will have just seen the drawing element was brilliant you know every every you could follow each little twig and he'd observed that twig and some of them was snapped off and some were not you know he clearly spent a lot of time looking at the actual world in front of him it's just as clear to me that he went away and then paying for the paintings somewhere else because there are inconsistencies and all the things that happen when you're out in the landscape the wind blowing and the Sun moving round and changing I mean those sunsets you only have about ten minutes to paint a sunset so you could not work in that way in front of the motif but of course various artists have worked in front of the motif starting with I mean Suzanne clearly did Giacometti did do we need people to be painting as I do well I don't know whether we need people like me but you're certainly going to get people like me and I'm sorry I'm boring you the person you yes yawn but if you hold it I could paint it now let's think about the experience of painting from observation if you have a still life it's quite difficult to make the thing look solid and as though it's inhabiting a space you're having to make an illusion quite difficult to get the proportions right or wrong but if you're painting a human everybody knows whether you've got the proportions right or wrong everybody knows that if that figure stone stands up the arms are going to drag along the ground or the head is too small we are all critics and if you take that one stage further and look at the face we all you are all staring my face not my feet not my shoulders not the other people you're looking at my face because we're importing so much more information with that so we're always going to be interested in faces now all the problems of painting from life are magnified when you sit someone down and try and paint another human being because not only is everything moving even if they're trying to keep still they're moving impossibly every possible way so not only might they be over there or over there compared to their background they also are moving like this the head is moving round and on top of all of that moving about the surface is moving about on top and the light is probably changing even if you've got an electric light that cuts it down a bit but the fact that you've changed that the facets are differently angle that the light will make the shapes that are coming to your eye enormous ly complicated vast numbers of shapes are coming to the artists eye so when people talk about merely copying appearances as they do rather in a rather derisive way in fact I heard a tutor from the Slade only last year sitting on a selection panel with myself for a national sending competition is missing quite a lot of the artists saying merely copying appearances well from everything I've just said with all of this Ord is the appearance what is mere what is copying so I think it's incredibly experiment that we keep hold of this experience which is almost gone from many of our art colleges it's taught in very very few places and there are all sorts of technical ways of helping artists get this three-dimensional moving living world down onto a flat surface and a lot teachers should be there helping them but some of them don't know about the angle of vision that everything's going to be distorted outside that area they don't know that perspective is a device that helps somebody make an illusion of three dimensions but it's not your human experience at the time nonetheless when you're painting you're going to have to cope with the fact that when you're looking up at somebody or the surroundings behind them or you're looking down you're going to get those perspectives going in all of these directions so it's multi-dimensional and that's what's exciting about it and why I think it should be taught and I think it should be talked immersively so that every student at some point in their art education should have a term at least where they're dealing with portraiture they can deal with it digitally they can deal with it in all sorts of ways I think that probably the best way is to have different practitioners talking to those students because yes they're going to use digital media yes they're going to use photographs you can make art out of anything and I'm not saying one way if better than another but working from direct observation is something that relates to everybody else and art isn't just for curators and museums art is for people and when you put on an exhibition of a port of portraits people come to it even in Edley little provincial galleries they come to it and they have a view as to whether you've got it right or wrong and they're usually right about whether it's right or wrong so there's no way that one wants to go back to teaching a method there are private art schools that do that and they're stuck somewhere back in the nineteenth century I'm not for that at all but any student who has the experience with a little help and guidance to work from life and going go into it deeply is going to be led into all of these other areas what is it that they are trying to catch from that experience and somebody will be catchy shapes and colors they certainly because we can tell whether we've got it right or wrong whether you've got a lightness or not they certainly will be more sensitive the colors more sensitive to changes in shape if they have this experience and all artists whatever persuasion are actually intended to be better than the rest of the population more sensitive to color more sensitive to shape and proportion and working from a living model another human being is interminably interesting and you've only to think that in the last century you've got people as different as say San slabby portraits or and I wasn't forgetting names from having to look MIDI Liana you know using doing something very stylized or Giacometti moving a little bit nearer our own time existential angst just gray just choosing what he wants from that experience hugely different all masters and then in our own time which is just about passing and maybe it's right that this won't matter anymore but I don't think that's true but in our own time we've just got rid of sorry got brittles lost Freud and Coldstream and of course we still have Hockney all people who paint portraits freud painting very fleshy ones Hockney painting rather more decorative paintings and Coldstream being much more controlled and cool about his appraisal of another human being so if they were doing it that recently and producing work portraits that everybody admires of course we should be going on teaching it so will you thank you [Applause] good afternoon everyone oops I should move a little closer okay I could read what I want to say I would like to reflect on how we look at paintings now and what it is like for students and emerging artists to navigate that and understand art history in the digital age I considered my own art education in the early 1980s when within fine art education the shift from taught art history not always a survey studies towards critical theoretical studies had already occurred since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1986 where I was taught actually by Stephen I have taught a generation of emerging artists in a number of British art schools and as an artist and like my students I've also been part of the technological revolution from analog to digital over the past two decades I perceive this significant shift in our viewing visual experience and cognitive analysis in a contemporary world dominated by the screen it's the balance between the real and the virtual that'll be my focus today as this seems to me a critical challenge for artists now I do not intend to celebrate one over the other but I do hope to highlight current trends and potential global changes in the production and reception of art in preparation for the symposium my research included online sources but daily in my inbox and junk mail that they're filled with exhibition notices introducing me to artists whose work I have only ever seen and may only ever know via a screen I confess the occasional virtual visit viewing of contemporary in the main commercial shows that I know I can't get to this easy access to information and visual stimuli stimulation is exciting for everyone including a generation of students emerging artists and significantly the audience for their art I'm not referring to art that is explicitly made on or for the Internet I'm more interested in what I term analog art that includes painting sculpture even installation art that has been digitized and uploaded to be viewable and entirely experienced via the Internet a relatively recent proliferation of art on MySpace YouTube Instagram and artsy have revolutionized how art is being seen how do we navigate this miasma of art often without any accompanying social economic or political history how do we as makers or as an audience operate when art objects are viewed as screen images artsy is a free online platform where you can buy require a bid on over 250,000 paintings similar sites or pile Saatchi arts / and curated durig spaces such as single art and art fine that are growing in an ordinance at an ordinate speed these sites charts the careers of artists act as archives give context and are not just about selling art but as good as this seems the culture established exerts new pressures for young artists seeking validation peer recognition and commercial success they need to be able to negotiate a global market art market sorry be commercially savvy socially aware and uniquely creative all in an instant there are of course online forums and magazines daily art magazine which bills itself as your daily dose of / interesting art history stories told in the most compelling way has 8 million followers I was just informed that doesn't I calm member I have been given free access to five of icons Museum and heritage related journals which is great online writing tends to be more skimmable and lists like than print I recently read an online Guardian article on why you should read this article slowly arguing that in the analog era writing was read much later than it was written digital writing is meant for rapid release and response a text or tweet is a slightly interrupted virtual way of having a conversation an online article starts informing so it starts forming a comment thread underneath as soon as it's published this mode of writing and reading can be democratic interactive and fun but often it treats other people's words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder to say something else everyone talks at the top of everyone else straining to be heard is their equivalents here to how art is increasingly being made and looked at everyone is familiar with Walter Benjamin's essay of cultural criticism which proposes that the aura of a work of art is devalued by mechanical reproduction the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction was first published in 1935 and generations of artists have death questions of reproduction first imprint and now virus screen have we become slaves to that compromise is this a good or a bad thing in 2014 the survey exhibition painting now five contemporary artists at paper written included the painter Simon Ling who said the simple act of observation is a deep mysterious and beautiful thing the camera is so powerful that many people have reached the point that they can only see the world photographically while cinematically and have lost the ability to see it in other ways in surface in a digital age writing for rhizome hawk Alex bacon outlines an emerging trend of painters heavily informed by the internet he says an artist today is automatically involved with ways of looking thinking and acting that are conditioned by technology even if their work is not ostensibly dealing directly with technological concerns he goes on to suggest a democratization of viewing as the Internet serves new audiences an audience that lacks indeed does not need an education or background in the critical and formal examination of art in its history he goes on to say this has led to a fundament this is the fundamental changes in the way a painting looks communicates and circulates which has in turn acted as a new which has in turn attracted a new younger generation of artists who approach the medium differently than their historical and students deploying it to varied ends some of this resonates with comments from fellow artists and students there is talk of a trend towards painting knowingly made to work on a screen to gain attention and approval or likes online in terms of art history today's art students are thrown into the maelstrom of contemporary art and invariably given only a brief and fractured history and approach noticeably different to that of their predecessors and the additional education they might search out by around the internet searches lacks contextualization and possibly rigorous scholarly input there are numerous articles and lists about how to make Instagram art how Instagram became the world's session can you make it as an artist in 2018 without constantly plugging yourself on Instagram and the artist dilemma refused the addiction of social media or fail other articles already a proposed why are these artists quitting Instagram as a teenager after swimming in the public baths adjoining Walsall Gallery of Art's Garmin Ryan collection I would search out Frank off drawing sorrow years later Bellinis ecstasy of sin Francis at the Frick Picasso's Guernica the Ghent Altarpiece Greenbelt I isn't an altarpiece giotto's fresco cycling's greeny Chapel Rothko's Chapel in Houston this is chapelle de rosa levels all had immediate visceral impact and developed my process of looking and cognition my personal tutor at the Royal College of Art in 1983 was Peter de Francia a french-born British artist who was professor of painting from 1972 to 1986 he was the author of two books on Ferdinand leisure leisure the great parade painters on painting and further knowledge a published by Yale University Press he had previously tutored in the department of art history and complement to studies at the RCA his colleague the painter John Golding trained at the Courtauld was an art scholar and a curator past perhaps best known for his seminal text cubism history and an analysis 1907 to 1914 as a curator he was known for two important exhibitions mounted at the Tate Gallery acaso sculptor painter in 1994 and Matisse Picasso in 2002 two three which went on to the Museum of Modern Art in New York both men inspired me and led me to seek out other artists writings such as the new arts the new life the collected writings of yet Mondrian the eyes mind Bridget Riley collected writings Patrick Harran on art and education and the daily practice of painting writings and interviews 62 to 93 by Gerhard Richter these and other texts gave and continued to give me insight in context I'm currently associate professor on the postgraduate and ph.d program at the Slade School of Fine Art UCL where I've taught part-time for over 20 years my colleagues and I teach via tutorials and dekes that reflect our own art education knowledge of art history and contemporary art with varying levels of critical and theoretical Allegiance our ma students receive a taught history and theory of art component while the MFA students complete written and oral critical studies supported by their personal studio tutors UCL has a distinguished history of our department separate from the Slade various museums and collections including the UCL Art Museum we have the British Museum the National Gallery the National Portrait Gallery the British Library Court old both Tate's Britain and modern and the Wallace Collection placed by commercial galleries and artists from spaces Ostra spread across London and it would be impossible to walk to the Slade from anywhere without encountering art firsthand nevertheless the value of this can dissolve or in a quick Google search with an image to a name since 2014 I've directed the discourse project developed in tandem with the materials research project at the Slade the aim is to research the cultural social and philosophical issues and inform shape and define the experience of contemporary painting since inception five artists have acted as only research associates within the discourse project investigating personal research strands which are shared with students where it talks seminars and visits just as a very nice plug one of those only research associates Rose Devi is here and her research has been captured in this pamphlet that she produced which are an artist's response to in form of a guide it's a six paintings in the National Gallery Rose has a few more of them here but she might chair or sell but they it's a quite a unique thing for a young artist to wish to convey something they're engaged in front of works of art other maker in relation to the art history we're also currently with them to HRAs developing a prototype mobile display unit allowing artists to curate and interpret existing UCL museums in this mobile display units called a knowledge exchange mobile display unit because that's the way it got funded to act as a show space involving audience participation in his water Neurath memorial lecture from 2000 published as experience and interpretation the dilemma of museums of Modern Art Nicholas Serota talks about how we see art and how it is displayed he addresses the changing attitudes the way artists presented and outlines that any display must consider an active dialogue between the present and the past he references the voracious consumption of culture by a wall a wider public than ever before and gives a coherent historical account of the changing attitudes the way art is presented in a modern museum of art almost two decades on from this insightful essay how in the age of the internet has the debate shifted study done by the Metropolitan Museum of New York a year ago found the average time taken by a visitor in front of a work of art is 28 seconds I was quite impressed by that John Ruskin wrote about spending the entire morning in a church looking at its art and architecture I might not be arguing for that the term slow art seems to have new currency professor Arden reads book slow art the experience of looking sacred images to James Terrell University of California Press is about attending to visual images in a culture of distraction and flow looking the art and practice of learning through observation by sherry Tishman tackle this from a makers perspective matthew gale curator of the Pierre Bonner the color of memory at Tate Modern has incorporated slow looking events slow art day 2019 is on April 6th and is across 84 venues around the world including Tate Modern and the photographer's gallery in London the 48 year old American artist Cory nuoc recently said I was born analog but I will die digital and my experiences both can we be all digital die analog and experience both Philip Guston said painting and sculpture are very archaic forms it's the only thing left in our industrial and I would add technological society where an individual alone can make something which is not just his own hands but brains imagination heart maybe in 2001 I stated my own ambitions as a painter to be I want to make paintings that route you to the spot will be it for a split second while peeling the cornea from your eyes cleansing washing refreshing them perhaps then now sorry perhaps then how we now look at painting my tree acknowledge and continue the power of direct engagement thank you [Applause] Thank You Estelle I realized in my haste and excitement talking about curators and artists that I didn't properly introduce Kathleen Soriano and though most of you met her being guided around the show that she's just curated here I don't Kathleen for quite a long time and most of all at the Royal Academy where she was our head of exhibitions and put on some fantastic shows there and since then has gone on to become TV star and a curator of other great shows so thank you very much an apologist for not okay and so my title which Steven wouldn't tell you what it was this is a quote from Benjamin Franklin tell me and I forget teach me and I remember involve me and I learn so I'm going to sort of talk a little bit around mainly art in education I think which is what I'm all about even though I started I was quite lucky in some ways because they offered art at my school as an a-level but at that point because the focus had narrowed down so much in our studying I was a bit nervous about taking art history because I didn't really know anything about it and it seemed like this odd strange class that only about three or four of the girls actually took so I put it to one side because it was too risky I needed a strong stable subject but then and I was lucky enough to get an english-speaking unions got a ship to the States and I studied in Kentucky for a year at a university there and of course the American system where you have a whole load of classes that you can take really opened up whole new world to me and the study of Fannett ology for example sociology but the one that sort of really inspired me and set me on my career path was that I did art history and in Louisville Kentucky we had the fantastic Speed Art Museum where I really altered our for the very first time I think coming from an immigrant family that was all about a work ethic our weekends were not spent and by being taken to museums and galleries where we were educated about the higher finer things in life so being exposed to that work in the speed art gallery sort of first hand really sort of blew me away mainly I think with the skill of production that's what I couldn't understand I couldn't understand how what shown you could make those forms and that's what sort of really captured me but at that point I wasn't thinking about becoming a curator but then I did come back and I went to university and I decided to do history of arts but I was still sort of hedging my bets and I did a combined arts degree and put a bit of English in with it as well because I thought just in case you know I can cover myself and so I started my career and in 2006 I found myself as director at Compton Burnie and at that time one of the things that used to talk about in the art world is how can we make are relevant to people's lives today and how you know Compton Bernie we tried to look at all the eclectic collections we had a Chinese bronze collection we had Neapolitan brougt we had a little bit of English portraiture and I was trying to bring them together by finding themes that were relevant to our lives today that were cut across all of them so it might have been religion or it might have been war because I felt if it's really important to give people a sense of why something like this related to our lives today because then it would have a meaning for them and it would have an understanding and I think once you have an understanding of what a painting what the story the painting is telling or what the story is that the artist is trying to tell you that helps you to appreciate it much more but it's no longer relevance that we talk about in museums and galleries now we've moved on to a new word and that word is useful art can't just be relevant anymore it's got to be useful and there's even a term that's been used in some museums today called our table deal which is about in a useful art and that is largely associated with social impact and the new phrase that's been around is well-being so well-being in art you can actually get art on prescription today known as return laugh this is deadly serious and it does worry me slightly because I have over the years watched libraries go through this attempt to bring meaning to what they actually do that their value to social communities the fact that homeless people can go there and pick up coats and I I do worry slightly that museums and galleries are desperately trying to find meaning beyond of the truth and beauty of what's actually on their walls um and I mentioned those sorts of phrases in those words because I think it's very much about the instrumentalizing of art we had to learn how to speak in government terms in the 1980s and 1990s because that was the only way in which museums and galleries were going to get the money from government and from the funders in order to support what we really wanted to do and a lot of this goes back to Chris Smith's time and and Chris Smith was an incredibly important figure at that time because he spoke about the value of the creative industries it wasn't just the art world or museums and galleries he brought us all together the theater the music industry and as a result we had a much sort of richer and stronger power that could be measured really but we never really argued for truth and beauty that was never the way in which we sort of protected what we believed in and I always serve ask myself why you know it was it a backlash against class a backlash against elitism or perceives connoisseurship and you know it's still undermining always undermining the aesthetic value in art when we try and instrumentalize it in some way but you have to remember that even the great Victorian philanthropists yes it was very sort of patrician they would provide art for the enjoyment of their workers such as the lady lever up in Port Sunlight for example and the art was there to be spiritual to be elevating but and I do think with all of this instrumentalize dating we have actually lost something and we constantly apologize for truth and beauty for elegance for this setec for the emotional impact and for the skill that's involved and I do think that the class ceiling is very much an issue at the moment only wealthy people can afford to send their children to extracurricular arts activities and I think it's incredibly ironic that at a time when government is removing arts from the curriculum we are being told that the only skills that we need in future are creative ones collaborative problem-solving because robots will do everything else and this disconnect is not there for everybody because the business world gets it property developers get it they've been using artists and the lights of hackney to help them with gentrification and then increase the value of their properties for years and there are a number of artists I know at the moment who are living in Nottingham because they get very cheap housing there's a great community of artists up there a lot of them working at the University and most of them have said to me don't tell anybody because you know they're being able to be creative in the way that what works for them and then we also know about the Bilbao effect for example we've had the V&A just open in dhanji we've had Abu Dhabi so someone gets it someone gets the art and and sort of profitability work together so we need to fix this disconnect really because I think it's a really important that we're exposed to art early in our life and we understand the clear benefit of it in our later life and I don't really understand why it's still a soft subject you know is it because of its past elite associations or because the value of whether it's good or bad is subjective or is it because that value is often described by people who are assumed to be the elite or the few in terms of curators as you suggested or is it because we're not very good at expressing its value and I've been fascinated by the fact that in the 1980s or so they started offering science communication grants at universal human communication degrees at university scientists realized they had a problem communicating the or try to communicate was complicated so what did they do they set up a degree to make it easier to communicate about it and I wonder whether arts and humanities needs a similar sort of rapport I mean yes we've had universities like the LSE produced quantitative reports about our contribution to GDP etc over the years but it's still not getting the message across and I think one of the issues is are we talking about ourselves as the as the arts as purely the arts or are we prepared to be part of the creative industry and I think despite all of his positioning around that in the 80s and 90s we still fight against being part of the entire creative end industries we're not good at working together but there have been lots of small victories about bringing things together in a way I heard recently that the NYPD the New York police force have been taking lessons with the curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York about looking and crime solving has increased it's gone up because they're learning to look longer and harder and there's a new sort of offer being put together by the wonderful art UK called the superpower of looking and it's for 7 to 11 year olds and it's helping them understand about how this long looking learning and understanding is very important and we've seen surgeons for example going back to arts classes because you know needing to learn about taking things slowly and paying attention to detail in these times as you mentioned a still of skin reading and swiping and the other problem is of course it's hard to produce qualitative measures Einstein a scientist said not everything that counts can be measured not everything that measured can't is not not everything that can be measured counts but we're more visually literate than ever you know we have Instagram for example as I still mentioned I remember when the iPods were the music first arrived it was that was the very moment when I realized that everybody was curating they were curating their music onto their iPod but now we curate our lives into pictures that mirror our desired lives it's not necessarily the real one so there's beauty but not always truth that we put together on our Instagram accounts in New Zealand the Prime Minister Jacinda Arden instructed her Treasury recently to include cultural well-being as a core component of new living standards framework and she passed a bill that ensures that council delivers social economic environmental and cultural impact for all communities and I think we're quite lucky at the moment in some ways that Matt Hancock has been the cultural sector secretary and he's now working as the National Health but the secretary for health and he get has an understanding of the value of art in that broader context communities are also far more important or quite rightly so I have a number of friends who work in the art world who are complaining a lot about institutional racism in the arts funding system and there's also the post-colonial impact on the story of the history of art we all like those straight lines that join Impressionism to post-impressionism and everything else but it's not a straight line anymore it's a world art history rather than a Western view I read this morning coming in on the train that LA County Museum has just amalgamated its European art and it's American art departments and the article was scandalized at the prospect of this but it made complete sense to me they're both coming out of the same traditions why shouldn't they sit side-by-side it's important I think that the art and cultural activities that we were exposed to actually reflects our communities for all of us it took me a long time to appreciate the fact that young black kids were coming into the Portrait Gallery when I worked there for 18 years and not seeing any people that look like them on the walls and that sounds like a throwaway comment but it isn't it's an important thing and I think Arts Council has recognized this recently they've shifted their emphasis on to creativity for everybody it's not just about diverse communities it's about everybody it's the it's the white local working class as well and that smacks lightly have been anti elite slightly hobbyist but it's about everyone getting involved in the making of art in that way that sort of Benjamin Franklin himself was alluding to and Tristram hunt the director the VNA spoke about this in his case for creativity in July 2018 how the fact that there is extraordinary happiness and satisfaction designing and creating it's a fundamental human desire he said it's a building block for essential life skills such as resilience confidence self-expression and motivation and a powerful tool for social change so just that little bit of instrumental insanities still there and the cultural learning alliance repeated that learning through arts and culture can increase cognitive abilities and improve attainment in other subjects such as maths and English and a u.s. study showed that the arts foster scientific success the more accomplished a scientists the more likely they are to have a creative hobby I've never met a scientist who isn't obsessed with visual depictions of his equation or his perfect graph and it's as if they're always searching for the visualization on that aesthetic representation sort of truth and beauty and the Innovation Fund Nesta supports the studio schools movement where schools are linked with the idea of workplaces the beginning of education is actually therefore connected to what we have to do in adult life and there's increasing evidence that a combination of practical and academic education a meeting of traditional subjects and a focus on problem solving and creativity is what we need to give children the skills to succeed in a high-tech economy now the barriers that exist apart from the fact that the government is taking arts out of the curriculum altogether is that the recent reforms actually make it hard to study science and the arts together now the Nesta 2015 report suggests that the UK needs to make 1 million new creative jobs by 2030 and the creative economy is one of the UK's great success stories it accounts for 2.6 million jobs that's bigger than advanced manufacturing bigger than financial services of banking and it's bigger than construction and the creative sector in the UK is growing jobs at four times the rate at the rest of the economy one in 11 job one in eleven jobs in the UK are in the creative economy and there are already recognised skill gaps so why aren't we invest units I don't understand in the u.s. in 2015 the creative industries contributed seven hundred and sixty three billion dollars to the economy that's more than agriculture or transportation and that sector there also expanded faster than the overall economy and seven percent of the jobs in New York City are in the arts now the Nesta report also showed that those people who work in the creative arts tend to have a much higher than average life satisfaction that's clearly not because of what they're paid though I would suggest and then in late February Andreas Schleicher who leads the programme for the International Student Assessment for the OECD told the House of Commons Education Select Committee who were looking at the idea of the fourth revolution that young people benefit more from skills gained through creativity rather than tests based learnings suggesting that will become more important than maths which becomes a softer skill as robots take over and the hard skills will be curiosity leadership persistence and resilience now he says that British schools are largely regards skills as inferior to knowledge British and schools associate learning with the past it's easy to teach it's easy to test but he says the modern world doesn't reward you for what you know but for what you can do with what you know now museums and galleries in the UK are at risk because of funding issues primarily but there are deeper issues that sit fit that are related to communities to class race purpose and function in these rapidly changing times there are collections that are currently been sold off there our curators being sacked only this last week we've heard that Leicester museums have got rid of all their curators and there are arts venues merging around the country Salisbury is putting its Arts Center in its theater together the Arnolfini has already merged with the university so you know there are good good positive things that are coming from out of that but at the same time there are alarm bells and I think it comes back really to the issue of ascribed value and unless we are embed art in our history and creative subjects at school will perpetuate the class divide that's associated with art and art appreciation I think and I do think that's at the heart of its problems in some way and will fail to build a creative population that can take on AI and the robots and will continue to have to find instrumental reasons like usefulness or well-being or relevance which will come round again believe me it will come around again it always does I will have to find those reasons to maintain culture and allow and to allow truth and beauty to survive thank you [Applause] wondering if this does this work bending hello yes thank you very much Kathleen now I feel duty-bound as ringmaster to bring us back in the first assault on opening this dialogue to our history it's them I think you know we talked a lot about the practice of the artist and their relationship with freedom and creativity but I think that if Martin Kemp were here and I can almost be Martin Kemp for a minute in his absence without I think destroying his reputation if Martin were here I know that one of his priorities when he was appointed as the professor of art history to the University of Oxford following on from Francis Haskell who had four decades before in the head of department was to start an undergraduate course in art history so Oxford University had brilliant Faculty of history it had an art school didn't have a school of architecture and it didn't have an undergraduate course in art history and I was on the appointments committee for Martin's appointment as to his chair and I remember him very clearly saying at his interview that his sole intention apart from maintaining the quality of delivery of art history in the university was to start an undergraduate course and I could see the history faculty backing out of the room as this was said because in Oxford at that time art history wasn't considered a serious subject history was and art was insofar as informed history but art history wasn't a university subject anyhow bless him Martin managed to start an art history course within a relative you know I think probably within five years which is high-speed in Oxford and that was his first idea and it's there running now but another very important issue that he raised in his interview and I'm not sure how this unfolded in the end but he said that we should drop the idea of art history and that he likes the idea of a department of visual culture of the study of visual culture and I I've thought about it's very often since first hearing him say this and I can see a lot of sense in it in that if you look at the shape of art in galleries today it isn't a bunch of people making engravings working with oil paint on canvas and doing stuff that is traditionally associated with a subject called fine art it's new stuff you know people if you go to the Royal Academy today you will see an exhibition where ill viola and Michelangelo are doing a two-man show Michelangelo is showing drawings courtesy of the royal collection here in England and bill viola is showing big video pieces and the exhibition attempts to draw together these two very different streams as they were of our visual culture film and silverpoint drawing and I it's not for me to say here you can you can say but it now strike me that there is a very strong argument that that if a study of art history let's call it to be less certain about what that subject is whether it you know is it just about art or could it be about craft could it be about design couldn't be about cinematography and cinematographer his relationship with the novel and so on and so on that the idea of having of having departments that have a broad reach rather than a corner that they have to defend might be the way forward in terms of arguing for a bigger future for art history rather than looking back to it it's historically quite small position I mean I don't know what the panel think about that and it would be say drop art history call it visual culture I'd what I had to press are there and I'd keep art history but I'd be very happy with it sitting underneath a banner that was called visual culture that would then draw in lots of other things at the same time I think there's a specificity to art history which is that needs to be part of telling that story in a very particular way but I think it would be comfortable sitting in amongst other subjects that we're looking at things in that way personally I don't mind what the terminology really is I think already and for a long period of time art history has been significant to young artists and within art education but also the breadth of that art history is enormous it really is global it can take on any form it's in our day-to-day conversations in the studio we might be talking about writing writers filmmakers dance fashion graphics or we might be talking about some of the paintings that are surrounding us here today it is really that diverse it is impossible to imagine a linear art history being taught within any institution I don't see that it would have any value but it has a place and it's a very significant and important place and my point is that when you have students directly engage we art from the past usually within museums there is something very very significant that happens because that experience without the mediation of a screen with contextual text with explanations with as was probably a big surprise to me today you know that the Dulwich picture gallery was purpose-built all of that time ago in relation to experience and engage with looking at something made by a human hand so it's sort of like I don't know that you know arty Street is significant and important but I'm as up-to-date as the next man and believe that the breadth of what both not just for make us not I'm not just a defendant as a maker or as a teacher but also for audiences to the world is just it doesn't it does slide and morph and needs to do you think sorry Daphne as a portrait painter do you think a good student needs to be aware of the history of portrait painting in order to be a good portrait painter I think it helps I think to me a lot of the talk this afternoon has been academics talking to academics the idea that the poor can't access art seems to be a nonsense now if you have to have a gallery to show your work fair enough but you actually only need a few railings and actually all you need i painted an eminent scientists at the Science Museum I've gotten his name I'm afraid my age but he was amazed I turned up with her with a an easel a wooden easel and a jam jar with my Turks in it no jungle and I said well we are still painting in the same way and I'm all for everybody using all sorts of media but you don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater so there are still exhibitions is going on you know yes lots of galleries have loads of other things going on in them but lots have you know down quarks Rita in particular have still have paintings on the walls and contemporary paintings and lots of people are still commissioning portraits it may be that they will Commission like lights and poles I have a portrait in st. Paul's the viola has his works in some ports you know this room for everybody my earlier little few words was about saying that looking at something is actually and taking the time which I think Estelle picked up on taking time to look at something it's actually a beneficial thing to you whatever a branch of art you go on into and looking at the artworks what I don't like is everybody going round galleries with something plug to their heads now fine if you come back to that fine if you look at the catalog when you get home all of those things but the communication is meant to be from the painting you know I've been gazing at that painting by Van Dyck of a dead lady that stopped there because I painted my dead mother and clearly he's been more tasteful and tried to keep her still alive and you know I've been thinking of the way that it drifts off into into the shadow which suggests a drifting off into death you know and I was looking at the faces of the audience and saying what are they looking at now largely fortunately because we had good speakers they were looking at the speaker hardly anybody was ever looking you know even incidentally of what was around the walls and it's that that that but that I think you have to expose students to - to real art from all the ages actually they tended to be to be kept from it a nephew of mine went to Leeds at that college he wasn't allowed to do any sort of practical art for the first two terms and then he happened to be the only person who chose to paint and other people did other things he thought what he did he got at first but he did it with a tongue-in-cheek and said you know I know what they want I'm gonna make some piles of this and that and the other and he got first and went out and and he makes a nice living making promotional videos I think he uses visual art that way but very very few people you know it's almost as though in fact I detect it here a little bit but that you know if you are the practitioner choosing to do what I do it is somehow that's a lesser thing to be doing and something that's considered more contemporary I don't think that that was I'd like to go back to something you just said the example of your nephew relative John Ruskin I can't tell you exactly where it is but he did at one point right that societies get the art they deserve and that's pretty much your a good illustration of that is that you're not in theory gonna get a show in the Tate Gallery if you paint portraits today unless you'd like yeah and the question is is he painting portraits or is he painting pictures but are you painting to get a career and use it you know we should respond to panes of young contemporary artists for whom portraiture in one form or another often painted actually I can name quite a lot of yeah from this side of the Atlantic and the other and actually globally so it really is a misnomer to imagine that somehow painting portraiture has died it has not I also think that painting is huge but the minute it sits I'm making an exhibition at the moment for Manchester on contemporary painting because young people are really enjoying painting again materiality or me and figurative painting as well it's Wave industry I've simply never gone away like anything in the world there are moments where things trend yes and there are moments where they get institutional support or they get public interest or approval but really at any given time I would say since you know cave painting painting has existed that has been enjoyed at some level with varying levels of support and interest but it's never gone away it's never died I wasn't gonna have that you know I wasn't going to propose something that even gave credence to that term because it just doesn't exist painting is relevant today as it ever has has been what concerns me you heard in here is is that we make sure that a generation for whom the magic of painting still inspires them constantly both in looking at it and making does not get occasionally tripped up by the screen that they continue to enjoy the truth and beauty of direct encounter I've just been fortunate enough to be somewhere very beautiful which have a beast has a beach called paradise an impaired ice which is paradise so many people arrive with their cameras I can't tell you and like all of us do try to capture you know the beauty the beauty and I'm not saying it wasn't experienced firsthand of course it was but it that little moment can get in the way but is also the truth of today because that yeah way living it is the way people look now is through that lens and I think it was really interesting what you were saying about the subtleties of what you actually see in the moment as opposed to what you see after and I thought that was absolutely fascinating fascinating but many people I remember gosh this is probably back in the early thousands I was in China going through a museum and there were a lot of young Chinese women photographing these Western impressionist paintings and I was huffing and puffing you know because they weren't looking at them and I stopped one of them and I asked her why she was doing it and through the interpreter she explained that she would take those photographs home she would upload them onto her computer and then she would sit with her parents or with her friends and they would study the pictures and I asked her how long would you spend on each painting she said 20 minutes she was looking at that picture for longer than I was really but I was being very prejudiced about the way in which she was doing it and and I think that one of the things is that we have to remember is that people access art in very different ways I mean you spoke about the virtual absorption of exhibitions online particularly contemporary that does happen and the thing about the headset I used to be very prejudiced about people walking around with headsets and why they weren't just looking but when I made the exhibition the bronze exhibition at the Royal Academy what I realized is that people find different ways of getting finding their way into something and some people want to understand how it's made other people want to know what out what it means other people want to know the biography of the artist and people absorb that information in same ways my Benjamin Franklin quote in different ways some people want to look some people want to hear some people want to feel it so you know a museum curators job is to provide all of that interpretation as many different forms as possible so I have come to accept that there is a role for film that shows you how the lost wax techniques works or someone's voice sitting in your ear taking you by your hand through the paintings in the collection even though I don't like them but it's about providing you know we're very lucky because of our education and our careers we are we are literate we don't see the barriers that other people see you know I because I work and tell you that you do I was talking to my makeup artist I said how I can't walk into a Sephora shop in New York which only sells makeup because I go in completely overwhelmed by all these lipsticks I only need one what are all these colors and I walked straight out and she turned to me without batting an eyelid and she said that's exactly the way I feel when I walk into a museum hmm and that's what we have to remember we know how to read we know what the language is but would I mean would this be an argument for teaching a larger group of students who go through universities the history of art I would say yes and I'm surprised actually that you know Estelle's talking about the students that the slaves maybe you're unique in looking at history because a lot of the art students that I've come across or even talking to people like on the professors at Yale a couple of years ago they were saying that the students aren't interested in anything that's earlier than Picasso they're just not looking and a lot of the art schools aren't so I think you're quite unique in that way it's laid possibly and probably and it is part of just what is Graduate painting that I would say specifically has enjoyed using that direct approach of taking people into galleries and talking about work in front of it of course not everywhere has that opportunity I think museums are doing a great job actually and have been for a long time at trying to integrate from really early on you know for years I got very upset about walking around the National Gallery and tripping over school groups there were endlessly you know grouped around a painting I'm joking but you know like a little bit of me as an artist was like hold on a minute guys I actually want to get towards the the stuff myself I think it's amazing I think the virtual tools that the National Gallery does Oh brilliant I think I was even curious to find out in getting ready for this that they they have an app and then you can share you know on there I think it's called something like oh I can't do a clever Apple Samaras savvy Apple was I can't remember but anyway you know I think that is amazing I want the dissemination of art I want everyone to be turning on a screen and learning something about art to inspire them to then go and look at whatever they're looking at just see it in the flesh to know how big it is to understand what how its painted I mean Jennifer did an amazing talk just with the Rembrandt didn't she about she she pulled us in and reminded us of all that was in that image which was about looking about experiencing about seeing about the direct tactile engage of look you made to see the highlight on the nose and that highlight must have been in Rembrandt's mind from the beginning of the painting or he would have used up all his whites in the sleeve of the girl without leaving enough to say that something even lighter than that so right from the start and this is why you really need if you're going to paint at all especially from observation but if you're going to paint it all you need over-the-shoulder teaching so the if this students all looking at a particular subject whether it's a still light or otherwise the the teacher has to sit down where they're sitting or stand where they're standing at their easel and see what they're seeing and say well at the moment when I'm standing here I see this you have not painted or drawn that why not not that they're wrong but why not because everything because everything's changing even if it's just the artists own head or the fact he's using one eye compared to another the fact that you've got motion parallax all of those things that make it so complicated to know what it is you're trying to put down on your canvas you have to have somebody with an eye with experience to sit in that position and open up the world of possibilities with how you how you are looking and what you're choosing to make your artwork with and I think it's that that seems sounds to me I'm not saying it's completely gone from the slave it's gone from a lot of colleges I think from the majority of colleges that about 1950 it was possible to go to an art school and you would be taught strategies for achieving end results in landscape painting or finger painting or in Modern Art yes I'm not talking about giving them a strategy particularly but more that they are they see that they have not seen enough you know that they say well I look to be there when I when I elegantly described why that highlight on the nose is possible mmm is because he hadn't used up all his wives in the middle of the painting and there is nothing brighter than white hmm so you have to have a strategy which holds back and pure white to the last moment and that's your finale if you're doing anything shiny yeah and that maybe it's not obvious when one says it but it's something that is painfully difficult to learn through practice without guidance yes I think I think you could spend your whole life using up your white so early yeah but you I want to ask my you're patiently sitting there would you like to pull us in another direction before we throw this open to broad a range of questions well our historian a Shakespearian there's a third person and it seems to me that this conference is followed on from the last conference which is which was actually to do with with literature we had speakers including Terry Terry Eagleton and and Emma Smith and Kathleen temple who's sitting sitting over there talking to us and one thing that kept coming out was this aspect of truth and the relevance of truth within literature and within art and what's happened today again is truth is coming out sit sit this world keeps coming coming zooming in ordered in all the discussions that are going on and yet we're living in a world in which we've got being economical with the truth fake truth false truth my truth is better than your truth my truth is that of the President of the United States oh it must be the truth of the world or my truth is my truth about brexit my truth is my truth about what we said about breakfast on the one side my truth is my truth about what we said about the X's on the one side that truth itself is a subject which we're being hit with and the falsity of truth is a subject which we're being hit with all the time and yet what we are saying is what was coming out of part what's coming out of literature is a truth what is that truth what is that truth is this this coming out I was giving a giving a talk in Saint Hugh's in Oxford just a couple of weeks ago when to actually some Russian students an account questions one student said to me she said I've got a question to be or not to be to be or not to be so I said well nice quite an important question because not to be is just emptiness to be is something which is true you are what happens when you're not we don't know and Shakespeare is confronting that truth all the way through the blood is confronting truth choose about around humanity about who we are who we're not who we pretend to be the illusions that we try to create and the power we try to have over other people to convince them of our particular truth but in the end there is only one truth you are or you're not and I've been looking at the paintings as we hang hang on particularly the bottom here with a strategically placed hand working out well did he woody did he decide to I I don't know I thought when you said about the the white and I'm sure you know your practitioners but there's that's a great thing about turn they're coming on and putting the little red I mean we near the competition by painting the painting that the boy so I think sometimes and certainly as a writer and I've written a number of books so as a writer you feel that you know what you're writing and yet towards the end there are things you want to go back to and just and just touch on just make it just a little bit better sometimes you make you worse by doing it you know but I don't have the problem in writing the running out of ink but you have to probably see it just with whites as you've been through so I don't know if that's taking you on any further Steven or whether that's just giving you a headache but I think it's to do with Steven have you got a headache or not not yet I'm resilient nobody I mean actually it touches on an important point that I think all of you have made which is it's something to do with having time to look and time to reflect and although you know there is a whole zone through which information now comes where you're not expected to think or reflect it just lands and you say to the person next to you do you know what X has done now and you know that's as far as it goes it doesn't necessarily open the dialogue but I think that life drawing painting a portrait looking at a painting as opposed to looking at painting on a screen takes time and I think that one of the things that may be missing from our bigger plans in education at the moment is giving our students time to reflect to think and to practice and certainly for me that's just about all I did in my postgraduate studies was sit and look at stuff and open and enter into dialogues with people who knew about that stuff and I think it's very difficult to walk into an art gallery cold and make sense of what is on the wall I think it's very difficult to take hold of an artist take hold of an artist like knowing you and if you don't know anything about them begin to unwrap what is going on and it's why I would advocate if you can study art history why not start with a survey course that attempts to join up the dots so that at least there is a framework into which you can place bill viola Michelangelo and because it's got to be that the fun of the game of art history is joining up the dots between is how does Peter Doig relate to Vermeer if that's all or perhaps more interestingly how does Piero della Francesca write to Jackson Pollock it's a great lesson he does talking to Bridget Riley about she was do kinda do some work the committee we're going to do some work with her at the University and I she just in the Mondrian exhibition at the taste now if you ever saw that there's a terrific exhibition and I talked to talk to her about it and I said - I said his Mondrian you know one of the great greatest influences on your art and she said well did the influence but not the greatest influence I said well who's that she said well Rembrandt of course yeah Rembrandt and I realized there's a kind of amateur that I didn't understand that when I look at her self-portrait of Rembrandt or and I look at the girl in the window that I'm looking for position of drama and I'm looking at the character that's coming soon but she's looking and actually the way that the light is working which I haven't been trained to do now I think I like to be trained to do that so I come and listen to people like yourselves to to hear about that but similarly I've got my training if you go if you go to look at it modern literature how can most modern literature in English how can you look at it if you don't know about Shakespeare because it going to but if you look at Shakespeare how can you really start to understand Shakespeare if you don't know anything about the liturgy Liturgy of the church a liturgical drama and the traditions of medieval drama that have led in to Shakespeare so there is a continuity but of course in my subject that was all attacked on the Canon of literature of English literature and so on and so forth but there is a continuity and a cross-referencing that is going on certainly my subject I'm sure it is going on absolutely really an art or art history as a study a study of the history of art there are also artists histories where artists right there his yes under engaging through their histories there is also the art historical exchange between artists where you know the Canon or whatever one art is going to look at another artist Brigit looking at Rembrandt as well as a whole plethora of other artists we all do that all the time interpretation is really significant but as far as I'm concerned there is a value to interpretation for either the maker or the audience and in the same way there is beyond interpretation is the practical the learnt history of using stuff and there is also just the sort of miasma the plethora of where knowledge intuition that tactile ability visual cognition all come together and that's when art works really you know move us and that's when art becomes significant whether it's through partly learning something of a history or simply stumbling across I still believe you know there's a lovely story of Peter Stuyvesant had a collection in his factory and he decided to collect abstract paintings in the 50s and he put those paintings on the walls of his factory floor and everyone said oh oh you know that she's rubbish you know my child could do this what is this six months later for whatever reason he decided he was going to move that collection out of the factory for there was uproar everyone working there that's our paintings why on earth are you moving them we you know they're ours leave them we enjoyed them don't know why that story seemed relevant but you know something to do with with knowledge and experience yeah Steven there's a gentleman there I wanted to ask you a question that I think I should have ended up with some questions and there's a microphone coming your way Thank You Jets we've seen today some wonderful examples of people who can put over ideas for clarity and enthusiasm that is inspirational we have seen hours the problem or one of the problems you're facing is that the teaching of the subjects that we're considering all the subjects we're considering it's not good it's not good at primary school it's not good at secondary school were two of I was a governor for 14 years and it's certainly not good at university it's rubbish at some universities and one of those universities is Oxford I'll be my own son and oh 20 of these other people you know a lot but you can't teach it and the sooner this group learn that the people who can teach don't necessarily have to be able to do the better that's my sort of thought you might like discuss I feel I must say strangely a conversation at lunchtime I feel that at the best institutions that adage that if you can't do teach is absolutely wrong that the best artists can make amazing teachers art history has proven that fact and there is some huge relevance to being taught by a practitioner because the practitioner if they're good is able to give insight that no other can because direct learnt experience in that way is invaluable and so for sure I agree with the comments that were made earlier about the fact that there isn't enough being put into the arts and humanities it is a curriculum subjects being ignored and undervalued but at the same time where it is taught it's taught of course like anything the different levels varying degrees of success but there are still amazing artists who teach there are amazing academics who engage young minds with new ideas and there are amazing young artists and art historians and cultural theorists emerging to build the cultural possibility so I'm not so you know full of doom I think there are things happening with museums that keep as a pace of changes in society I think we're in a really fabulous place but that we need always just a little bit more just come back on that question about teaching and various universities my career as I said earlier start in 1974 they started at Sunderland which is now a working class what I call a working-class University moved on to De Montfort again rather a working class also University with ethnic great ethnic diversity and then I went to Wrexham and blinnder University which is certainly probably the most working-class University in the in the whole of the UK and and now I've arrived at Oxford and I'm very proud to be at Oxford because it is one of the premier universities if not the premier university in the world my experience has been such that people have taught in different ways I had over 80 come to my Shakespeare courses in Sunderland I had 35 coming to my Chaucer course in Sunderland I've had I've seen excellent teachers in Sunderland in in de Montfort and Englander absolutely fabulous teachers and at Oxford I can't I've only just arrived I'm at Blackfriars but the care the tutorial care of the of the staff within Blackfriars and I'm not just talking about the religious staff the members of the Dominican Order but the lace staff at Blackfriars it's just overwhelmingly good they are excellent and their colleagues are very proud to work with so I think there's a kind of a view that maybe Oxford doesn't teach in the same way and it doesn't teach in the same way as we taught at Sunderland or at De Montfort or at blinnder but the way they do teach and the care that he's shown to those students is immense absolutely immense and I'm very proud to be there if I didn't think that I wouldn't they're just to being in Oxford to be quite honest I don't have to really I'm retired and I've been brought back you know brought out in my box sorry you know about sort of a parallel really with curators I suppose in museums and galleries and it started in about the 1990s when I was at the National Portrait Gallery and some of the team were arguing that we needed interpretation staff within the learning team and I never quite understood that because the job of a curator is to communicate either through writing or through the stories that they tell you in front of the works and if your curator isn't doing that effectively you need to invest in training in them to help them be a better communicator about that work to inspire the people who either come to the gallery or who did they encounter so it sort of saddens me even more really that we're doing exactly that we are getting rid of curators in major institutions in this country at the moment rather than investing in the very people who help people grow to love and understand all these marvelous well another word in defence of Oxford I know it the art school Enochs that was started with money that came from Felix Slade the same person who gave money to London University set up a Slade professorship there and ultimately school and he also or his estate also gave money to Cambridge University where they set up an art history department with money and this was really to catch up with what was going on in America at the time where universities had already taken on the problem of teaching art history and later practical art and the academies were starting and really the we're looking at a date around 1870 and in his inaugural lecture John Ruskin made it quite clear that he didn't want to start an art school that competed with the Slade which trained artists he didn't want to start an art school that competed with the Royal College of Art or the National Art School as it was called at that time and what he wanted to do was encourage the undergraduates of the university in whatever subject they were studying to learn to draw because he saw it was a part of literacy and that the ability to render images in two dimensions was just as important as the ability to render speech in two dimensions writing and he was actually very successful in this and his it stated aim in his inaugural lecture was that he should make the future captains of industry more aware of the beauty of art and the beauty of God's work which seems to me like a really rather smart idea and as a result he gave a massive collection of drawings of several thousand and prints that would be good examples and so there were Turner's and jurors and constables and collections of geology lots of drawings by himself and these were the fine examples which he turned into a curriculum and then he gave them three thousand seven hundred and forty-one pounds and seventy pence to pay a drawing master it was a drawing master I said to animate this collection with the students and it all went on beautifully until modern art turned up and suddenly the models were out-of-date the Ashmolean which is where it was housed was no longer an appropriate place the curators loath the students the students couldn't make a mess in there and they moved out into another building painted it white and it became a modern art school Philadelphia Academy is still going strong Chicago Institute is still going strong bound to a collection and one of the great things about America it didn't get poor and so it kept a modern art and so instead of ending up as we have in Britain with a lot of collections were frozen once the wealth of the 19th century was spent America forged on and and places like the Corcoran in DC had great collections of abstract expressionism that students could relate to and I think you know actually the story of modern art education is wrapped up just in that guy called Felix Slade and what America did to inspire him and still today at Oxford the Ruskin school on I think it's Thursdays and Wednesday evenings runs drawing classes for the whole university and as a result it does something also mirrors what happens in America which is that a student can study other subjects let's say call it a liberal arts degree but end up doing a master's degree and fine art at a later date which personally I prove of I think it'd be great if all people who went to art school got a general education and then they specialized later they can become animators and filmmakers so I think actually or funnily enough I think that John Ruskin got it right and I think that what happened is that it fell apart afterwards and my entire time in Oxford I was trying to put it back in place kind of work didn't really know enough questions yes you have the microphone I think the points they wants to make I must just compliment what dr. Scott said about black friars because black friars there is a kind of inverted snobbery sometimes about Oxford where's black friars apart from all the wonderful things you correctly said about them they also allowed anyone who wanted to town or gone to attend there and I was there in the mid-1980s as a mature student I wasn't a member of Blackfriars Hall but I was very involved with Blackfriars it with the community and my own college I used to attend lectures there and theology they've always had this their Dominicans have always been quite radical I suppose but that's the one who think there was no them and us it was everyone could attend the lectures so I just wanted to make and it still is de facto isn't it yeah but wants to make that point clear anyway and the thing is that what sprang to mind when you were saying Stephen I think it is here but you need to stare have time to reflect well immediately shot into my head WH Davis what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare and admittedly nowadays everything is at such a pace that that is being demolished but the whole thing about are you said that's not taught properly in the school six and universities but you need to start sooner than that it's in the home I was very fortunate my parents as a child took me from the age of seven eight upwards to all sorts of art galleries and museums and it was my initial engagement and reaction I would then ask a question of my parents and maybe then if there was an attendant around they would ask if they needed to give her further thing so it was nurtured in me early this love of art because of after the theatre I then went on to do reviews of art and it all stems from being a child I used to UM when we went abroad we went to all these museums and I did drawings of the various art I saw and made comments on them from the age of eight outputs that was and you know it is that engaging early so at a home is so important and unfortunately with all modern media children watching things in one room parents honor another what sit somewhere else so we need to get back to nurturing art right in the home before you go to the school even but also you mentioned Estelle but about various media caught are working complementing together I was really surprised you didn't mention the theater because theater like art is alive creative divet ii and it is as deafness who really Sprint's strenuously emphasized it is that engagement like we engage in the theater we engage with the art and that is the core of it and we cannot lose we need to re-engage much more but as I say I think it needs to start in the home I could say much much more but anyway that's Volare with you but as an artist and i know have many artist friends have a similar experience my child hated to be taken to art galleries because of course she was taken endlessly to art galleries there was never a holiday that didn't include you know numerous film pilgrimages into different art institutions and just so you know until the theater it's almost the same there is a lovely reciprocal arrangement or it's not reciprocal but there's an arrangement at the moment where we are given tickets to go to Eno and students can simply look to attend sadly I would say that a small percentage to do we try to encourage it hard and if we can broaden that everywhere to valet to you know to theater how I would be you know 100 percent behind it I think building the opportunity to for students to encounter things we are pushing for widening participation across arts education of course it's a it's not just a buzzword it's essential we you know with the cost of education now anyone coming to the Slade whether it's a homey you student or an overseas student they have enormous debt and I understand that the cost of that education makes the cherry on the top impossible it actually makes sadly the education itself impossible for so many opportunity you know I agree it's about the home but it's about opportunity and what opportunity looks like to those communities and not you know I've you know I've got a 21 year old daughter who's its OS at the moment and I think if she was sitting up here she'd be using words like white privilege at the moment for the way in which we talk about the arts and what we have access to and I I do think that we need to think much more carefully and more broadly about and and and it's more complex than just saying children should be taken to our galleries it's much more sophisticated than that I think I don't have the answers but I think we were all very lucky no I don't think I took my daughter round an exhibition when she was very young and we used to talk about the works and then when she was about eight or nine we went to take Britain to see a pre-raphaelites show they had a sheet of paper and I thought great she'll have something to do keep her occupied she hated it you're absolutely right because she wasn't talking to me I wasn't engaging with her about the art that we were looking at together and she walked up and down the galleries shouting boring boring so you know you are right in that capacity is about communication but and it is about you know people talking about something to each other and looking but I just think beneath that sits a whole raft of things about opportunity and access thank you can we leave can we now leave that there please can we stop speakers and questioners have said I really wanted to ask about schools but if I could just preface this by saying I taught for many years in the London borough of South at which were in now not at the schools that might be the closest to this lovely gallery but schools in places like Camberwell and Peckham and Berman C and just to pick up gentleman behind me said our art teachers really worth some of the most fantastic teachers in the school they've got amazing results they got children from who came from very difficult homes sometimes into places like the Slade another you know very highly regarded institutions and I think one of the reasons they were so successful was because in London and I've been retired for a few years now so I don't know if this is still happening with which is why I wanted to ask about it and we had really good links between the school art departments and the galleries and I think you know that worked on so many levels that in the end paid off in terms of the standards for those young people achieved in their both their GCSE and their a level examinations and their progression to University so just wondered if anybody might be able to say a quick word about that and also possibly about artists going into schools is that still happening thank you I think there's an enormous appetite within schools for this to happen and it's always the same thing that stands in the place in in-between the meeting is is financial and the you know the timetabling on the curriculum and you know they're kind of crazy things but of course in the end it's only about prioritization that you're spending the money somewhere you're spending the hours somewhere and it's deciding where the hours are spent and it I mean I think what it requires you know if there's any point in having this conference is for people who are responsible for creating the curriculum and the timetable people who are ultimately the people who decide what shape a university school or kindergarten is in are aware of the importance of people spending time looking people seeing art in the flesh and not receiving it all through the internet and of meeting people who are creative people who make art and you learn about highlights on noses you learn about you know how photography when it's interfaced with Instagram is probably the way in five years time that we will receive just about all information about art unless you happen to be a gallery goer and but it has to it has to be driven from the top you know it doesn't matter how loud people shout from the bottom it seems as though it doesn't happen because people have been shouting since the 60s about it next foots because let's go to the back of all the people the Front's are getting the opportunity find somebody with a hand up near the back and we'll work our way back here hi and thank you for everyone who spoke and I just wanted to make a comment really about s in relation to my own education I was taught at AB University where I studied art history and then went to the slate where I worked with the Stowe and I produced the pamphlet she mentioned earlier and I felt that actually contemporary art helped me out massively when reading paintings from the past I remember being in seminars in Edinburgh I was from a rural school state school and there are a lot of very confident students there and they talked a huge amount about what they saw and they all always play symbolic value on the objects that they described and I felt very much that so much the time these objects were there due to formal reasons they balance things out they through color they threw your eye around they flew focus and I felt I had learned that from looking at contemporary painting and abstract painting and so often there seems to be this gulf between kind of art that we see in institutions like this and then works in the Tate Modern who works there being kind of shown supremely contemporary galleries and I just think both could help each other out so much if paintings such as the ones we see on the walls are spoken about as in the way that students talk about their own works in in studios and contemporary art schools when they talk about which was mentioned earlier about when a painting might be finished they talk about the struggles that they had because we can kind of reference all the narratives and the religious and kind of social influences upon these paintings but what makes works iconic is surely they're organized of color shape and form and that to be able to recognize that it's a confidence in your own vision and I think kind of almost children have it and then they lose it when they feel that describing what they see is not enough it needs to be intellectualize it needs to be somehow kind of laden with clear research that has red exterior experience of the image so I wonder if we can actually make if our history more relevant by looking at it in the way that it probably was always looked at but in the way we look at contemporary paintings in the way we discuss painting in art schools a really really good point and actually one of the things I'm doing at the moment is working with an old master dealer because he wants to make old master paintings sexy in the way that contemporary art are you know there was a Tintoretto that sold at auction I think two years ago it belonged to David Bowie it sold for 100,000 pounds as peanuts it was a good one as well and you think about something like a Jeff Koons and that what was that what that would sell for now this dealer has sort of honest good interests at heart because he it actually really cares about good old-fashioned Spanish painting but he's trying to approach it from that end and exactly that way you described I mean back to the point I made earlier which is that English collections just ran out of money and they caused the fracture you know there it wasn't intentional I don't think I don't think we will revolt it by modern art we just didn't buy it and so if this were the Corcoran collection there would be some rooms with Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman and there would be some American cubism maybe Stuart Davis and there would be a continuum that starts in Europe and ends up as thoroughly American and what we've got here is one that starts in Europe and ends in Europe and tark collection and the Arts Council they have collections they go on commissioning work don't they and yes it's not very readily available to the public well no because they're working collections you see these are teaching collections the the collection in the Ashmolean is a teaching collection and they were and but the the collections by the British Council and the Arts Council are working collections which in theory can be sent out on loan until they fall apart I mean you know there's always culture Park last year which was a young British artist Rana Begum who I taught at the Slade who selected from the Arts Council collection and so it was on display so there are counter examples but it's not a teaching collection so it doesn't have this story what it is it's it's a it's a pot of goodies that people dig into to lend to other people to help them tell their story it isn't a story in itself it's a fantastic thing that's entirely different from this collection I think I've never thought about what you just mentioned before about that stop of purchasing but I've been doing a lot of research on art UK website recently cuz they have all the paintings in all the museums across the UK looking at a certain theme in that I've been looking for and what I've not been able to get over is how it just stops posts it just isn't present after 1935 in most regional museums 45 ya know it's it's it's post-war it's the fact that these museums stopped having money to spend or acquisitions and also there wasn't the philanthropy the local philanthropy and you suddenly then see a jump to the collections that have worked from the 80s and 90s and it's very local it's very sort of amateur actually and not particularly very good so there's this sort of dropping off which I don't think we've even begun to feel the impact of actually I think you'll feel it in another fifth time the collections were disbanded because of the cost of just simply managing and storing well these are systems that are still there they're still stranger you'd be horrified to know I know this from personal experience of and a good friend artworks bought not so you know but within the 80s which were then you know removed from collection which is horrendous we've got another question coming here second row second row second row on the left and then the one at the back after it's with the back I just wanted to say one little thing in relation to what you said was that pre 1935 of course oh it's quite difficult to find lots of art on the internet before a certain date you know even people aren't uploading images so equally our students and young people encountering art on the Internet of course have you know there's there's a ghost period of art where things weren't there dirt eyes and captured so there's equally that sort of black hole that's quite interesting if you go if you go into the tape site this was true two years ago they may have changed it if you're going to tape site and type in there's a search to women artists you get a load of pictures of women you don't get paintings and sculpture by women and they might have fixed it by now it's worth looking it please your question I've been very relieved to hear the discussion today because for many years now I realize at work I've been feeling anachronistic because I run the art history corsets Liverpool John Moores University so a widening participation University and I'm under pressure all the time from managers and peers they don't really believe in the value of art history at all so to hear that people are reconsidering it and trying to push its value forward has been really hardening and my question then is as a result of all these symposia and discussions are there projected measures going forward then to try and change the situation what's the the outcome from today yeah well we are trying to lead the revolution but I we want to influence people and first the first way we want to influence people is gaining a number of a number of viewpoints from experts interacting with audiences we hope to publish that we hope to get people from from politics eventually to come to some of our some of our lectures so that they hear hear what's going on and we did invite a number of leading politicians in the UK to come today they said there was something more important that goes on there and my response to them was well you know if you came he might just get a bit of sense in your heads you know and be able to not vote or vote in them in the right way and as I'm going on the march on the on the weekend you know what I think about the right way is a way so we are trying we are trying to influence and the next stage actually within the conference is that we go out to Washington on I think it's April the 22nd with with Nicola Gardini who's the professor of Italian in Oxford who's who's giving a giving a lecture over in Washington and then we got another one in Washington in October we'll have another one I hope related to to the politicians thinking that the brexit is over in in autumn probably here in here in London that's being discussed at the moment I have to say I'm I really am very grateful to Georgetown for the for the way that they've supported this and they've put money into this and also to say my experience at Georgetown of the teaching in Georgetown is also extremely good which I didn't mention but I've been teaching in Georgetown since 1987 off and on and so I'm not saying like my teaching is good but the people of my colleagues teaching a couple more questions there was somebody at the back there we are one to this lady pink just don't take it back to Liverpool I'm just gonna stand up over here I just like to give a little shout out for the grassroots as you were saying Kathleen over there I think the people that we've missed out in this equation really are teachers and teachers right from early years because teachers are extremely enthusiastic about their passions but they're of course they're not given any enrichment nowadays at all you know they're just expected to get children through tests and and their education as far as becoming a teacher as concerned finishes in as soon as they've done their PGCE they get very little enrichment after that an institution like this tries to you know get some make arrangements with teachers make relationships with teachers to keep their enthusiasm is going I don't think it's it's there's a they're badly educated at all I just think they need much more you know help and support if you go into any of the local state schools coming back to the portraits you know you see that every young person's education seems to start with painting a portrait of themselves all about finding their self identity you go around all the schools and there's you know portraits of every teenager sort of round the walls and and in schools earlier and if we're going to teach art history we just need a better recovery I open my TS Eliot's coming back to your point about Shakespeare this morning in order to try and say something intelligent at a group I'm going to on Thursday and I thought God where to start you know what's what do I know what is my education in literature given me that I can bring to this we all need much more of a background and much more good teaching you know I think we just need we need to support our teachers much better you know we can close schools now on Friday afternoons that's the the latest it goes back to right to politicians you know we've got to provide more money in the system otherwise the first thing that will go when we cut out Friday afternoon is the arts thank you okay this is the penultimate question and the last question there's a person in the third row on my right at the front at the beginning of the afternoon we were talking about one of the beautiful paintings in the first room and as an artist I paint myself and one of the questions was when when he's a painting truly finished now to me just in terms of art context it's when I make my next mark and I stand the risk of spoiling the actual work so far to those that paint on the panel when do they consider their works actually finished or how difficult I mean with portraits it's usually that you've got a limited time frame because people are not going to give you more than two extra sittings after the number you've asked for in the first place funnily enough when I paint people as I do that are not commissions and can go on and on I can kill them off I can still do that unfortunately artistically I mean I and I well if it's finished when you've said enough for the painting to be moving to you when you come across it by mistake so I stick the works I'm working on around the house very often and certainly in odd places in the studio and leaning in the corner or something like that I remember when my tutors saying you put a painting up on the wall this was Keith born people due to a painting up on the wall and it would miraculously finish itself and it's only now you know several decades later that I'd scorned this at the time but I I know what he means that leaving a gap in what you might have done allows allows the viewer to get into the work sometimes and it's almost demonstrates that things cannot be finished you actually cannot join up all the dots that's in a way to come back to the experience of looking spending some time looking at something which is different to just not falling it over things that are in your way and looking at them in that sense but that concentrated looking you see the mystery I don't have any religious belief but I can see the mystery because I can try and try and try and I've spent my entire life trying to get I mean quite often I paint bricks not not people I love painting bricks you can't actually get there there is an it's too much change this it's too much it's it's too grand a question as to what is there and so I think the painting is finished and I I wish there was a formula don't you that said you know that you know but but I suspect I'm beginning to suspect that it's when there is still something to do but you've done an awful lot you've digested an awful lot okay it's like finishing sentences isn't it it's very difficult estelle I suppose when I surprise myself is perhaps an ambition and when something happens it's difficult to articulate but somehow you the wholeness of what I have made doesn't lead me to want to do anything more to it I mean that said it's very very rare and I have been known to exhibit works and then come back into the studio and be repainted and so that that question of like you know I think it's like finished and there's really finished and again the conversation about the Rembrandt today you know there are very few paintings in the world that you know can take all of those boxes but we know when we see them you know and it's a collective thing and that's true for makers as well you know you know when something has really got somewhere I'm not saying there but as near to there as you're able to get and and sometimes not but I suppose it's it's it's one you know that something happens that surprises me and to that I I simply can't see what else would improve change that good two points one of them is that I was at the Requiem Mass for Peter Greenham who was their head of the Royal Academy schools and a friend of his so I can't remember who it was but an artist read a letter that he'd sent him and he's in it finished up with a four o'clock this afternoon I have probably painted the best painting I've ever painted by 6:00 p.m. it was in the garbage can such as life and that final question just here and then we must break it this gonna have to be a really quick one so if you can turn it into a tight question and give everybody a child lots of questions it's not quite a question right what I get from this is with 2.6 million people in England in the creative arts industry the arts seem alive and well and that's usually encouraging that's what what I take away and yet the questions are killers on the ground experience of people like me is that their children are missing out if you had a great football player who was five years old there would be after-school clubs and he'd be doing a lot at school where is the drawing teaching because I absolutely right every childhood draw I love Ruskin Ruskin saying that where is that and where is the history of art that everybody needs we had a cultural loss of confidence that meant we couldn't teach history of art because somehow it was elitist which is is shocking so I think if we fail if this some conference fails there should be a huge voluntary effort these are times of austerity anybody with a love of art or an ability to paint should go to their nearest Primary School start an after-school Club and help the next generation to grow into artists as good as some of the artists were looking at at the table today you're absolutely right I now feel like the harbin did do my daughter works in publishing goes off one lunchtime a week to read to children who don't read well and has enjoyed the experience found it really interesting the school obviously facilitated it in conjunction with the publishers my experience when I very briefly was in charge of a Faculty of Arts and Humanities was that one of the programs that we tried really hard to do and we have this open forum was to engage schools and to draw them in I of course you know in that role wanted to do it both to tick the boxes but also because I believed in it it was impossible because the schools had they were so sort of under-resourced and overworked and the curriculum just didn't allow any time or space for it I agree with you it should happen but it really does need it really just as a soft option we just know that 2.6 million that we currently have is because of the investment in the past and what I'm talking about is a warning sound really that when we're not investing now which means we're gonna fall over in about ten years time and especially because we know that the skills that you get through learning about the art are the very skills that we are going to need going forward and that's that's we need professional investment I completely agree the idea of communities is super important but we mustn't undermine the value of it by making it only volunteer and community led needs to be done professionally too for being here this afternoon it's being spended afternoon as far as I'm concerned listening to the comments coming from the audience can I can I thank four speakers for engaging us in the in disturb eight we now pause for an hour there's tea in the end the cafe the refurbished cafe I understand this tea tea there for you and then at five-thirty gabriella finale he's giving a lecture the director of the National Gallery the whole point of this is to show the academic integrity of fine art in practice in the context of the lecture that the Gabriella is going to give to us if you haven't got a ticket for the 5:00 5:30 lecture I understand that I'm looking at the back I understand that there are some tickets still available so if you see King you're at the back or what one of the one of the people who's helping us at the back you can get a ticket for the for the lecture at 5:30 the lecture is not in here the lecture is in the lecture room which holds more people that's why we can say there were maybe a few few tickets left if you haven't ordered them so with that our thanks please to the speakers

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Length: 138min 29sec (8309 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2020