Century of artistic struggle

Press, 4 June 1982, Page 13

Century of artistic struggle

The Canterbury School of Fine Arts celebrates its centenary this week-end with exhibitions, public lectures, and an open day. To gain insight into the school’s history and influence ROBERT CROSS interviewed six people: one has been the school’s director for 20 years and the others were students at different times during the last half century.

"The most extraordinary thing about this place is that it has survived at all." says the director of thb Canterbury School of Fine Arts. Professor H. J. Simpson. He glances- around the walls of his office as if he expects them to crack and crumble' at -any moment. "Many times during my 20 years here it has held on only bv the skin of its teeth."

Reading the school's history is like reading "Cinderella" — the deprived childhood in buildings vacated bv Christchurch Girls' High School (1882-1957); a repressed adolescence in an old house on the Ham campus while sister, faculties were showered with new buildings (1957-1979); and only being invited to the new buildings ball because of a fire (1975).

It has its happy ending. Housed in new buildings the school found security. “I do not usually attach much significance to bricks and mortar. but'these buildings have special significance,” Professor Simpson says. “They were designed and built for the school — they would be useless for anything else — and they confirm our place at the university.”

Why did the school have to wait until almost the end of its first century to find security and recognition? Professor Simpson says that while the community needs an art school it is reluctant to support one. For most people the benefits of other institutions are more tangible, their contributions

more obvious, so their needs come first. There is no question in his mind about whether the school is justified. "For every place we can offer we get three applications; the demand is far greater than the supply; that demand alone justifies our existence." Although most people who leave the school are unable to support themselves by

their art. he says that most continue to practise it, thereby benefiting society. “Everything a community achieves and stands for lies in the art it creates." The school's role is to help people be artists. If the school plays its part properly there is a flow of’artists into the community: people who, in the Professor's words.

"reveal the true nature of their country." • There is. of course, the counter-argument: “Who needs the arts, the artists, and the art schools?" heard more often during recessions; advocated by those who hold that art is a useless byproduct of affluence. An exponent would assert that an art school should be the first to go when times get tough and cuts have to be made. Professor Simpson vehemently disagrees. “Art is not the icing on the cake. The harder the times the more important it becomes."

He cites what happened in London during the Second World War as proof. All the paintings from the National Gallery were removed and stored during the blitz. Only a single masterpiece, which was exchanged from time to time, was exhibited.

“Hundreds of people queued every day to see a single painting; they knew it was important. Without art a country does not have a soul.” The school's job is to foster artists and in so doing foster the arts. How is it done?

“You cannot teach art: all you can do is to provide a context in which people can make good, solid progress towards their ideals,” Professor Simpson says. "Some people would make it without coming here, but it would be much slower and more perilous for them.” Through the school, students can also gain access

to the world's finest art schools.

“Every year a handful are able to go overseas to study. Fortunately, some of them come back."

Like any other educational institution the school has had to change to meet society's demands. In the last 20 years that has meant broadening the traditional categories of fine art — painting, drawing, and sculpture at the top, "crafts" somewhere below — to include modern, popular media.

Professor Simpson says that he has tried to put design, photography, filmmaking. and print-making on an equal footing with the traditional disciplines. “These are the new artistic currencies," he adds.

More is now being done to encourage students to earn their living by their art. Professor Simpson says it is often an unrealisable ambition. but the more it is encouraged the more people will try - and succeed.

Last year, the school was empowered to offer courses for a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Before, it could offer only diploma courses — a limitation that denigrated its academic status in some people’s eyes. Professor Simpson says that the new degree secures the school academically in the way the new buildings secure it physically. “With the introduction of that degree the last criticisms of our worth were laid to rest.”