The ascent from the maelstrom: Art Students Observed and its descriptive resonance 40 years on

Abstract

Between 1967 and 1973 Barbara Weinberger and Charles Madge undertook a longitudinal study of art students at Coventry and Birmingham Colleges of Art, incorporating pre-diploma to final year students and their teachers, with a focus on fine art students. This article revisits the study in light of accounts from participants, archival documents and reviews. It also looks at the study's value both as an accurate description of art school socialisation and its effectiveness as a piece of sociology. It then looks at some of the main issues raised by the study and how they have influenced writing since and their value today. The article aims to clarify some of the obscurities of the study and offer a critical context within which it can be read as a now unique historical document.

Notes on contributor

Mark Dennis is an artist and PhD student at Coventry University, researching the origins of Art and Language in the art school with regards to the role of theoretical studies in art education.

Notes

1. Art & Language were a group of four artists (Michael Baldwin, Terry Atkinson, Harrold Hurrel and David Bainbridge) established in 1968 and initially associated with the Conceptual Art movement. They quickly established an output through the journal Art-Language in 1969 and became a transatlantic collaborative enterprise. The group has changed scope and membership several times in the intervening four decades.

2. Such as the tensions between largely design-based disciplines and fine art values traced in most historical studies of art education (MacDonald 1970).

3. ‘Midville’ was recently resurrected by Lynda Morris to mean regional art activity, or, as Lynda Morris puts it, ‘not London’. An amusing alternative association is that with John Wyndham's ‘Midwich’. Lynda Morris also wrote her MA thesis partly on the Art Theory Course at Coventry in 1973.

4. Most notably her long-time engagement with the work of Barnet Newman, and her many reviews and writings for Studio International.