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	Home		First Degree by Fledgling An Art History student charts his progress...


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			May/June 2009 Art fairs for me are hilarious events. They are a feeding frenzy for rich art-lovers and galleries know it; they make most of their money at these funfairs. The last one provided me with a new experience of wealth and stupidity. A young man, let's call him David, wandered over to my friend and I and sat down to initiate conversation. It quickly became apparent that he was fairly battered but we chatted a while about the fair. He had that excessive cleanliness so typical of the extremely wealthy. Though drunk, he managed to reveal several interesting facts. He was a buyer for a private collector (identity secret) but he wasn’t buying today because the art at the fair wasn’t expensive enough for investment. He liked ‘life’ in his paintings, animals in particular, which I thought was a nobler taste for a collector to have. But the paucity of his knowledge about art and the inordinate amount of cash he held were both quickly exposed when he pointed over my friends shoulder and said ‘I like that painting – who is it by?’ It was a Damien Hirst ‘spot’ picture. We then asked if he liked contemporary art and he revealed he had recently acquired a Warhol. Surely the high-end art market is not reliant on complete morons like this? We bumped into him again the Spring AAF. During another tedious exchange, stilted somewhat by his seemingly constant inebriation, he revealed that he had just spent close to a million on a Chardin, but had not heard of the Courtauld Gallery in London. The university chum I took with me to both these fairs, one of the more presentable females and perhaps the main reason for the wealthy collector’s approach, is uncertain that she chose the correct degree programme. She is more interested in illustration and finds the academic study of old art dry and a little irrelevant. I’m finding generally that the more times I ask how the course is going the more tentative answers I receive from people. Although the year group was effectively handpicked from amongst the numerous applicants, the epithet 'worst ever' seems to be tacitly acknowledged amongst the students. We have emails relating to consistently late essays and mass absenteeism from lectures and discussion classes. The lecturers suspect a protest of some sort. Over the year we must do seven 1,500-word and four 2,500-word essays, about 30 pages in total. We are also required to do a foreign language module at LSE. Within the degree there is a foundation series of lectures, three a week, which skates across 2,500 years of art. We also have a weekly in-depth topic class series, which focuses on a single, pre-defined period. There is also a large weekly discussion class for us to meekly argue about the theories in our foundation lectures. But it amounts to just seven contact hours a week and subsequently our first year has been mostly empty space. With the wiles of over-worked medical students ringing in my ears, I attempt to fill the time with other art-related pursuits; part-time gallery employment, internships and plenty of exhibitions – and of course the dithyrambic opening nights held across the capital. A few weeks ago Nicholas Bourriaud, the very Gallic curator of Altermodern at Tate Britain, graced our lecture theatre with his diminutive presence. Although it started well enough, his elucidatory spiel on the blockbuster exhibition ran out of momentum within ten minutes but proceeded to limp and jerk on for another fifty; a miasmal jumble of postmodernist nuggets that, as usual, people seemed to eat right up. Uncomprehending spectators just revelled in the cleverness of the botanical analogies (Rhizomes etc.). Altermodern wasn’t that good, but an exhibition that was fun was ‘Mark Wallinger Curates: The Russian Linesman’. It was an engaging mash-up of disparate objects, all fascinating in their novelty or concept (re: the disorientating corridor), housed in the pleasantest exhibition space on Southbank, the top level of the Hayward Gallery. There is something particularly nice about that large, multi-segmented room, in contrast to the tall, white, moribund rooms of the Tate Modern with their morose visitors. My favourite art-work there was the officially approved portrait Profilo contino del Duce, 1933, by Renato Bertelli and manufactured by Ditta Effeffe. The work is more a rotational machine component than a portrait, even having its own patent number. It’s a clever piece of lathing that embodies the artistic spirit of Futurism and is symbolic of Mussolini’s government. It also genuinely accomplishes its aim as an optical spectacle, as you walk round it the prognathous ‘Duce’ seamlessly goes with you, perpetually refusing to turn and break that strong, regal profile of a conqueror.


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	Fledgling • Mar/Apr 2009 • May/June 2009 • Jul/Aug 2009 • Nov/Dec 2009 • Jan/Feb 2010 • Mar/April 2010 All of this site is © The Jackdaw - a newsletter for the visual arts 2010. Drawings are by wood engraver Ian Stephens - contact him on: 01604 460457.