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First Degree
by Fledgling

An Art History student charts his progress...

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Nov/Dec 2009

A good teacher can change your mind. The first rhinovirus of the academic year never fails to knock me down and this time, to my ire, it managed to interrupt the initial seminars for my topic course, Gothic Cathedrals. My tutor, a late-middle-aged man with an endearingly blustering manner, is clearly still infatuated with the architecture of the early middle ages. I have never been a fan of Gothic, nor of the 19th century buildings in that style’s revival such as the convoluted Houses of Parliament with a surface texture sharp and cage-like. These aversions are purely aesthetic; I didn’t know much about the intentions, antecedents or development of Gothic and my judgements were based on meagre exposure. After a few lectures and a couple of hours required reading, this period began to get interesting. My tutors enthusiasm for the reality of the era, the actual (mostly nameless) people who set about designing and constructing the stone megaliths, ‘brings it to life’ for us, the students, and engages our minds. An invaluable field trip to Canterbury Cathedral led by our loquacious mentor invigorated the subject further. As you walk through the pilgrim’s entrance in the nave’s west end you are confronted with sheer, palpably thrusting columns which, just for a moment, stretch up infinitely. You raise your eyes and follow the shafts to the springing vault that crosses at a point only visible by tilting the head fully backwards, exposing the throat and instilling a sense of meekness. This is actual emotion evoked by thousand-year-old design; and on me, a 22-year-old bored by even the retina-searing visuals of computer technology. Very little contemporaneous literature exists for Gothic and I am grateful to my teacher – dedicated scholar – for demystifying the arcane.

So my second year has begun and I’m based not fifteen minutes away from my student halls but in a very different area. I no longer comfortably saunter the walkways of Bloomsbury. Now, I tuck my chin into my coat and make a brisk pace through the residential backstreets above Kings Cross, dodging feuds of felines and families alike. I only refer to my location because where you live makes subtly alters your outlook. I spent last year lazing (rarely of course) round an extremely wealthy area, having my coffee and cigarettes amongst potential millionaires. I now eat my egg and bacon next to some of the poorest people in London, and I don’t always feel safe. The unexpected onslaught of winter weather didn’t make the transition any less bleak either. I am unreservedly middle-class and have had everything I needed from birth. This alienates me from a large sector of my new community on a superficial and easily overcome basis. However, my area of interest, Art with a capital ‘A’, seems to remove me even further on a far more fundamental level, and this I find is a terrible thing. When I understand and accept the premise of a crass installation piece as legitimate by engaging with it I then allow it to be ‘misunderstood’. Andy Warhol surmised this rampant art world elitism: ‘You have to do stuff that average people don’t understand because those are the only good things.’ This flimsy, misguided soundbite from the original master of spin could be the emblazoned motto of most art schools. My university, categorically not an art school, doesn’t force us to take this position as it is an academic institution. However abstruse my tutor is sometimes, it is always the result of a long, distinguished pursuit of knowledge rather than a fatuous exclusivity. Ever egalitarian, Tolstoy rings true for me more than ever: ìTo say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.î

The year of gentle introductions has passed but the year of decisive hard work and urgency in the face of final judgement is yet come. I want this intermediate year of student life to be one of measured dedication and gradual specialism, and hopefully total detachment from the land of bullshit that is, say, literally the entire set of galleries on Vyner Street. All I feel when I walk through any of those western gates is the heat of ‘charisma’ and despair for humanity.

Bin Ends

Alan Hansen

Dear Tony

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