In the introductory speech given by the foundation course staff, Keith Armitage asked the new comers, ..."who wants to do Fine Art." I put my hand up. He said something to the effect that it was a mug's game and do something that could earn you a living.

 

Kerr was an outsider. He was a helpful teacher whose European attitude did not fit easily into the British system. He was a gentle and understanding man and a painter who was underestimated. I visited him with Chris and Bert soon after arts chool and he gave me a print. He advised me against demonstrating my anti-social attitude too much. I hope I listened to his good advice.

 

(The first crit). As for the harsh judgements, I reciprocated with my own rhetoric. Their comments were reasonable compared to the hostile rhetoric that was currency between my mates back home on Merseyside.The three years at Midville was a steep learning curve with many painful experiences that ultimately inured me to class intimidation and sharpened my intellect

 

(The drawing project). There were more than the balloons and streamers. Chris laid out a grid on the floor and attached string from the corners to the ceiling and a model would walk around for short intervals and stop. It was an incoherent criticism of life drawing. I recall going with Coutts, Gibson and others to a symposium on drawing at the ICA in 1968/9 where the issue of 'teaching drawing at art school' was dragged over the coals. However, because of the Conceptualist's radical “mark making" projects, the basic idea of drawing naked women as a method of expressing beauty was revealed as toxic and patronizing. There were no courses in oil painting techniques because all the strategies of oil painting had been explored and it was a redundant technique - according to the Marxists conceptualists

 

The art history lecturer was subjected to our poor student behavior. She had the decency and courage to take us all to Herford and Worcester cathedrals for a day trip. The boys behaved badly

 

(External speakers). I cannot remember many visitors names or who invited them. I remember having tutorials in the sculpture department with Joseph Kossuth and Ivor Abrahams. We had lectures from Sol Le Witt, David Hockney and Les Levine amongst many other significant people. 

 

(Tutorials). We smoked hashish and occasionally took acid before we went and drank barley wine in the pub with the staff

 

The only thing I remember is being embarrassed by Gibson saying that I had a ‘buffoon-like persona’. He was probably correct. I was naive, immature, and, in many ways totally unprepared for the challenges that Midville School of Art presented to me.I was insecure and immature. I was also untrusting and patronising to females. I was an impressionable boy out of his depth in a situation that was fluid. At the time I was unaware that art was a competitive sport where ideas were currency and deception common place. I was innocent of that kind of cynicism. It was through my association with guys like Ashley and Coutts that I was able to see art as a viable lifestyle.

 

We talk ourselves into what we are, so I guess at Midville I was in the romantic process of talking myself into being a ‘great’ artist - carrying the values of the handmade object. Coutts was all about the opposite. Although I disagreed with his idea of dismissing the handmade, I respected his analytical thinking and his critique of the economy of the art game. The conversations were extensive and wide ranging, covering Conceptual Art in general, and, in particular the movement's motivations, political agenda as well as the comings and goings of the London art scene. He described Gibson as being 'dragged kicking and screaming out of the 19thc.', which Gibson took as a compliment. To Gibson, Coutts was an intellectual thug. 

 

Liz is correct, most of the guys were assholes when it came to women.

 

(The liberal studies performance). We were dressed up and moved about on chess board in some kind of pattern. It went wrong half way through when some of the performers forgot what to do.

 

Some of the students were unable to deal with the laisser-faire method of education. Which is what Coutts described the method as to me. However, it belies what happened. The staff were really trying to herd cats while asking them to be squirrels. The conflict between abstraction and figuration, conceptualism/minimalism and traditional practice, sculpture and performance, industrial techniques and hand made was acted out by the staff. It was a time when I felt I was part of the sharp end of music and art. I felt that in being at Midville I was at a banquet of ideas and practice, especially being able to work for practicing artists like Gibson and conversing at length with Coutts during his driving lessons.We were at the sharp end of 'what do you mean by the word mean'.

​

Coming to terms with the staff/student ratio was a challenge. One on one was common. Each staff member selling his, or, her art ideology to us with intensity.  Far more than on the foundation course, which was again more intense than 30 to a class at grammar school. The students who could not compete with the staff went under. Many hid themselves in hard to access cubicles they constructed. ]I felt that I coped with the situation because I was athletic and competent with a dominant personality and I knew the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. I was there to climb out of the world of working class necessity into the world of Ideas. It was going to be tough and I knew it.

​

My experience at Midville was like entering a playhouse directly onto the stage in the middle of a particularly compelling, modernist  drama. And it was your turn to 'match the room and speak". If you could hack it you survived if not you were left perplexed and disenchanted.

 

Without a completely life changing event like the one I experienced on the Fine Art course I had the very real possibility of living my life in the clutches of bosses like my parents had. To me the behavior of us all - students and staff - on close review seemed to be a dramatic enactment of characters caught up in an epic struggle. 

 

Like Stephen King setting a horror novel in art school.