|
|
NOT CRICKET
Often, people will ask, "How did you get into art?"
From a child, I was always interested in making art. At the age of five, I won my first award for painting. The small ceramic figure of a lady in a crinoline is still in my possession. Painted in red, green and blue, the figurine has an inscription on the underside of the base. Mother had written, "August 10th, 1938: Roy won”; my first prize. As a youngster, I continued to draw, not too well, but with enthusiasm. Cartoon movies on rolls of paper from a cash register and imaginary illustrations of soccer games heard on the radio were among my favorite crude endeavors.
At age 11, having passed the rigorous exam, I was the only child from my elementary school to go on to grammar school, Cathay’s High School for Boys. The art classes soon became my favorite subject. The art master was Roy Saunders, same initials and first name as mine. He was a strict disciplinarian who trained Welsh Sheepdogs and young boys.
Our first project was to put our names on our art folders. The lettering was a specific size and style: Roman sans seraph with the names lettered in full. My name had eight letters and, although the "S" was difficult, the task was completed quickly and well. However, a fellow pupil, named Robert Anthony Charles Jones never did finish his art folio, a prerequisite for moving on to do original art. Always did wonder whether that long name of his, was the reason that RAC never made art and, I believe, became a scientist?
Meanwhile, I worked hard, with little natural talent, but intense commitment. Soon I became "teacher's pet", allowed to work whenever I could in the art room and invited to visit Mr. Saunders at his home to see the sheepdogs being trained. Like his pupils, the dogs were most obedient.
One day, on the sports field, I was in a cricket game, somewhere in the outfield, a long way from the ball and action. Cricket was, and is, a game I never could be interested or involved in. I was standing, looking at the grass and counting the buttercups, when Mr. Saunders came up and asked, "Slade, what ARE you doing?” In my cricket whites, I stood to attention and replied, "Playing cricket, sir?"
"NO, boy, what are you doing with your life after you leave school? What career?" At the age of fifteen, I had not really thought much about that question. In fact, I had no idea, so said what most kids say," I'd like to be a teacher, sir." "Good. You should go to art school and learn to become an art teacher"
Confused, I asked, " But, sir, can you TEACH art?" This question would remain with me forever. After a life and career dedicated to art and education, I am still not sure of the answer. I do know you can foster an appreciation of art and teach certain skills, encouraging creative endeavor; but can you teach art? My art teacher had a response, as red in the face, Mr. Saunders growled, "What the hell do you think I've been trying to do with you for the past years, Slade?!" "Yes, sir. Thank you, I'll go to art school, sir."
Thus, on the cricket field where little of consequence happens, the momentous decision was made that I should go to art school. As I stammered my apologies, my teacher stormed off but, days later, he talked to me about art schools and entry requirements. How ironic and poetic that at a cricket match, in a game I never understood, my career in art began.
INTERVIEW
In my home town of Cardiff, there was an old building that was originally a church school, called St. John's. Strangely enough, my mother told me, I had gone to that school for a few weeks when very young. During World War II, the building became a civil defense station and I was issued my gas mask there. After the War, St John’s school became Cardiff College of Art. The building where I'd gone to kindergarten and been issued with a gas mask, would become where my future studies would occur, the beginning of my career in art.
After hearing from my art teacher about art school, my mother made inquiries and found that I could go for a meeting with the principal. Mother took me, in shorts and blazer, to meet the Principal of the art school. His name was Jack Tarr A quiet, small man with moustache and hair lick similar to that of Hitler. Unlike the dead dictator, Mr. Tarr was a kindly man, who, like my headmaster at grammar school, road a bike to work.
Later in my student years, the figure of Mr. Tarr, with trilby hat, scarf and trousers clipped, was seen on his bike, cycling endlessly through my drawings and paintings. Every morning, Mr. Tarr arrived at the art school, dismounted and, slowly, would remove his cycle clips and gloves, then put a pipe in his mouth, ready for work.
On this day, he was to meet with an innocent and ignorant fifteen year old to talk about his art school. Patiently, he explained that four years of full time study was required to graduate as an artist, with a further year qualify for teaching. Like many other schoolchildren, my limited and only ambition was to be a teacher. But first, a portfolio review and entrance exam had to be taken and passed before acceptance into art school.
The coming months became a blur of activity. With portfolio reviewed and entrance exam taken, successfully, I was accepted to Cardiff College of Art. However, formal entry was dependent on matriculation from high school. Later that summer, in a somewhat archaic manner, on an August day, the results of the matriculation exams were posted on the office doors of the education department at City Hall. The crowd of kids waited anxiously. What worried me was whether I had passed in language, my weakest subject and a matriculation requirement. Pushing and shoving, I saw my results and, joy, had passed in my Spanish oral test: 'Ole, I was on my way to art school at the delicate age of sixteen!
That year, 1949, the art school had a very mixed student body. I had just turned sixteen and was in a beginning class with other young teenagers mixed in with war veterans in their late 20s and early 30s. These were toughened soldiers, some with beards, others with aftershave, unfamiliar to an adolescent, and the ladies wore perfume and lipstick. For a kid straight out of school, the mix was unusual, as was being in art school at such a young age.
I remember my first life class vividly. I did not know what to expect but had been told that we would drawing the human form, studying from a naked model. We sat around the throne or dais, a raised wooden platform, on which the model was to pose. We sat on benches that were called donkeys. At the end of each bench was a device like a small easel on which you could rest your drawing board. The students busied themselves with getting paper, pencils, brushes, whatever was necessary to avoid looking up. Out of the corner of my eye, I was aware that someone was on the platform and heard the rustle of a robe falling. I glanced up and caught a glimpse of an old woman, naked.
In that first life drawing class, I was so in embarrassed to be looking at a naked woman that I spent a great deal of time looking down and mixing my paint. Eventually, in frustration, the art teacher came to me and said, “Slade, are you going to spend forever mixing sepia?” I realized that I could not carry on this pretense of mixing a brown shade of paint much longer; accordingly I began to make marks on my paper. Again, the teacher stood over me and asked, “Slade, don't you think it would be a good idea to look at the model?!” Thus started of my first art class, in rather an ignominious way.
ART SCHOOL  RS "self portrait" c1951
My first vivid memory of art school was that life class and my first nude, a glimpse of an old woman, naked and shriveled. The model was in her seventies, not the glamorous goddess that I had imagined and expected. Art school models are not fashion plates, far from it, as gravity and age wore away at the body. From that day, I began to realize that life drawing was an arduous, demanding discipline for years to come, particular in the academic style of that era.
That first life class was an ordeal, the embarrassment remains even today, as I remember sitting on my donkey. The bench with adjustable and slanted support for a drawing board is called a "donkey", which also is defined as "the ass; stupid or silly person." That day, certainly I felt stupid.
Next to me, an army veteran, just back from Egypt, was drawing rapidly with broad flourishes and confident strokes. Yet, I noticed that, increasingly, he spent more time looking at his drawing than at the model. Obviously our teacher was aware of that tendency, a bad habit that had to be corrected. The model was given a rest and the class some relief; the younger ones from their embarrassment. The art teacher told of the artist Edgar Degas who made students draw a still life. The objects were arranged on a table placed in the basement. Degas's students gathered around and studied the objects with concentration and care. The drawing class was held three flights up, so the aspiring artists had to learn to observe and memorize or face the endless stairs. In this way, to look became more important than merely to draw. From the beginning, looking at the model became a priority, not mere glances but intense observation.
After that tale, our model came back and disrobed. This time, the teacher discussed many issues from posture to proportion. Now there was no escape nor embarrassment for the nude became, and remained, a puzzling problem of line, form, mass, shape, gesture and much more.
The first two years of art school were conventional, the teaching traditional, with classes in the history of architecture, fashion, perspective, lecturing, lettering and an optional in the crafts. I chose what was called in those days ‘pottery’ and made some awkward figures in clay; obviously sculpture was not for me. After two years, students had to select a major. I decided to be a painter, feeling that this was a romantic pursuit. The reality was that we had to study painting five days a week, three of which were devoted to, again, to life painting. The models continued to be all shapes and sizes, from old to opulent. The paintings had to be most realistic, in the academic style. I was not good at figure painting but I was extremely accomplished in painting furniture that looked like furniture. I also painted actual furniture, walls and, even, garage doors to make money. In every way, I was truly a painter.
Two days were devoted to what was called ‘figure composition’. Our paintings had to follow the classical compositions of yesteryear. I was much more interested in landscape than figures, enough already in life class. The figures in my paintings got smaller and smaller, eventually losing themselves within elaborate landscapes. Of particular interest were industrial scenes of which there were many in the docklands of Cardiff. In our final exam, we had to make a painting titled “The birthday party”. My entry is was of a dockyard full of scrap metal with a background of factories and chimneys belching smoke. Within this elaborate scene of twisted and rusty metal were three diminutive figures, dock workers drinking bottles of beer and supposedly celebrating a birthday. I passed my exams and was awarded my degree in painting. I was grateful, celebrating with a few pints of draught beer with my fellow students, another raucous moment in our Bohemian life.
In my fifth and last year, I took classes for my teaching degree at the University of Wales. I never will forget studying psychology with a professor who constantly played with a yo-yo in front of the class. Also not forgotten was “student teaching’, that time where the student becomes teacher and, under supervision, conducts an art class. The young pupils, whether kids in kindergarten or teenagers in secondary school, awaited the student teacher as hunters await their prey. Somehow, I survived and graduated, with my teaching degree, after five unforgettable years of art school and Bohemia.
SILVER MEDAL
As a young art student, I thought of myself as most bohemian and acted accordingly with hard work and outrageous partying, isn’t that what artists did? As well as copying the styles of various artists, I emulated the life styles of those wild bohemians of “Gay Paris” of the naughty nineties who were carousing with wine, women and song. In Wales, the bohemian life was a little different. Rather than carafes of wine in a café, we drank mugs of beer in a pub. Our singing was done in raucous crowds at rugby matches where, with passion and gusto, the Welsh spontaneously sang “Bread of Heaven”. That hymn, sung as no where else, either in church or chapel, brought tears to our eyes and terror to our opponents. Many a visiting rugby team has collapsed as the Welsh players rise up, inspired by the words “Lead me, oh my great Jehovah”. Never is such singing heard in this world, only on the rugby pitch or paradise.
Life in an attic seemed the romantic ideal for the starving artist but, during my five years of college, I lived at home; difficult for me, even more so for my mother and step father! To have their son become an art student must have been hard to deal with, particularly as he became a wild bohemian. Painting, pubs and parties became my way of life. I worked hard and played hard, with the enthusiasm and naivety of youth. How did my poor parents suffer and survive those unruly and turbulent days? How did I?
Every morning, I left our small flat and walked to St John's. The art college was housed in St John's, a building of real significance for me. St John's was my very first school, as, for a few weeks, I went to kinder garden there. Then, with the war and evacuation, the building was taken over by the government. I was issued with my gas mask from those offices. Now I was studying art in this old, red brick building, located just off Queen Street, the main shopping thoroughfare of Cardiff. My daily, leisurely stroll took ten minutes from home to school, through streets and a small park with Celtic crosses and Roman roads. I walked past the National Museum of Wales and the City Hall, both huge and white, classical architecture. I lived and studied in the center of the capital of Wales, with the museum and its art collections close by but, even closer, many pubs.
At the age of 18, pubs were legal for me; I was already familiar with them. I remember our annual college fancy dress party and, on one occasion, my mother made me a wonderful costume for Scaramouch. I created the false nose out of papier mache. Unfortunately, before the ball even began, I had partied too much, fallen and my nose crumpled, so did I. My parents suffered patiently through the wild Bohemian life of pubs, parties and picnics. The annual bus trip was organized by students to celebrate the end of each academic year. Five buses, crammed with the student body of 200, took the annual trek to Mumbles Bay for a picnic. On the return, too much beer and booze led to sickness and singing, asking Jehovah to lead us back to “the Promised Land”.
College life was not only fun but became a way of life for I became involved with the Student Union. At the age of seventeen, I ran for and was elected President of the Union, young indeed considering the student body was much older with veterans and mature students. In the election process, student candidates had to make a speech to fellow students. I had to overcome not only my youth and shyness but had been to the dentist that day, so I was spitting blood in more ways than one. Some say that I’ve been spitting blood ever since. My election as President changed me in many ways. I assumed a leadership role that has been my way from then on. In 1953, I was honored to receive the College’s Silver Medal: “Awarded to the student who contributes most to the life of the college and who also produces the best work in open competition”. A year later, a few days after graduation, I entered the British Army.
RS drawing "Backyards with laundry on the line" c1957.RS drawing "Ferry Road, Cardiff" 1960. |
|