The Art School Dance Read Online Free PDF Page A

butchered properly it isn’t,’ he said, with a look of
professional disgust. ‘That looks like it’s been hacked at by a
novice.’
    Again I had to
agree, wondering why the drawing was turning out as it was. The
mood affected the medium, perhaps?
    ‘ Best
you give it a rest for the day, Ginny love,’ Arthur suggested,
going back behind his counter. ‘We don’t want folk thinking this is
an advert for my business, do we?’
    I smiled,
accepted his suggestion, packed my things as I drank the tea.
    *
    Later, back at
college, Ben pointed out a certain influence of Francis Bacon, and
though I laughed at the unintended pun I could see what he
meant.
    ‘ It
wasn’t intentional,’ I told him.
    ‘ No,
perhaps not, but it might be useful to have a look at some of
Bacon’s work all the same. Why don’t you pop down to the library
and have a browse?’
    I said I
would, but didn’t, not there and then, for I had always been a
little wary of looking too closely at another artist’s work; there
was certainly a time and a place for that, but when I was
preoccupied with a work of my own was never propitious. There was
the danger that I might be too greatly influenced by what I saw,
that I might take a little bit here and a little bit there to put
into my own work. This was excusable, of course, all modern art
contains some response to the art of the past, but I was never
quite sure that it was right for me as a student.
    Instead of
going to the library, then, I found a stretcher frame and some
cotton duck and started to prepare a canvas. I took my time, my
canvasses were always well prepared, tacked the fabric to the frame
and soaked it with water to stretch it tight like a drum-skin. I
had coated it with glue-size, primed it with emulsion, was sitting
back smoking a cigarette, gazing at the canvas and making only
imaginary marks, when Gus came into the studio. He regarded the
canvas for a moment, grinned slyly at me, then took it from the
easel and held it at arm’s length as if to appraise it. It might
have been a six foot snowstorm of white emulsion to anyone else,
but to Gus, trained as he was, it was descriptive of a monumental
sensation of space, a feeling of desolation and loneliness.
    ‘ This is
fan-bloody-tastic!’ he said. ‘It’s man’s lack of direction, a
perfect interpretation of him lost in our modern antiseptic
world.’
    ‘ Thanks,’ I smiled patiently. ‘It’s kind of you to say
so.’
    Even at that
time, still students, we had already become acquainted with the
poses and pretensions of the art world; we had listened intently to
those whose language was so lyrical and in perfect rhythm with the
art school dance. Art was not a category of perceptual fields, Ben
had told us, but one of role playing; ‘it ain’t what you do, it’s
the way that you do it’ was how we had translated this, and both
Gus and I had rehearsed our parts with care.
    ‘ It
smacks you in the face,’ Gus continued to enthuse. ‘There’s nothing
here, it says nothing because nothing can be said, nothing
definite; everything can be qualified to such a degree that
ultimately nothing can be said.’
    ‘ Exactly.’ I thought it best to agree, as Gus’ smile beamed
and his laughter reverberated about the studio.
    At this point
in his mocking appraisal the canvas left his hands as he spun it
through a quarter turn, the top becoming the side and the side
becoming the bottom. ‘But does it hang this way?’ he asked, before
spinning it again. ‘Or is it this way?’
    ‘ Careful!’ I warned, reaching out for the canvas.
    ‘ But
it’s an important question, Ginny, how you hang it and
why.’
    ‘ At the
moment the material is more important than the motivation,’ I told
him, taking the canvas from him and carefully setting it back on
the easel. ‘I don’t want it damaged.’
    In one
of his irksome moods, Gus tried to argue that a more complete
statement would be achieved if the canvas was damaged in some way, that an open