Complementary studies

The report states that the term ‘complementary studies’ had “evidently caused some misunderstanding especially with regard to its relation to studio work and to

3 Due to its importance in defining the role of writing in this contextual review, paragraph 38 will be quoted in its entirety.

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the history of art” (1970:10). In response to this, paragraph 38 of the report states:

We see a need to develop the previous position. The conception of complementary studies and historical studies in terms of subjects has sometimes led to these studies becoming too easily separated from the students' main studies and to an unnecessary division between history of art and those other subjects collected under the term 'complementary studies'.

We believe that these weaknesses can be overcome if the purpose of non-studio studies is thought of in terms of the educational objectives rather than the specific subjects to be taught. (1970:10).

The committee identify that those teaching complementary studies were not focussing on educational objectives but on specific subjects. The advice to focus on “objectives rather than specific subjects” (1970:10) is given due to

incompatibilities that had arisen after the recommendations of the first Coldstream Report to teach history of art and other subjects as ‘complementary studies’. One of the possible reasons for the confusion regarding complementary studies is that the report was received by art schools, many of whose teaching staff comprised those proficient in traditional studio skills and crafts, rather than in the reflective skills required by practitioners to develop their practice in terms of its conceptual context. The focus on the outcome here seems to make it more specific to educators that the purpose of any complementary study should develop and deepen the primary focus, but it is still unclear and opaque as to how this should be done. The committee attempts further clarification, thus:

We see a prime objective of complementary studies as being to enable the student to understand relationships between his own activities and the culture within which he lives as it has evolved. Such studies should

therefore offer him different ways of looking at art and design, and begin to build up a background against which he can view the experience of the studio (Department of Education and Science, 1970:10).

The committee foregrounds ‘studio’, giving it primary position, and placing all other studies as supplementary to it. However, it is unclear what ‘such studies’ will contain or offer the student, other than a set of relations through which a student may understand their practice better. Moreover, the term ‘background’ is

ambiguous here because it appears to refer to unspecified canonical

epistemologies taken from the history of art, cultural studies or other humanities

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areas, applied as a lens through which these relations should be framed. The report does not mention critical thinking, which, as was apparent in the art and design scene at the time, would be part of the education process in the studio or cultural analysis (cf Richard Hoggart, 1957; Raymond Williams, 1989), and which was an emerging area of study (Christie, 2004:155). Indeed, Thistlewood (1992b) reflects on the pre-Coldstream 50s movement to address art and nature, through debate at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), which evolved from the ICA’s symposium, Aspects of Art (1951), in turn influenced by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s text, On Growth and Form. Further debates were held about Paul Klee’s anti-academic stance (Thistlewood, 1992b:153-155). A debate about art and science, through the use of text and discussion was developing as was a lively critical discourse regarding theoretical creative process and practice. This in turn was feeding into teaching pedagogies within the art and design schools.

During the 1960s the teaching of studio-based art and design saw the

evolution of an innovative, creative and subject specific pedagogy. However, the student experience in art history sessions was a result of an entirely different evolutionary route concurrent with the developing learning cultures of the humanities or of liberal studies (Kill, 2006:313).

This is equated with the impact of The Coldstream Report’s “intentional separation of these two elements of the curriculum” (Kill, 2006:313). This separation of theory and practice was thus the result of a mismatch of requirements from a diverse set of opinions.

Returning to the report’s concluding paragraph regarding a clarification of what was meant by complementary studies, the committee states:

They should give him experience of alternative ways of collecting, ordering and evaluating information. Complementary studies should be an integral part of the student's art and design education, informing but not dictating to the creative aspects of his work. (Department of Education and Science, 1970:10).

Here mention of “the alternative ways of collecting, ordering and evaluating information" denote the analytical skills that were part of the methodology used in conceptual art and design practice of the day. The report appears to have been

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written to inform those unaware of the changes in contemporary art practice such as craft and technology schools, which did not traditionally encourage the reflective and critical thinking of the conceptual art and design disciplines. When read by art historians and practitioners, different understandings would have arisen and been put into practice within the different areas of the courses.