Chapter Six First trip.
The tutor in charge of our trip to north Europe thought the best way to
make us keep up was to run from one tram to the next and not give us
an itinerary and we didn’t think to ask for one. He took the whole trip at a
breakneck pace, probably the third year he’d done it. Once at an
exhibition we had some time to look but he hardly bothered to discuss
or instruct beyond occasionally covering labels with his hand and asking
who we thought a painting was done by.
Van Gogh in Amsterdam was followed by Warhol in Berne, the silver
floating pillows and the Brillo boxes, and Brancusi in Paris. Bryony
and I saw the famous studio through slightly blurred vision as we’d
shared a bottle of wine in the lunchtime sunshine but at least we didn’t
knock over the endless column. In a museum of Impressionist works
Chris sat looking French while two English tourists talked about him
disparagingly and then he spoke in English to embarass them. He
always made us laugh.
Some of them sat playing cards on the train and never even saw the
alps. One of the tallest of the young men was ill and I made everyone
laugh by saying ,’its always the big ones that wilt’
We hardly remembered what country we were in. We refused raw
looking beef, coped with all the changes of currency and bought no
books to keep our luggage light and were home in Nottingham in no
time.
Now the course diversified to give a taster of various departments so
the pre - diploma students could make up their minds where to apply for
next year, not having our luxury of being safely ensconced for another
three.
One of the tasters was photography. We were isued with enormous
twin reflex cameras with square ground glass screens and two inch
negatives and we wandered around the city to take pictures feeling
important. In the darkroom I found myself next to a technician
developing prints of Derek, the body building model. Life drawing had
now stopped and would not be referred to again. The technician looked
over a female students shoulder at a picture of her lean spindly
boyfriend magically appearing in the dish. ’Call that a man?’ he said
with contempt, motioning to his muscle bulging Derek.
Printing was another section, lithography on an offset machine with an
eight foot wide roller that with the tiniest push rolled beautifullly along
oiled cogs to take up the image from the plate onrto the roller and then
to the paper. We were warned not to inhale the toluene used for
cleaning as it was halucinogenic.
I didn’t seem to have the time to take the other hallucinogenic
substances that were around. I took it quite seriously, read about Aldous
Huxley and decided that unless I could put aside a couple of days and
have a friend to take care of me I wouldn’t take the chance.
The Head of the Royal College of Art came to visit, Peter de Francia,
and chose a few students to talk to. I was one of them, but I hadn’t a
clue how to make any use of this opportunity. I didn’t try to get his
phone number.
Stuart Brisley came and staged a bizarre ‘happening’. We had to do
some concrete poetry using a word. I chose ‘sticky’ and wrote it in honey
and flies walked into it and died. I exhibitied in college a warped comb
I’d left on a radiator and called it ‘metamorphosis’
We learnt nothing about how to survive as artists, how to make
contacts in the art world or how to exhibit outside the college.
It was time to move on from the cramped rooms in Burns Street and
we found an unfurnished flat on Forest Road, with huge high rooms on
the ground floor and a garden. The shared bathroom was upstairs, very
chilly and with three dining chairs opposite the bath as if for spectators.
The gas boiler exploded into life dangerously.
The question of buying beds came up. Bryony’s boyfriend had told her
mother that single beds only forced people to sleep on top of one
another. My parents looked askance put didn’t protest when I said the
only bed available at the auctions was a three quarter one.
I painted my room entirely blue except for an orange door and on the
other side I cut out an elephant from the green and painted it pink. A
visiting child pointed to it excitedly and I told the parent that they were
quite correct, there was really an elephant there.
The landlord dropped in every month without warning for the rent and
to see what we were up to. Bryony had a red haired youth often there
with her. I had a round table top just on the floor so it was 4 inches high.
I had an enormous old sofa also from the auctions, a big mahogany
wardrobe with mirrored doors for my satin and velvet secondhand
gowns and a moleskin fur coat, way before anyone made objections
about being clad in the skin of a dead animal.
Upstairs the old lady that had lived there for years didn’t mind us. We
didn’t play our music very loud. Occasionally a few fancy dressed folk
turned up and stayed for hours but there was no real problem. One of
these groups was actually the members of a band called ’Principal
Edward’s Magical Theatre’. We were preferable to the skinheads with
shaved heads and tattoos, big boots and threatenening behaviour. The
two subcultures were uneasily side by side, hippy flower children versus
bother boots.
One hazard was venereal disease. It turned out that the Milky Bar Kid
had dumped me because he thought I’d passed on to him crab lice, but
it was the other way about. I made more than one miserable visit to a
concrete clinic where one of the young doctors making their intimate
inspections said,’It looks fine to me.’ Pills were given out to stop non
specific infections. Examinations always hurt the urethra, a needle like
a knitting needle was passed up it and afterwards to pee hurt for a
day.
It was however between the time when syphilis had been incurable
and the discovery of chalmydia and the start of Aids. It was a brief
window when a cheerful, uncomitted promiscuity could be tried by those
intelligent enough, or maybe just lucky enough, to avoid pregnancy. This
serial monogamy gave experiences without learning anything about
love or even about love-making.
No comments:
Post a Comment