Williamson

© Beth Williamson 2008
above all was a deep sense of inquisitiveness. It was this inquisitiveness, a
desire to understand themselves and their medium more fully, which was to
take these students forward in their careers. For this reason, Thubron should be
singled out as running courses which related only loosely to Basic Design. He
never formalised his thinking on art education or anything else for he was, first
and foremost, an artist and a teacher. According to the late Norbert Lynton,
Thubron ‘had no set program but responded to what he saw happening around
him.’ 31 Ehrenzweig acted similarly in his teaching practice at Goldsmiths and it
is perhaps this freedom, this non-programmatic approach, which set Thubron
and Ehrenzweig apart. Their methodology, if it can be called such, was simply
to respond to the creative process as it happened in the studio. As student
David Barton experienced it, ‘In the studio Anton acted much more as an
unquiet restless spirit, a disturber of the peace. He often rejected the easy
targets that students were setting themselves … encouraging a far more
exciting albeit “Dangerous” alternative.’ 32 It is this sort of approach that
differentiates Thubron and Ehrenzweig from those who followed the Basic
Design course. Still, their methods were so bound up with Bauhaus legacies
and Basic Design that its importance cannot be denied. On a more personal
level, it may be significant that Ehrenzweig was once taught by Ludwick
Hirschfeld-Mack of the Dessau Bauhaus, an experience he recounts in his 1956
paper ‘The Mastering of Creative Anxiety’.
Goldsmiths and the ATC Course
Ehrenzweig’s pioneering role in the field of art education was formalised in 1964
when he was appointed to teach the ATC course at Goldsmiths College (fig. 1).
re·bus Issue 2 Autumn 2008 12