Pupils go back to the drawing board as life imitates Hockney

Sarah Jane Checkland on the state of the art school

OBSERVE the habits of the Hockney, genus David. Rare art bird from Bradford, he migrated to California more than 20 years ago and nowadays appears only occasionally in his natural habitat - usually to launch his latest exhibition.

Gentle, owlish, and inclined to quietly eccentric plumage, he always causes a stir when he gets here, by airing his latest theories on life, art and the universe. Last week was no exception.

At the Royal Academy, where an exhibition of his drawings opened, he denounced art schools for a failure to teach drawing. "It is sad," he said, "when the colleges abandon the teaching of certain kinds of craft." His theme was the same on Radio 4. "Watching people older than yourself draw was a total apprenticeship. That system's gone now."

His comments will certainly have struck a chord with the British public which, ever since the avant-garde disappeared down a vortex of abstraction and conceptualism, has been in revolt against contemporary art.

But is Hockney right? He admitted himself, when I talked to him on Thursday, that he is "not involved in art education". It is perfectly true that, for some 25 years, "the basics" of drawing went out of fashion in the art colleges. But over the past decade art schools have been turning back to the drawing board.

"There has been a tremendous rebirth of drawing, responding to student demands," says Deanna Petherbridge, recently appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal College of Art. "Students draw with passion. There is a fascination with the most complex thing you can draw: the human body."

The story goes back nearly a century and to the growth of the British inferiority complex about overseas art, created partly by the enthusiasm for the French Impressionists. Soon the British art establishment was kow-towing to all new art trends from overseas. By the early Sixties, drawing was on its way out.

This movement coincided with the drive to make art a "respectable" academic subject, with degrees or degree-equivalent diplomas. In Hockney's youth, "all you needed to go to art school", to use his own words, "was enthusiasm and showing them some work". Art is "not an academic subject", he insists. But increasingly art schools demanded O-levels and A-levels. Though all students had to take a pre-diploma (or foundation) course between school and college, a report in 1960 said there should be no national regulation of what it contained. Out went the antique casts from which students used to practise drawing. Into unemployment went an army of models.

By the 1970s, recalls Alan Smith, now assistant principal at Hockney's old college in Bradford, "drawing was the poor relation, taking second place to general design activities".

But now the pendulum has swung again. In 1991, Bradford made drawing compulsory for students whether they were studying painting, design or multi-media. "You may see some weird work coming out of Bradford," Mr Smith says. "But it is coming out of life drawing." Far from being a menial skill, he adds, drawing is the key to the whole of art, teaching mental discipline and hand/eye co-ordination.

Even Ravensbourne College in Bromley, Kent, renowned for its television and multi-media courses, has seen the light. "We've been doing drawing classes for about eight years," says a tutor, Robin Baker."Whereas before it was used as the only tool for visual thinking, now it is only one of the tools."

The main exception seems to be Goldsmiths' College in London, the art school which is most in vogue as a result of patronage from the advertising magnate Charles Saatchi and the Tate Gallery. Its Fine Art professor, Michael Craig-Martin, was quoted last May saying that drawing is "basic to some art, but not to art in general ..."

Hockney, no doubt, would deplore that. But it is hard to keep his mind still and, on Thursday, he was soon straying on to other topics. Between private views and catalogue signing at the Royal Academy, the great enthusiast digs into his pocket and draws out a tattered photocopy of the amendment to the 1985 Obscene Publications Act initiated by Winston Churchill MP. "Frankly, I am appalled at the ignorance here," he says leaning forward dramatically. "Look, it says an image is deemed obscene if it depicts 'cruelty towards persons and animals'. Just think about that. It means even the Crucifixion has to be banned! People like Winston Churchill don't think about pictures, history, religion. He is just an ignorant person."

And with this he falls onto his knees in despair.

Tim Hilton, Sunday Review