The emergence of the English art school system

This thesis deploys a Foucauldian genealogy to critique the historical emergence of the English art school system.

The first part considers the ancient values that transform the idea of the artist as distinctly different from that of the artisan; the second part considers the transformation of art itself, from serving the wealthy patron to its co-option by government to improve public taste and national economic success. This gave rise to a national system of art education. The third part considers the final emergence of the English art school in its modern form, and almost simultaneously, its disappearance as an autonomous institution within the wider education ecology. This was described at the time as the ‘Murder of the Art Schools’.

This thesis contends that, rather than being murdered, the art schools were seen in the end, despite centuries of development and state support, to have failed in their aims either to raise the level of public taste or to provide professional training for industries which depended on good design and craftsmanship.

Subsequently, the art schools became irrelevant as a state concern and were absorbed into the polytechnics. This thesis further contends that far from being the radical, creative centres of their own imagining, the art schools were often regressive, hierarchical, solipsistic, prone to the whims of charismatic individuals and in thrall to their own historical origins. They had scarcely advanced in any meaningful sense over several centuries.

Ultimately, the English art school system, in the view of the state, became both irrelevant and obsolete.