New director promises art college renaissance

EDINBURGH College of Art is a “sleeping giant” that has not shouted loudly about its successes in fashion or architecture, the college’s new director has warned, in a year in which Glasgow artists have yet again dominated Scotland’s profile in the contemporary art scene.

The ECA cannot hope to mimic Glasgow’s gritty style, but film is one area for expansion at the college, said Chris Breward. It was his first interview since his appointment in September to head the college, newly merged with Edinburgh University after its finances went into a tailspin last year.

The Glasgow art scene, centred on the Glasgow School of Art, has produced two Turner Prize nominees this year, Martin Boyce and Karla Black, who also represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale. They come from two different generations in a city that has delivered a number of leading contemporary names, from Turner Prize winners Douglas Gordon and Richard Wright, to the painter Alison Watt.

But Edinburgh is “more than a painting school” said Mr Breward, a leading fashion historian and former head of research at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. The ECA’s design and fashion courses were well known, he said, from tailoring and men- and womenswear to award-winning costume designs by students.

Architecture was “incredibly strong”, while the art history department – part of the ECA’s responsibility after this year’s merger with Edinburgh University – had produced “some of the key art historians of their generation”, he said. “I knew there were some enormous strengths in these areas when I came here,” added Mr Breward.

Asked about the ECA compared with Glasgow’s formidable track record, he said: “I think it’s been a sleeping giant. I don’t think it’s about the quality of the students or the quality of the work that went on here. I have a sense that ECA didn’t shout as loudly about itself. As the merger embeds, as we grow and benefit from that, we will shout loud.

“GSA have been very good at that, but you also have to remember that Glasgow is a gritty, art city that produces a certain kind of environment that is precisely about that Glasgow style, that Glasgow punch. You wouldn’t want to replicate that, that’s very Glasgow.”

The 250-year-old Edinburgh College of Art began merger talks with the university early in 2010. The two had offered a prestigious joint degree in fine art since 1946 – with the director general of the National Galleries of Scotland, John Leighton, among former students, and had begun joint architecture courses.

While the move was criticised by some leading figures in the Edinburgh art world, it emerged that ECA had run heavily into debt, and was close to having its bankers refuse further credit. A merger was agreed this year, and implemented in the summer.

Mr Breward was quick to stress that the merger was carried out before he took his new post as principal – though he noted that the prestigious Ruskin and Slade art colleges operate within Oxford and London universities, respectively.

The ECA recently won the contract to do research work with on the D’Offay contemporary art collection overseen by the National Galleries of Scotland, and Mr Breward hopes to increase ties to the National Museum of Scotland, which he compared to the V&A in the strength and depth of its collections.

Mr Breward took a foundation course in art after leaving school, but quickly became an art historian rather than an artist. He studied and then taught at the Royal College of Art, and at the London College of Fashion, and went on to the V&A in 2004. .

The best-known artists that Edinburgh has produced probably remain John Bellany and Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, both well into late age, artists whom Mr Breward praised for their sense of line and colour. While later alumni include the artist Katie Paterson, the ECA’s contemporary track record pales beside Glasgow’s.

“Though they may not have been producing the Turner Prize artists, I think there was a very solid tradition and a sense of continuity,” Mr Breward said.

With the art college embedded within the broader university, the college could develop cross-disciplinary relationships, blurring boundaries not just within the arts but with the sciences, in infomatics or even neuroscience. “One of the interesting things is we have got film all across the university. There’s film theory and literature and languages. There’s film music, which is part of the music school, part of the new ECA, and film production,” Mr Breward said.

Edinburgh was a strong fashion city, particularly in the use of textiles, he said. “There are none of the big stars but I’m not sure we’re in the game of big stars any more as we move into the 21st century. It’s about setting up small-scale companies, people working at that level.

“I was very aware that ECA has consistently over the past three or four years been winning the student awards in terms of their collections and has possibly one of the strongest costume design courses, in costumes for theatre.”

The Scotsman’s arts correspondent, Duncan Macmillan, said Mr Breward faced the challenge of bringing radically different teaching methods and approaches together. “It’s to do with defining itself within the university,” he said.

The Ingleby Gallery director, Richard Ingleby, said: “It’s very unfair on Edinburgh that it was always compared to Glasgow.”