Jon Thompson, The Toronto Cycle # 19, Cadence and Discord
(HM) Traer los Sentidos,
2011 |
Artist, curator,
educator, writer, Thompson was a remarkable person.
Jon Thompson
was long associated with Goldsmiths’ College where he was successively, from
1968, Lecturer, Head of Painting (1970-71), Head of Fine Art (1972), Principal
of Art School (1973-80), Dean of the School of Art (1980-85) and Head of Post-Grad
Fine Art Studies (1985-89). It was during his years as Principal and Dean that
he instigated changes in the curriculum and departmental structure at
Goldsmiths which are credited with nurturing the generation of artists who
became the YBAs and established Goldsmiths as a leading British art school. Michael
Craig-Martin, who worked alongside Thompson, describes the changes in his
recent book On Being an Artist
(2015): “Jon was visionary and radical… Before I joined [in 1973], Jon had
already taken the crucial decision that would make Goldsmiths fundamentally different
from most other art schools… [H]e abolished the division between mediums. There
were no separate departments of painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography,
film and video: there was only one department, fine art… [S]tudents had the
freedom not only to choose what they did, but also to change direction and
medium mid-course… students were responsible for structuring their own course
in conjunction with their tutor.” (pp142-4) The artists who graduated in the
1980s, and were to become the YBAs, are notable for their adaptable approach to
artmaking, finding the best means for executing their ideas rather than more
narrowly mastering a particular medium.
In
Thompson’s own practice he moved from painting to sculpture and conceptual art
and back to painting – all exquisitely executed with a fine attention to
detail.
Thompson
was responsible (along with Barry Barker) for curating two particularly remarkable
exhibitions: Falls the Shadow (1986)
and Gravity and Grace (1993). Both were
notable for the poetic intelligence of their selection and their strikingly
European sensibility – they presented a range of significant artists who were
otherwise little evident on the British art scene (which, perhaps, tended to be
either parochial in its gaze or in thrall to America.) Falls the Shadow included Lothar Baumgarten, Marcel Broodthaers,
Luciano Fabro, Rebecca Horn, Jannis Kounellis, Wolfgang Laib, Ulrich Ruckreim
amongst others; Gravity and Grace did
include a handful of Americans – Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra and
Robert Smithson – but was otherwise dominated by British and European figures –
Joseph Beuys, Luciano Fabro, Barry Flanagan, Eva Hesse, Mario Merz,
Panamarenko, and Gilberto Zorio amongst them. (The catalogues, too, are
beautiful.)
Fittingly,
given his evident Europhilia, after retiring from Goldsmiths Thomson went on to
be Head of Department of Fine Art, and Reader, at the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht,
before returning to the UK as Research Professor at Middlesex University.
Thompson
was a prolific and erudite writer: happily, his work is available in The Collected Writings of Jon Thompson,
edited by Jeremy Akerman and Eileen Daly (2011), London: Ridinghouse.
I knew
Thompson a little, in the 1980s, when I worked at Goldsmiths: one of the things
that deeply impressed me about him – apart from his erudition and charisma –
was his remarkable social adaptability: he appeared to be as comfortable having
a smoke with the college porters, playing pool in the bar with students, chatting
to me sitting in the upstairs, front seats of the No.36 bus, as he was engaging
in intellectual debate and critique and, all the while, smoothly managing a University department – having encountered many art school managers in my
time I recognise these to be very rare qualities indeed.
Read an obituary by Nicholas de Ville, one of Thompson's former colleague at Goldmiths'.
Read an obituary by Nicholas de Ville, one of Thompson's former colleague at Goldmiths'.
Jon
Thompson, Cascia, 2007
|
Jon
Thompson, The Toronto Cycle #2, The Beach
Midday Sunlight, 2008
|
Jon
Thompson, The Toronto Cycle #6, Northern
Lights, Red, 2009
|
Jon
Thompson, The Tornonto Cycle #17, Cadence
and Discord (PC) Traer los Sentidos, 2010-2011
|
Jon
Thompson, Simple Paintings – Thinking About
Poussin, 2013
|
Jon
Thompson, Simple Paintings – Sky Blue
Cruciform (Benjamin's Doors), 2012/13
|
Jon
Thompson, The Lyotard Suite – Sponge,
2014
|
Hi,
ReplyDeletewhy hasn't there been an obituary in the Guardian, Times or Telegraph, there must be thousands of people who knew and admired him.I first met him when he started his lecturing career on a fellowship at Lancaster School of Art in 1962/3.
I am very sad to read this, I didn't know until this very moment. I was working with him at the Jan-van-Eyck-Academie in the Netherlands in the 90s. He will always be unforgettable for me, especially his non-judgemental and non-paternalistic approach to young artists like me.
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