Art Student Book Two 1969-70

If you wanted to enjoy yourself back in 1968, and were so inclined, you might possibly think about going to Art College, perhaps in London, and spending your summer holidays wandering around the great galleries of Europe including the Louvre, the Prado and the Vatican, as well as visiting the Parthenon, the caves of Altamira and Pompeii.
This account of such indulgence, a mosaic of short episodes, is the platform for presenting the History of Art, Literature and especially Film as it was encountered, using hyperlinks for reference and illustration. A series of five books presents the whole rose tinted reminiscence beginning with the first book in Bournemouth-by-the-Sea, all that time ago, when Modern Art was, indeed, still relatively modern.
The many references to Literature and History, throughout the books, reflect what the Fine Arts once enjoyed. This was a happy synthesis between Art, History and Literature. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Fine Arts were deprived of this by other Art forms, which included Illustration, Photography, and particularly Film. The consequence of these developments was an ideology of what little remained. This was called Modern Art.
Book Two describes the first year on the Diploma Course at Wimbledon and the new experience of living away from home. The first term included: visiting the Courtauld, the galleries in Bond Street, insulting David Hockney, a Private View at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Hayward, and going to the many Art-House cinemas up in town. Giles also wandered around the museums and explored the historical parts of London, each with its own story.
As well as experimenting with painting and learning to stretch canvas Giles began taking photographs. A distinct smell of oil paint still hung in the air but the ethos was noticeably beginning to change. They attended a dynamic Buckminster Fuller lecture and as summer approached began to plan travelling to the great galleries in Italy, popping over to the Parthenon as a preliminary.