The building of a temple

In among the volcanic eruption of visual ideas splattered on the walls at Hastings Museum by JAKE & DINOS CHAPMAN, there’s a couple of pages hand-written in red ink and framed. They are written by their one-time tutor ROD HARMAN and recall the days when the brothers were Foundation students at Hastings College: not a review, nor a tribute but more an expression of kinship. It is totally in keeping with the works on show.

I can remember back, sometimes as if it was still happening. I was involved in the Foundation course — mundanely described, it was a group of friends, who were also lecturers. We were all strangely confident, in ourselves and each other. This extended to the students, so education was a profound collaboration.

Fundamentally this year was based on love, love of art. We touched each other and then let go.

Years of reflection make me think that what follows best puts into words my prayers for a foundation course. The young Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher, after his foundation with Bertrand Russell, found his immediate next step was the Eastern Front, the First World War’s Austria/Russia meeting point. In his knapsack was the mandatory note-sketchbook.

These notes (forget War and Peace) voiced in a pure way, like an angel speaking above the trenches, the Tractatus. It ends mystically thus: “My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognises them as nonsensical, when he has used them as — as steps — to climb up beyond them (he must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed it). He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence”.

Like Jacob’s ladder propped against heaven, early work is supercharged with what is to come. I think of how overwhelmingly Cezanne’s and Van Gogh’s are their feet on the first rungs.

I feel obliged to start (recollection is backwards and forwards) with Dinos and Jake’s father David Chapman … Talking to David was a bit like talking with Goya. Visually, because being slightly deaf he would turn his better ear — that extraordinary ‘askance’ look. But also he was prophetic. He taught sculpture on the course and already the stuffing was being knocked out of funding and materials. He was the first to suggest students became like Robinson Crusoe — the only materials that would be washed up would be in skips. Pragmatism against the growing crassness and meanness. Let the mind keep growing as the mindless got a grip.

Dinos arrived when I arrived. He was like a wonderful owl. He had little round glasses, always stood about three persons back —  but I sensed a master mind (someone who makes sense even in a photograph).

In those days we were based at the Brassey Institute above the public library. This paradise we were expelled from by an almighty storm. The RSJs which held the milk of light gave way.

The course was moved to St Leonards where the profound and enlightened Principal, Don Ball, had two replica light-filled studios built for us. Enrolment soared so we broke the student cohort into tutor groups and adopted a carousel of teaching. Jake arrived, the late Bill Day was his tutor — may light perpetual shine upon him. Yet Bill taught a sort of holy darkness — the alertness that accompanied early man when there was an eclipse, and later when “a darkness fell over the earth”. The sort of gloom that hides naturally in mirrors which Bill used in his still lifes —  ‘objects’ with their ghosts.

This double magic rubbed off. I remember feeling very proud of Jake when he was arrested for an animal rights march, and at his astonishing command of drawing.

This exhibition shows some of the images of the ladder they climbed at Hastings and the one they have continued to climb.

Angelic as “pass over in silence” is, the greatness of Wittgenstein is that he went on to say you can DEMONSTRATE. You can talk without talking. This exhibition is a gesture and demonstration by the Chapmans —  it’s a wonderful ladder for us to climb.

I can remember the prayers I made to be a good teacher. Nowadays education is suffering terribly at the hands of those who want everything to be explicable and accountable. They fail to see that it is mystical. I wanted every student to wake up in the middle of nowhere — to remember the dream that centred them, helped them ‘see the world aright’ and to pour oil on the stone they had used for a pillow. And in the all-embracing covenant build a temple.

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