In September 1978 Jasper began a foundation year in art and design at Ravensbourne College of Art, near Bromley, in south-east London. One of Jasper’s tutors on the course was the well-regarded artist and teacher Peter Midgley, who had escaped Berlin in 1938 as a Jewish teenager. Midgley had trained in poster art and photography before he arrived in Britain aged 17. Jasper made the etching above in Midgley’s class.
I chose Ravensbourne because at the time (and maybe still) it had what they called a three-dimensional foundation course. It had been set up by the artist Peter Midgley who had grown up in Berlin as an orphan and been to the art school there (the Hochschule, same school I went to later). Because of his German past we all mistook him for a Bauhaus student, perhaps because the course itself seemed Bauhausian. He never denied it but looking him up now I see we were wrong. It was a good course.
The college’s building was an impressive modern structure with a view over to Shooter’s Hill. It probably marked a high point in the funding of art school education. The workshops were impressive. There was a materials hatch where you’d go to ask for anything you needed from the storeman: a sheet of plywood, screws, metal tubing, whatever you needed. He’d write it down in a notebook and hand it over. Monday mornings they showed the whole school films like Fellini’s 8½. I think the film tutor had rather advanced taste because the films he chose were always unexpected and interesting.