London Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic on Glasgow School of Art fire - 'It's like watching acid thrown at a Rothko canvas'
London Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic has described the blaze at Glasgow’s iconic School of Art as “like watching acid being thrown at a Rothko canvas”.
Tearful: Deyan Sudjic
Speaking to The Drum just hours after the fire took hold at the historic building designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Sudjic said he became tearful when he saw the images of the blaze and spoke of a cultural loss.
“I had exactly the same tearful reaction as Muriel Gray on seeing the shocking images of the fire,” he said. “This is like watching acid being thrown at a Rothko canvas.
“When I was directing Glasgow’s year of architecture and design I realised just how much of an asset it was. Any designer in the world from Ettore Sottsass downward jumped at the chance to exhibit in it. The library was a magical place to have dinner.
“This is one of the world’s great buildings, one of tragically few that Mackintosh was able to build; an intensely personal vision that touched everybody who ever experienced it,” he added.
“The fact that you could still smell paint in the studios and that each year a new generation of students got to use it somehow kept it young, rather than a mausoleum or a tourist trap.”
Glasgow School of Art was founded in 1845, but it was the late 1800s when work began on a new building, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The building was completed in 1909, and while it has become a tourist attraction and site of cultural and architectural significance, the school remained functional for pupils.
In addition, the school erected a new building in April, the £30m Reid building, which has just been named AJ100 Building of the Year 2014. The school is known for producing highly skilled and respected artists, and it has produced three recent Turner Prize winners.
Sudjic added: “Of course the school will survive, and it will be rebuilt. It won’t be the same glass, or the same timber that Mackintosh worked on with such love and ingenuity.
“The patina, and the sense of direct connection with the architect will have gone. But for once this is no place for anything but the most faithful replica of what we have lost.”
After the news of the fire broke, former pupil Stuart Gilmour, now the owner of Glasgow-based communications agency Stand, spoke of his devastation at the scene, while members of the public took to Twitter to express their shock.