Star tribute to art lecturer
Scarborough art lecturer Malcolm Burn has been remembered by one former student, the top designer. Richard Seymour.
The renowned art lecturer Malcolm Burn who died recently, has been remembered by one of his former students, an eminent international product designer. Richard Seymour, in a vivid tribute to his mentor, said: “Sitting before me, as I perch at the back of the Art History class in November 1970, is a lugubrious, lanky figure, half Leonard Cohen, half Tom Waits, with a Flock of Seagulls hairdo.
“Three open packs of Alba fags sit before him, backlit by a Kodak Carousel slide projector image of Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’. A nimbus of blue smoke surrounds him.
“Mal taught me everything I know about early 20th Century Expressionism, chain smoking, pencil perspective and the underlying geometry of the Fibonacci Series.
“He was sincere, persistent and utterly committed to his craft. In later life, he would come to my lectures on design with the same, grave concentration. He became a friend, a supporter and an enduring muse.
“All those early memories are etched into my retina.
“One of his favourite paintings, Dali’s Persistence of Memory (those melting clocks) seems curiously appropriate for me as a fitting epitaph.
“God Bless you Mal.”
Born 1927 in Gateshead, the son of a master butcher, Malcolm Burn devoted his entire professional life to art and design education in a continuous career that spanned nearly four decades. Evacuated as a child during WW2, his formative years included attending Grammar school, a period of National Service, subsequently pursuing art at college in Sunderland.
After studying at The Royal Academy in London in 1952, he then embarked on teacher training in Leeds.
Aged 29 he arrived as a lecturer at the Scarborough School of Art, his former student and teaching colleague of 30 years Austen Sleightholme recollected:
“Malcolm was a great draughtsman and colourist. He was like a breath of fresh air to those of us who were his first students in the mid1950s. I have yet to meet an exstudent who has not been full of praise for him.”
Leading New Zealandbased graphic designer Dave Clark said of his former tutor: “He had this unique ability to not only explain how to draw but also to demonstrate the process with a perfectly actioned drawing technique that showed us all how you could create something remarkably like a Raphael or Leonardo pencil mark in a few seconds of graceful movement.
“That ability was priceless, because it set myself, and I’d imagine many other classmates, on an art odyssey that for me, certainly, has lasted over fifty years.”
Generous of spirit, gentlemanly with an exacting dry sense of humour and a beguiling eccentricity, his students much enamoured with him, he continued as a Fine Art lecturer at Scarborough Technical College until retiring in 1992.
Diffident, immensely scholarly, magisterial in his knowledge of art history, drawing and painting, Malcolm Burn epitomised the inspirational teacher whose influential guidance would become the catalyst for many prominent artists and designers’ future careers across numerous creative disciplines.
Malcolm, a widower, survived both his wife Kate and son Mark who passed away in 2010 and 2007 respectively.
‘I have yet to meet an ex-student who has not been full of praise for him...’