Between 1968 and 1971 I was part of the first cohort of students to be taught art history by Richard Verdi at Manchester University. We were so lucky. As a New Yorker he swept away the very English teaching style of art history, with its feet in European philosophies that taxed the student brain. Instead he presented visions of art and artists in galaxies that entranced the eye.
He showed us less of the foundations, cement and cellar works of art history and more of the flora and fauna of its artists in an evolution renewed in colour, form and imagination. It was a revolutionary way of looking at things, and helped us to begin to understand what was going on.
