Art education

“ Here we touch a great difficulty in our art education. In spite of all the chattered tomfoolishness of the hour, the fact remains that for most artists, the school training is the beginning of wisdom. ”

“ Two significant and fundamental outcomes of art education are revealed by an analysis of the relation of this subject to the social and occupational life of the pupil. These are, first, ability to recognize and appreciate art quality and to apply this ability to the needs of everyday life; and, secondly, ability to produce art quality even though in a relatively elementary form.
When art has been effectively taught there are many tangible evidences of its functioning in the personal and home life of the girl. What are some of these tangible evidences that indicate successful art training? ”

“ We will deal with the second aim first, and it may be termed roughly “Education”—the process of increasing a man’s ability to enjoy better art. The last phrase embodies our idea of the function of art-education. If education does that—improves the range and quality of his pleasure in the beautiful—it has performed its prime duty. ”

“ Yet, in the shape of elementary drawing, the rudiments of art are beginning to take their proper place in our schools as a necessary and indispensable element of all real education, and the art galleries and the foreign musicians of a few of our older cities are beginning to exert their influence, if a slight one, in introducing higher ideas of the importance of art into our new country. They will have but a limited influence, however, till the study of the fine arts takes its proper place among us as a necessary element in every conception of true education. ”

“ It is not necessary to review the history of art education in public schools, nor to present argument for the introduction or retention of drawing as an important study. These questions have been exhaustively treated, and need no fresh discussion. The school that does not offer to its community some kind of systematic art instruction is today an exception. ”

“ And I attach great importance to the sound education of our younger females in art, thinking that in England the nursery and the drawing-room are perhaps the most influential of academies. We address ourselves in vain to the education of the artist while the demand for his work is uncertain or unintelligent; nor can art be considered as having any serious influence on a nation while gilded papers form the principal splendour of the reception room, and ill-wrought though costly trinkets the principal entertainment of the boudoir. ”

“ They must put their own consciousness into a picture. At the dawn of this stage of appreciation the esthetic tastes should be stimulated by exposure to, and instructed in feeling for, the subject-matter of masterpieces; and instruction in technique, detail, criticism, and learned discrimination of schools of painting should be given intermittently. Art should not now be for art's sake, but for the sake of feeling and character, life, and conduct; it should be adjunct to morals, history, and literature ”

“ These considerations belong to the moral and spiritual value of the study of art, in the early years of an education intended to be general. They are of primary importance although in themselves only indirect results of the study. As to its direct results, it may be said in general that two things must be aimed at during the years of school life, appreciation of the beautiful in the whole realm of art, and some very elementary execution in one or other branch, some doing or making according to the gift of each one. ”

“ The truly educated man in art perceives the adaptation, polish, and perfection in literature; discovers the grace, the just proportions, the ideal form and typical idea in sculpture; views the expression, grouping, sentiment, coloring, and human passion in painting; enjoys the harmonies, movements, and ideas in music, that combination of effects that makes subtile and evasive metaphors ”

“ This is the æsthetic element in the art which appeals to and develops the student’s taste. It is an important feature of drawing, not less on this account than from the fact that the designer’s profession is a very lucrative one, but it is less important than object and constructive drawing, because less fundamental. Besides, object and constructive work in drawing come first in the order of development, and it is an inexorable rule of the new education to follow implicitly the hints of nature. ”

“ Someone has truly said that the question whether we shall have art in education is a question whether we shall be barbarian or civilized. And art in education means more than talks in the schools of things not seen ; more than pictures, as essential as books ; more than anything connected with day school or art school. It means the appeal of beauty, whether consciously or unconsciously felt, and the expression of beauty, since all true education comes both from the influence of environment and from activity of the self, in the everyday surroundings and work ”

“ Study of the operations and results of those in the past who have greatly succeeded is essential. There is always a tradition, or schools of art, definite enough to impress beginners, and often to take them captive. Methods of artists in every branch depend upon thorough acquaintance with materials and tools; the painter must know canvas, pigments, brushes, and the technique of manipulation of all his appliances. Attainment of this knowledge requires persistent and concentrated attention to objective materials. ”

“ Finally, schools of pictorial and plastic art, of architecture, and of music, will offer a thorough discipline in the principles and practice of art to those in whom lies nascent the rare faculty of aesthetic representation, or the still rarer powers of creative genius. ”

“ The training for the pictorial artist and for the craftsman would, therefore, naturally be different.
The character of the art-teaching adopted in any country must of course depend upon the dominant conception of art and its function and purpose. If we regard it as an idle accomplishment for the leisured few, its methods will be amateurish and superficial. If we regard art as an important factor in education, as a language of the intelligence, as an indispensable companion to literature, we shall favour systematic study and a training in the power of direct expression by means of line. ”

“ Indeed, so esthetic is the spirit of Positive education,341 that no special training for Art will be needed, except that which is given spontaneously by practice. There is no other profession which requires so little direct instruction; the tendency of it in Art being to destroy originality, and to stifle the fire of genius with technical erudition. Even for the special arts no professional education is needed. ”

“ If general principles of art have been kept before the minds of children, and the history of art has given them some true ideas of its evolution, they are ready to learn the technique and practice of any branch to which they may be attracted. But as music and painting are more within their reach than other arts, it is reasonable that they should be provided for in the education of every child, so that each should have at least the offer and invitation of an entrance into those worlds, and latent talents be given the opportunity of declaring themselves. ”

“ I wish to show that the traditional 'drawing method' of teaching art is too weak to meet the new art criticism and new demands, or to connect with vocational and industrial education in an effective way ”

“ EDUCATION IN TASTE
There is a naïvely systematic way of teaching artistic appreciation to the students of many of our city schools. To each class is allotted a famous painter. The class is then taken en masse to the art museum, and, under the guidance of one of the official show-women, confronted with the masterpieces of its proprietary genius. ”

“ It calls rather for sensitiveness of appreciation and powers of judgment. * * * The major objectives must be the ability to choose and use those things which embody the higher and better art motives. Education is to aim at power to judge the relative aesthetic qualities of different forms, designs, tones, and colors. Skill in drawing and design does not find a place as one of the objectives. ”

“ I think it rather valuable as an expression of the means of education, that there should be early lessons in art—that there should be this sort of art selected especially for first studies, and also that there should be a recognition of the exceeding preciousness of some other art. ”

“ My present task, however, is not to waste time going over the indifferent works in the Gallery, but rather to point out, as they occur to me, those masterpieces, the studying of which may educate the mind of the outsider to whom Art is a mystic term, and advance the student in his education as a painter. ”

“ As the sphere of Art includes every subject of human interest, we shall become familiarized, during the esthetic period of education, with the principal conceptions that are afterwards to be brought before us systematically in the scientific period. Especially will this be true of historical studies. By the time that the pupil enters upon them, he will be already familiar with poetic descriptions of the various social phases, and of the men who played a leading part in them. ”

“ Harris contends that æsthetic education—the cultivation of taste, the acquirement of knowledge on the subject of the origin of the idea of beauty (both its historic origin and the philosophical account of its source in human nature) , the practice of producing the outlines of the beautiful by the arts of drawing, painting, and modeling, the criticism of works of art—all these things we must claim form the true foundation of the highest success in the industries of any modern nation. ”

“ So far from looking upon a knowledge of the art of drawing as necessary merely to the artist or designer, we hold that it should form an essential part of general education; that its proper place is in the daily school; that its principles and practice should be inculcated in the daily lessons; in short, that equally with reading or writing, drawing should be deemed one of the branches of everyday tuition. ”

“ This leaves in every stage the possibility of taking up particular branches of art study, whether historical, or technical, or practical, and these will find their right place, not dissociated from their antecedents and causes, not paramount but subordinate, and thus rightly proportioned and true in their relation to the whole progress of mankind in striving after beauty and the expression of it. ”

“ I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few. ”

“ Every operation in the arts should be perfect. It has to be so in most arts, from violin-playing to circus-riding, before the artist dare make his bow to the public.
Placing on one side the question of the higher grades of art which depend upon special talent or genius—the great qualities of imagination, composition, form and colour, which belong to mastership—I would now, in this book, intended for students, dwell upon those minor things, the doing of which well or ill depends only upon good-will, patience, and industry. ”

“ It is in Keats that the artistic spirit of this century first found its absolute incarnation.
And these pre-Raphaelites, what were they? If you ask nine-tenths of the British public what is the meaning of the word æsthetics, they will tell you it is the French for affectation or the German for a dado; and if you inquire about the pre-Raphaelites you will hear something about an eccentric lot of young men to whom a sort of divine crookedness and holy awkwardness in drawing were the chief objects of art. To know nothing about their great men is one of the necessary elements of English education. ”

“ As soon as art became, not art for the whole people, but for a rich class, it became a profession; as soon as it became a profession, methods were devised to teach it; people who chose this profession of art began to learn these methods, and thus professional schools sprang up: classes of rhetoric or literature in the public schools, academies for painting, conservatoires for music, schools for dramatic art.
In these schools art is taught! But art is the transmission to others of a special feeling experienced by the artist. ”

“ I would rather advise students to exercise all their faculties as well—colours, gradation, outside sketching from nature, copying in galleries and from the life; only never let them forget that this is the one muscle which they must exercise regularly and without intermission, for it is the all-important factor of their future lives.
Everything helps art, as art enters into everything: music, poetry, science, history, romance; in every walk of life which we may enter upon, it must be ennobled by art, while the draughtsman has a decided advantage over the man who cannot draw. ”

“ This can only be acquired by him that enlarges the sphere of his understanding by a variety of knowledge, and warms his imagination with the best productions of ancient and modern poetry.
A hand thus exercised, and a mind thus instructed, will bring the art to a higher degree of excellence than, perhaps, it has hitherto attained in this country. Such a student will disdain the humbler walks of painting, which, however profitable, can never assure him a permanent reputation. ”

“ Now, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual temper and character) the excellence of an artist, as such, depends wholly on refinement of perception, and that it is this, mainly, which a master or a school can teach; so that while powers of invention distinguish man from man, powers of perception distinguish school from school. All great schools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of sight: and the only rule which I have, as yet, found to be without exception respecting art, is that all great art is delicate. ”