SPIRIT OF THE COURSE
THERE is evident in our country to-day a great turning of energy to the higher interests of human life, especially to the fine arts. Apparently some part of the enthusiasm and youthful power that has built so wonderful a material civilization is now set free for the pursuit of beauty and wisdom. We send our students far and wide to the schools and galleries of the old world; we build art museums in all our cities, and cultivate music with a new earnestness. Unfortunately the noble promise in this awakening is hampered by grave misconceptions as to the meaning of art in relation to the human spirit. Widely, among high and low alike, art is regarded as a pleasant adornment of life, worth seeking after the serious business of our existence is fulfilled, but quite dispensable meantime. Others—well-meaning people—hold art to be justified only by some obvious moral teaching it conveys. In reaction against this view and as a result of the difficult technical problems art presents, many artists fall into the equally unfortunate error of regarding art as primarily an exhibition of skill, interpreting “art for art’s sake” to mean art for technique’s sake.
There is no hope of giving art the place it should occupy in our culture until these errors have been overcome. We must learn that art is serious business, that beauty is the most useful thing we know, and that art is not for adornment’s sake, or preaching’s sake, or art’s sake, but that it is for life’s sake.
The aim of this course is, therefore, to consider as fully and searchingly as possible the place and meaning of the fine arts in relation to the spirit of man. We shall study first the unity of the arts, their expression and interpretation in common of the universal elements of human experience. Then the historic sources of the arts and the great forces that determine the specific characteristics of a masterpiece will be studied. The heart of the course will be an effort to define the particular meaning and function of each of the arts, the way in which it can express and interpret some phase of the common human life more effectively than any other. Finally, the work will close with a study of the ministry of the arts to man’s spirit and their place in culture.
If art is for life’s sake for the appreciative student, even more is it so for the creative artist. If often the lesser men have lived to paint, or carve, or write, or sing, the great masters have ever found art a way of life, have painted, carved, written, sung, to live,—that through creative expression in art they might grow up into the fullness of their own potential humanity. Thus it is necessary that every one should be an artist in this high sense of the word; and if that is impossible in what we call the fine arts, it is possible in the finest of all, the one supreme art of living. The need is, not that beauty should be added artificially to daily life, but that life itself, in work, relationship and environment, should be made a fine art. That this study may help a little to that end and so add something of the joy that comes from supreme beauty, redeeming the commonplace detail of life by clothing it with a transfiguring atmosphere and exalting the spirit to a place where a serene vision of life in relation is possible, is the hope with which the work is undertaken.