ON THE TEACHING OF ART
THE teaching of Art! Well, to begin with, you cannot teach it. You can teach certain methods of drawing and painting, carving, modelling, construction, and what not—you can teach the words, but you cannot give the power of expression in the language.
Of course a man’s ideas on the subject of teaching necessarily depend upon his general views of the purport and scope of art. Is it (1) a mere imitative impulse, a record of the superficial facts of nature in a particular medium? or is it (2) the most subtle and expressive of languages, taking all manner of rich and varied forms in all sorts of materials under the paramount impulse of the search for beauty?
Naturally, our answer to the question, What should be taught, and how to teach it, depends upon our answer to this question. But the greater includes the less, and though one may be biassed by the final definition, as above, it does not follow that the first-named may not have their due place in a course of study.
The question, then, really is, What is the most helpful course of study towards the attainment of that desirable facility and cultivation of the feeling and judgment in the use of those elements and materials towards their ultimate expression of beauty?
And here we have to stop again on our road and ask, What is this quality of beauty, and whence does it come? Without exactly attempting a final or philosophical account of it, we may call it an outcome and efflorescence of human life and energy under happy conditions. It is found in varying degree, and the development of the sensibility to impressions of beauty follows much the same course and stages as those of the senses and the intellect themselves—of the development of man, in short, as a social and reflective animal. As one cannot see colour without light, neither can we expect sensibility to beauty to grow up naturally amid sordid and dull surroundings.
To begin with, then, before we can have this impulse and sensibility towards beauty, it is necessary to create an atmosphere of beauty,—a condition of life where it comes naturally with the colours of dawn and sunset; where it has not to struggle as for very life, as it were, for every breath it draws, or ask itself the why and wherefore of its existence.
Nor is beauty an independent and unrelated quality, but is the result, as we find it in its various manifestations in art, of long ages of growth and co-operative tradition and sympathy.
Seeking beautiful art, organic and related in all its branches, we turn naturally to places and periods of history which are the culminating points in such a growth—to Athens in the Phidian age, to England or France in the mediæval age, to Florence or Venice in the early Renaissance, for instance, rather than to modern London or Paris. Or even limiting ourselves to our own day, we have got to expect far more from the man who has worked from his youth up in an atmosphere of art, even if it is only that of the modern painting studio, than from one of our artisans, trained to some one special function, perhaps, in a process of manufacture, and whose daily vision is bounded by chimney-pots and back-yards.
A pinch of the salt of art and culture, at measured intervals, will never counteract the adverse influence of the daily, hourly surroundings on the eye and the mind. It is useless if one hour of life says “yes,” if all the others say “no” continually.
Our first requirement, then, is a sympathetic, or at least suggestive atmosphere—which means practically a reasonable human life, with fair play for the ideas and senses through the drama of the eye. It ought to be within the reach of all of us, whereas as a matter of fact it is hardly possible for any under the present economic system.
Granting our first condition would go a long way towards solving the next problem—what to teach, for we should then find that art was not separable from life.
Children are never at a loss what to learn or what to teach themselves when they see any manner of interesting work going on. They gather at the door of the village blacksmith, or at the easel of the wayside painter. Demonstration is the one thing needed, primarily. Demonstration, demonstration, always demonstration. This is perhaps at the bottom of the recent strong determination to French methods on the part of our younger painters. You can learn this part of the painting business because you can see it done. You could learn any craft if you saw it done. But it does not follow that there is no painting but impressionism—with M. Monet as its prophet.
Not that I would undervalue any sincere and genuine impulse; only the cultivation of this kind of painting exclusively—that is, the presentment of aspect—specialises a man and differentiates the painter more and more from other artists; and the concentration of public interest on this form of art draws away talent from the other most important branches.
It might be said almost that the modern cabinet or competitive gallery picture, unrelated to anything but itself (and not always that), has destroyed painting as an art of design.
I would therefore rather begin with the constructive side of art. Let a student begin by some knowledge of architectural construction and form. Let him thoroughly understand—both historic and artistic—the connection between art and architecture. Let him become thoroughly imbued with a sense of the essential unity of art, and not, as is now so often the case, be taught to practise some particular technical trick, or be led to suppose that the whole object of his studies is to draw or paint any or every object from the pictorial point of view exclusively. Let the two sides of art be clearly and emphatically put before him—that of Aspect and Adaptation. Let him see that it is one thing to be able to make an accurate presentment of a figure, or any object in its proper light and shade and relief, in relation to its background and surroundings, and quite another to give expression to outline, or to make them into organic pieces of decoration to fit a given space. Then, again, he should perceive how the various media and materials of workmanship naturally determine the character and treatment of his design, while leaving large individual range.
A course of study from this point of view would tend to bring home to the student the wholesome dictum of Goethe, “Art is art, precisely because it is not nature,” even if his very first study failed to convince him of its truth.
The formative capacity and constructive sense may exist in a high degree, without any corresponding power of drawing in the pictorial sense; and considerable proficiency in simpler forms of various handicrafts, such as modelling, wood-carving, and repoussée work, is possible of attainment by quite young people, whereas the perception of certain subtleties in pictorial methods of representation, such as the perspectives, planes, and values, delicacy of modelling, and the highly selective sense which deals with them, is a matter of matured mental capacity, as well as technical experience and practical skill. So that there are natural reasons for a primary training in some forms of handicraft, which, while affording the same scope for artistic feeling, present simpler problems in design and workmanship, and give a tangible foundation from which to start.
In thus giving, in a course of study in art, the first place to architecture and the allied decorative arts, we are only following the historic order of their progress and development. When the arts of the Middle Ages culminated in the work of the great painters of the Renaissance, their work showed how much more than makers of easel pictures they were—architects, decorators, jewellers, calligraphers, embroiderers; so that a picture, apart from its central interest and purpose, was often an illustrated history of contemporary design in such things.
Now, my conclusion is that whereas a purely pictorial training or such a training as is now given with that view, while it often fails to be of much service in enabling a student to paint a picture, quite unfits him for other fields of art quite as important, and leaves him before the simplest problem of design helpless and ignorant; while a training in applied design, or merely in drawing and colouring with that view, and all the forethought and ingenuity it calls forth, would be a good practical education in itself, would be a good preparation for pictorial studies, should the student ultimately devote himself to them.
I should therefore endeavour to teach relatively—to teach everything in relation not only to itself, but to surroundings—designating in relation to its materials and objects—the drawing of form in relation to other forms.
The ordinary ways of teaching drawing, say from the human figure—the Alpha and Omega of all study in art—do not show themselves sufficiently alive to the help that may be gained by comparative anatomy. Study the figure not only in itself, but in relation to the forms of other animals, and draw the analogous parts and structures—bones, joints, muscles—side by side, not only from the comparative anatomist’s point of view, but the artist’s. Study them in life and in action also.
We have recently been told that artists have been fools since the world began in relation to depicting the action of animals; but it was by a gentleman who did not appear to have distinguished between moments of arrested action and the action which is the sum of those moments. Instantaneous photographs of animals in action tell you whereabouts their legs are at a given moment, but it is only when they are put in a consecutive series and turned on a wheel before the eye that they represent action. This is illusion, not art. Now the artist has to represent or to suggest action without actual movement of any kind, and he has generally succeeded, not by arresting the action of the moment, but by giving the sum of consecutive moments, much as the wheel does, but without the illusory trick. His business is to represent, not to imitate.
Art, after all, is not science. Until we all go about with photographic lenses with dry plates in them instead of eyes, we shall, I fear, still be interested in what artists have to say to us about nature and their own minds, whether instantaneous impressions or not.
This is only one of the many questions which rise up at every step, and I know of no system of teaching which adequately deals with them. No doubt our systems of teaching, or attempting to teach, art want overhauling like other systems; and when we are overhauling the system of life itself, it is not wonderful.
I do not, of course, believe in any cast-iron system of education from any point of view. It must be varied according to the individual. It must be made personal and interesting, or it is of little good; and no system, however good, will manufacture artists in anything, any more than the most brilliant talents will do away with the necessity of passionate devotion to work, careful thought, close observation, and constant practice, which produces that rapid and intimate sympathy of eye and hand, and makes them the responsive and fluent interpreters of that selective and imaginative impulse which results in art.