could by combination in some way still further counteract or control
purely commercial production, by raising certain standards of
workmanship and taste, and in the special branches of handicraft look
after the artistic interests of their members generally, their power
and influence might be much extended, especially if such guilds could
be in some sort of friendly relation, so that they could on occasion
act together, combining their forces and resources, for instance, for
special exhibitions, or representations, such as masques and pageants,
of the kind recently presented by the Art Workers’ Guild at the
Guildhall of the City of London.
Such shows, uniting as they do all kinds of design and craftsmanship in
the embodiment of a leading idea, are a form of artistic expression
which may be regarded as the latest outcome of the movement, and may
have a future before it.
I think that by such means, at all events, artistic life would
be greatly stimulated, and artistic aims and ideals better
understood--especially in their relation to social life.
And, surely, art has a great social function, even though it may have
no conscious aim but its own perfecting.
Even in its most individual form it is a product of the community--of
its age, and it is always impossible to say how many remote and mixed
elements are combined to form that complex organism--an artistic
temperament.
Every age looks eagerly in the glass which art and craftsmanship hold
up, even if it is only to find itself reflected there. But it not only
seeks reflection, it seeks expression--the expression of its thought
and fancy, as well as its sense of beauty, and the successful artist is
he who satisfies this search.
It seems, too, that every age, probably even each generation, has a
different ideal of beauty, or that, perceiving a different side of
beauty, each successively ever seeks some new form for its expression.
This is the movement of growth and life, the sap of the new idea rising
in the spring-time of youth through the parent stem, bursting into new
branches and putting forth leaves; the green herb springing from the
dead leaves--the new ever striving with the old.
It is always possible for a society to narrow down, or to widen. It may
consider its true work lies in the exposition chiefly of the work of
one school, and would be perfectly justified in so thinking, so long as
that school maintained its vitality and power of growth.
On the other hand, it might determine to have no prejudices on the
subject of school or style, but welcome all good work after its kind.
Such points are largely controlled by considerations of available space
and determination of scope, and are usually settled by the effective
strength of the view which has the majority. There might even be
something to be said, given unlimited space, and security against
financial loss, for placing every work sent in to such exhibitions, but
keeping the _selected_ work in a distinct section.
“_Here_,” we might say, “is the material we had to deal with, and
_here_ is our selection,” and so make the exhibition an open court of
appeal. These are questions for the future. We have, as a society, even
in our comparatively short life, lived long enough to see great gaps
in the ranks of English design. Great names, great leaders have passed
from the roll of our membership, but not their memory, or the effect
and value of their work.
We are left to carry on the twin-lamp of Design and Handicraft as
best we may. If we bear that lamp with steady hands, fully alive to
the necessity of continual life and freedom of movement in art, while
conscious of the value of preserving certain historic traditions,
founded upon real artistic experiences, and the necessities of material
and use, we may yet, I hope, be of service in our exhibition and other
work, if we succeed in comprehending within our membership the best
elements of both new and old, in maintaining the highest standard of
taste and workmanship, and in placing, so far as we are able, the best
after its kind, in our honest opinion, before the public.
OF 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, what not--you can teach the words, you can teach the
logic and principles, but you cannot give the power of original thought
and expression in them.
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 Art (1) a mere imitative impulse--a record of the superficial facts
and phases 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 selective search for beauty?
Naturally, our answer to the question what should be taught, and
how to teach it depends upon our answer to these questions. But the
greater includes the less, and, though one may be biassed by the second
definition given above, it does not follow that the first may not have
its 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 of workmanship, that
cultivation of the natural perception, feeling, and judgement in the
use of those elements and materials in their ultimate expression and
realization 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 the delight in life under
happy conditions. The history of art and nature shows its evolution
in ever varying degree and form, constantly affected by external
conditions, and modified by place and circumstance, following, in the
development of the sensibility to ideas and impressions of beauty,
through the refinement of the senses and the intellect, much the same
course as the development of man himself as a social and reflective
animal.
As we cannot see colour without light, neither can we expect
sensibility to beauty to grow up naturally amid sordid and depressing
surroundings.
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Painting School under Prof. Gerald
Moira
Sketch for Figure Composition. “Frederigo Barbarossa.” By Lancelot
Crane, A.R.C.A.]
To begin with, then, before we can have art we must have sensibility
to beauty, and before we can have either we must have conditions
which favour their existence and growth. We must have an atmosphere.
A condition of life where they come naturally, with the colours of
the dawn and the sunset; where the common occupations are not too
burdensome, and the anxiety for a living not too great to leave any
surplus energy or leisure for thought and creative impulse; where the
cares of an empty life, and the deceitfulness of riches do not choke
them; where art has not to struggle, as for very life, for every breath
it draws, and ask itself the why and wherefore of its existence.
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Painting and Life School under
Prof. Moira
Time Study. By H. Parr]
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Painting and Life School under
Prof. Moira
Time Studies of Figures in Action. By H. Parr]
For art is not an independent accidental unrelated phenomenon, but is
the result, as we find it in its various manifestations, of long ages
of growth, and co-operative tradition and sympathy.
Seeking beautiful art, organic and related in all its parts, we turn
naturally to places and periods of history which are the culminating
points in such a growth. To Athens in the Phidian age, for instance; to
almost any European city in the Middle Ages; to one of our own village
churches, even, where the nineteenth-century restorer has not been;
to Venice or Florence in the early renascence, rather than to modern
London or Paris. But 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 what we call “an atmosphere of art,” even if it is only that of the
modern painter’s studio, than from a mill hand, say, trained to some
one special function, perhaps, in some process of machine industry,
whose life is spent in monotonous toil 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 and more prominent influence of the
daily, hourly surroundings on the eye and mind. It is hopeless if one
hour of life’s day says “yes,” if all the other twenty-three say “no”
continually.
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Painting and Life School under
Prof. Moira
Time Studies of Figures in Action]
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Architectural School under Prof.
Beresford Pite
DESIGN FOR A CHURCH UPON A DETACHED SITE]
[Illustration: Design and Plan of a Domed Church. By A. E. Martin]
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School under Prof. Lethaby
Design for Tapestry. By E. W. Tristram]
Our fundamental requirements then, are a sympathetic atmosphere, a
favourable soil and climate for the raising of the seed of art in its
fullest sense; which means, practically, a reasonable human life,
with fair play for the ideas and senses, and good for the drama of the
eye. To how many is this now possible?
Granting this, however, 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
and have access to tools and materials. They gather at the door of
the village blacksmith, or at the easel of the wayside painter.
Demonstration is the one thing needed--demonstration, demonstration,
always demonstration. This is, perhaps, at the bottom of the present
strong determination to French modes 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, and had
ordinary aptitude. But it does not follow that there is no art but
painting, and that impressionism is its prophet.
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_.
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School under Prof. Lethaby
Design for Embroidery. By Miss L. M. Dunkley]
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School under Prof. Lethaby
Museum Studies in Embroidery. By Miss L. M. Dunkley]
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School under Prof. Lethaby
Sheet of Heraldic Studies. By Miss C. M. Lacey]
I would, therefore, rather begin with the constructive, and adaptive,
side of art. Let a student begin by some knowledge of architectural
construction and form. Let him thoroughly understand the connection,
both historic and artistic, 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 meaningless elaboration; 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, which may be
distinguished broadly as: (1) Aspect, or the imitative; (2) Adaptation,
or the imaginative. Let the student 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 express them in 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 ample range for individual choice and treatment.
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School under Prof. Lethaby
Studies in Counterchange. By W. G. Spooner]
The constructive and creative capacity may exist in a high degree
without any corresponding power of drawing in the pictorial sense,
and considerable proficiency in some of the simpler forms of various
handicrafts, such as ornamental modelling in relief, wood-carving, and
repoussé work, is quite possible of attainment by quite young people;
whereas the perception of certain subtleties in pictorial methods of
representation, such as perspective, planes, and values, and the highly
selective sense which deals with them are matters of matured mental
perception, as well as technical experience and practical skill. The
same is true as to power of design. It is a question of growth.
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 and substantial foundation to start with.
In thus giving the first places in a course of study in art to
architecture, decorative design, and handicraft 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
earlier Renascence, their work showed how much more than makers of
easel pictures they were, so that a picture, apart from its central
interest and purpose was often a richly illustrated history of
contemporary design in such things.
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School under Prof. Lethaby
Studies of Scroll Forms. By W. G. Spooner]
Now, my contention 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, 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, with all the forethought, sense of beauty and fitness,
ingenuity and invention it would tend to call forth, would not only be
a good practical education in itself, but would enormously strengthen
the student for pictorial work, especially as regards design and
the value of line, while he would get a clear apprehension of the
limitations of different kinds of art, and their analogies.
In studying form, if we model as well as draw, we enormously increase
our grasp and understanding of it, and so it is as regards art
generally that studies in every direction will be found to bear upon
and strengthen us in our main direction.
I should, therefore, endeavour to teach relatively--to teach everything
in relation not only to itself, but to its surroundings and conditions;
design in relation to its materials and purpose; the drawing of form in
relation to other forms; the logic of line; pictorial colour and values
in relation to nature but controlled by pictorial fitness.
The ordinary practice of drawing and study from the human figure--the
Alpha and Omega of all study in art--does not seem sufficiently alive
to the help that may be gained by comparative anatomy. We should study
the figure, not only in itself and for itself, but in relation to the
forms of other animals, and draw the analogous parts and structures,
side by side, not from the anatomist’s point of view but the artist’s.
We should study them in life and action no less.
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School under Prof. Lethaby
Studies of Plant Form. By W. G. Spooner]
Now a word as regards action. We have been recently told that artists
have been fools since the world began in their manner of depicting
the action of animals, or rather animals in action, but it was by
a gentleman who (though I fully acknowledge the value and interest
of Mr. Muybridge’s studies and discoveries) did not appear to have
distinguished between moments of arrested action, and the action
represented, which is the sum of those moments. Instantaneous
photographs of animals in action will tell you whereabouts their legs
are found at a given moment, but it is only when they are put in a
consecutive series, and turned on the inside of a horizontal wheel
before the eye that they represent action, and then it 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 literal 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 or analysis, or we might expect fidelity to the microscope
on the part of our painters and draughtsmen. Until we all go about
with photographic lenses in our heads instead of eyes, with dry plates
or films instead of retinas, we shall, I fancy, still be interested
in what artists have to say to us about nature and their own minds,
whether instantaneous impressions, or the long result of years.
This is only one of the many questions which rise up at every step in
the study of art, 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 constant overhauling, like most other systems. When we
are overhauling the system of life itself, it is not wonderful.
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School under Prof. Lethaby
Pen Drawing. By H. A. Rigby]
I do not, of course, believe in any cast-iron system of education
from any point of view. It must be varied according to individual wants
and capacities. It must be made personal and interesting or it is of
little good; and no system, however efficient, 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 produce that rapid and intimate
sympathy of eye and hand, and make them the responsive and delicate
interpreters of that selective and imaginative impulse which results in
Art.
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School under Prof. Lethaby
Pen Drawing. By H. A. Rigby]
OF METHODS OF ART TEACHING
Methods of teaching in art are, I take it, like most other human
methods, of strictly relative value, depending at all times largely
upon the current conception of the aims, purpose, and province of art.
As this conception necessarily alters from time to time, influenced
by all sorts of subtle changes in the social organism (manifesting
themselves in what we call Taste), as well as by fundamental economic
conditions, so the ideas of what are the true methods in art teaching
change also.
Naturally in a time when scepticism is so profound as to reach the
temerity of asking such a question as “What is art?” there need be no
perceptible shock when inquiries are instituted as to the best methods
of art teaching. As important witnesses in the great case of the
position of art in general education, or _commercial interests_ v. _the
expansion of the human mind and the pleasure of life_--methods of art
teaching have to be put in the box. What do they say?
Well, have we not the good old (so-called) Academic methods always with
us?
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School Craft Classes,
Gesso, under Mr. G. Jack
Cabinet designed and decorated in Gesso. By J. R. Shea]
The study of the antique by means of shaded drawings, stumped or
stippled “up to the nines” (if not further), leading on to equally
elaborate life-studies, which somehow are expected to roll the
impressions of eight, ten, or more sittings into one entirety--and
wonderfully it is done, too, sometimes.
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School Craft Classes,
Pottery under Mr. Lunn
Group of Pottery designed and executed by the Students]
Are we not led to these triumphs through the winsome defiles of
freehand and shaded drawing from the cast, perhaps accompanied
by cheerful model drawing, perspective puzzles, and anatomical
dissections, and drawings of the human skeleton seen through antique
figures, which seem to anticipate the Röntgen rays?
“The proper study of mankind is man,” but according to the Academic
system it is practically the _only_ study--study of the human frame and
form isolated from everything else.
No doubt such isolation, theoretically at least, concentrates the
attention upon the most difficult and subtle of all living organisms;
but the practical question is, do these elaborate and more or less
artificial studies really give the student a true grasp of form and
construction? Are they not too much practically taken as still-life
studies, and approached rather in the imitative spirit?
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School Craft Classes,
Wood-Carving, under Mr. G. Jack
Wood-Carving by J. R. Shea]
Then, again, such studies are set and pursued rather with the view to
equipping the student with the necessary knowledge of a figure painter.
They are intended to prepare him for painting anything or everything
(and generally, now, _anything_ but something classical) that can be
comprehended or classified as “an easel picture”--that is to say, a
work of art not necessarily related to anything else. It is something
to be exhibited (while fresh) in the open market with others of
a like (or dis-like) nature, and, if possible, to be purchased and
hung in a gallery, or in the more or less darkness of the private
dwelling--“to give light unto them that are in the house.”
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School Craft Classes,
Stained Glass, under Mr. C. W. Whall
Panel designed and executed by A. Kidd]
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Modelling School under Prof.
Lanteri.
Frieze by J. A. Stevenson]
Works of sculpture (or _modelling_ as she is generally practised) may
not fare any better (privately) in the end, when one remembers the
busts placed back to the windows, or the marble statue forced to an
unnatural whiteness by purple velvet hangings--but, certainly, the
methods of teaching seem more in relation to the results.
To begin with, a sculptor’s or modeller’s figure (unless a decorative
group or an architectural ornament) is isolated and has no background;
and it is undoubtedly a severe test of skill and knowledge to model a
figure in clay in the round from the life. Some are of the opinion that
it is more difficult to model perfectly a basso-relievo, but there is
no end to the work in the round.
I am really inclined to think that ever since the Italian Renascence
the sculptor’s and modeller’s art and aims have dominated methods of
art teaching generally, and have been chiefly responsible for what I
have termed the Academic method, which seems mainly addressed to the
imitation of solid bodies in full relief, or projection in light and
shade on a plane surface, which method indeed in painting, at least, is
quite opposed to the whole feeling and aim of Decorative art.
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Design School, Instructor in
Lettering Mr. Johnson
Page of Text, written by J. P. Bland]
In architecture, on the classical and Academic method, the young
student is put through the five orders, and is expected to master
their subtle proportions before he can appreciate their artistic value,
and with but a remote chance of making such knowledge of practical
value, in a country and climate to which such architectural features
are generally unsuitable.
Our methods of art teaching have sailed along in this stately way from
time immemorial. Does not Burlington House stand where it did?
At all events a new spirit is abroad, since the arts and handicrafts of
design have asserted themselves.
Methods of art teaching in relation to these must at any rate be
definite enough. Each craft presents its own conditions and they must
be signed, sealed, and delivered at the gate, before any triumph or
festival is celebrated within.