A Plea for Arts and Crafts as the Logical
Basis of a National Development
of the Fine Arts.
In line with President Schurman's criticism of American culture is the
plea by Charles de Kay, the New York art critic, for more attention to the
industrial arts. His argument is that out of the arts and crafts the fine
arts naturally develop; that out of the artist-artisan comes the highest
class of artist, as, for example, Augustus Saint Gaudens, who began as a
cameo cutter. To ignore the industrial arts is, so to speak, to leave out
of count that solid middle class upon which alone the aristocracy of art
can safely rest. Writing in the New York _Times_, Mr. de Kay says:
Plainly enough there is a field scarcely plowed at all in
the arts and crafts. These arts in the Middle Ages, and
latterly in Japan and India, absorbed and absorb the
energies of the cleverest hands and brightest minds; but in
America and England to-day are neglected for the fine arts,
because the rare prizes in the latter, whether of fame or of
wealth, dazzle the imagination.
Fashion rather than taste has set easel paintings so
absolutely in the forefront that with most people this
represents art in its entirety, and though the appreciation
of the minor arts of Japan has opened the eyes and enlisted
the sympathies of thousands, this one-sided view of art
holds on; so encouragement of native arts and crafts is
slack and uncertain.
Yet a democracy like ours, while the most difficult of all
communities to rouse to a vivid sympathy with the industrial
arts, owing to cheap processes and the influence exerted by
traditions that began in aristocratic lands, is of all
others that community where they are needed most.
The huge engine of the public schools is forever milling
over the raw material of the Union, educating the native
children, assimilating to the commonwealth the young people
of immigrant stocks. The higher education of taste and
refinement ought to go hand in hand, but it is sadly
deficient.
No one should expect that the public-school system could add
this to a task already appalling for its size and
complexity. It can be coped with only by organizations apart
from the existing schools, which might attempt for the
youthful artisan what the art schools attempt for the
training of architects, sculptors, and painters.
It is the fate of democracies to waste energy and attack
each problem by the wrong side. Commend us to a democracy to
put the cart before the horse every time! In the arts we
have been doing this imbecile trick steadily, persistently,
for a hundred years, trying to foster the fine arts while
our minor arts and crafts are too contemptible for
criticism.
Is it not about time to show that even a democracy can learn
something? Certainly if we can convince this community that
the most crying need is a thorough regeneration of the
industrial arts, the object will be attained. For though
democracies are often clumsy, when they once strike the
right path they rush forward to the highest places with a
speed and an irresistible force no other communities attain.