Part 3

Such schools as the Central School of Arts and Crafts, under the London County Council, may be regarded as a direct outcome of the movement, and it is a remarkable fact that its teachers are composed principally of members of our society and committee, to whom the organization of the classes was due.

Besides, if the artist has learned of the craftsman, there must be a good deal of education going on quietly in the studios and workshops of those aforesaid artist-craftsmen, wherein the craftsman learns in his turn of the artist, and here again must spring good results.

Sound traditions of design and workmanship should be of enormous help in starting students on safe paths, and preventing that painful process of _un_learning from which so many earnest students and artists have suffered in our days. Such traditions, however, should never be allowed to crystallize or hinder new thought and freedom of invention within the limits of the material in which the designer works, for living art exhibits a constant growth and evolution; and though in some cases the process of evolution in an artistic life may appear to take rather the form of degeneration, the important thing is to preserve life with its principle of growth, without losing balance, and above all, sense of fitness and beauty.

If beauty and utility are our guides in all design and handicraft, we can hardly go wrong. If our design is organic both in itself and in its incorporation with constructive necessity--if it, springing out of that necessity, expresses the joy of the artist, and is truly the crown of the work, making the dumb material vocal with expressive line and form, or colour, it must at least be a thing having life, character, sincerity, and these are important elements in the expression of new beauty.

Along with the formation of discussion clubs and societies of designers and craftsmen, the tendency to form Guilds of Handicraft, whether they are a new form of commercial enterprise, or consist, as they frequently do, in the first place, of a group of artists and craftsmen in genuine sympathy working together with assistants, must be noted as another sign of the influence of the movement; as also the influence of certain types of design upon ordinary trade production.

It is even asserted that--I quote from a trade journal on a recent Arts and Crafts exhibition--“the arts and crafts movement has been the best influence upon machine industry during the past ten years”--that “while we have sought to develop handicrafts beside it on sound and independent lines, we have succeeded in imparting something of the spirit of craftsmanship to the best kind of machine-work bridging over the former gulf between machinery and tools, and quickening machine-industry with a new sense of the artistic possibilities that lie within its own proper sphere.”

Let us hope so, indeed.

Certainly we cannot hope that the world, just yet, will beat its swords into ploughshares, or its spears into pruning-hooks, still less that it will return to local industry and handicraft for all the wants of life, or look solely to the independent artist and craftsman to make its house beautiful. The organized factory and the great machine industries will continue to work for the million, as well as for the millionaire, under the present system of production; but, at any rate, they can be influenced by ideas of design, and it must be said that some manufacturers have shown themselves fully alive to the value of the co-operation of artists in this direction. Those who desire and can command the personal work of artists in design and handicraft are now able to enlist it, and this demand is likely to increase, and therefore industrial groups or guilds of this kind may increase.

If such groups of workers, or workers in the different handicrafts 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.

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.

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.

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_.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.