College Teaching Part 51

B4 _History of Modern Art._ (III) History of art in Western Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

B5, B6, ... etc. _History of Special Periods; Consideration of Special Forms of Art, and of Great Masters in Art_ (IV) selected from the following: Art of Primitive Greece, Greek Sculpture, Greek Vases, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, History of Mosaic; Medieval Illumination; Sienese Painters of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries; Florentine Painting; Domestic Architecture of Various Countries; Leonardo da Vinci and His Works; Art of the Netherlands; History of Mural Painting; History and Principles of Engraving; Prints and Their Makers; Chinese and j.a.panese Art; Colonial Architecture in America; Painting and Sculpture in America, etc., etc.

=Teaching equipment for college courses in art=

No attempt will here be made to comment upon the general furnis.h.i.+ng and equipment of lecture rooms, laboratories, and studios.

Nevertheless, some reference to the special teaching equipment is necessary for the further consideration of the methods of teaching.

Ill.u.s.trations are of the greatest importance in the study of art. The best ill.u.s.trations are original works of art. For manifest reasons these are not usually available in the cla.s.sroom, and the teacher is dependent upon facsimiles and other reproductions. These take the form of copies, replicas, casts, models, photographs, stereopticon slides, prints in black and white and in color, including the ubiquitous picture postal card.

The collections of public art museums and of private galleries are of great value for ill.u.s.trative purposes; but of still greater value to the student is the departmental museum, with which, unfortunately, but few colleges are equipped. Some colleges have been saddled by well-meaning donors with collections of various kinds of works of art which are but ill related to the instruction given in the department of art. The collections of the college museum need not be large but they should be selected especially with their instructional purpose in view. The problems of expense debars most colleges from establis.h.i.+ng museums of art; but with a modest annual appropriation a working collection can be gradually gathered together. A collection which is the result of gradual growth and of careful consideration will usually be of greater instructional value than one which is acquired at one time.

An inst.i.tution which owns a few original works of painting, sculpture, and the crafts of representative masters is indeed fortunate, but even inst.i.tutions whose expenditures for this purpose are slight may possess at least a few original lithographs, engravings, etchings, etc., in its collection of prints.

Fortunately, there are means whereby some of the un.o.btainable originals of the great public museums and private collections of the world may be represented in the college museums by adequate reproductions. The methods of casting in plaster of Paris, in bronze and other materials; of producing squeezes in papier mache; and of reproducing by the galvano-plastic process, are used for making facsimiles of statues, vases, terra cottas, carved ivories, inscriptions and other forms of incised work, gems, coins, etc., at a cost which, when compared with that of originals, is trivial.[108]

Paintings, drawings, engravings, etc., are often admirably reproduced by various photographic and printing processes in color or black and white.

Generally speaking, the most valuable adjunct of the college art museum or of the college art library is the collection of photographs properly cla.s.sified and filed for ready reference by the instructor or student.

A specially designed museum building would present opportunities for service that would extend beyond the walls of the art department, but if such a building is not available, a single well-lighted room furnished with suitable cabinets and wall cases, and with ample wall s.p.a.ce for the display of paintings, prints, charts, etc., would be of great service.

A departmental library of carefully chosen books on the theory, history, and the practice of the various arts, together with current and bound numbers of the best art periodicals of America and of foreign countries, is indispensable.

=Methods of teaching=

Methods will naturally depend somewhat upon the size of the cla.s.s. In large cla.s.ses--of, say, more than forty--the lecture method, supplemented by section meetings and conferences, would usually be followed. In the following discussion it is a.s.sumed that the cla.s.ses will not exceed forty.

Under the head of Methods of Teaching are here included: Work in Cla.s.s and Work outside of Cla.s.s.

The work in cla.s.s consists of lectures; discussions by the members of the cla.s.s; laboratory or studio work; excursions. There is no worse method than that of exclusive lecturing by the instructor. If the methods employed do not induce the student to do his own thinking, they have but little value. Much of the instructor's time will be occupied in devising methods by which the students themselves will contribute to their own and their fellows' advancement.

Discussions led by the instructor and carried on by the members of the cla.s.s should be frequent. From time to time a separate division of a general topic should be a.s.signed to each member of the cla.s.s, who will prepare himself to present his part of the topic before the cla.s.s either by reading a paper or otherwise. Discussions by the members of the cla.s.s, concluded by the instructor, should generally follow this presentation. Topics for investigation, study, and discussion should be so selected as to require the students to make application of their study to their daily life and environment. In this way their critical interest in the design of public and private buildings, of monuments, and of the innumerable art productions which they see about them would be stimulated.

For the purpose of ill.u.s.trating lectures and aiding in discussions, prints and photographs may be shown either directly or through the medium of the reflectoscope. Or, they may be transferred to lantern slides and shown by means of the stereopticon. To a limited extent the Lumiere color process has been used in preparing slides.

The methods of laboratory and studio work have already been briefly treated under the head of Courses of Instruction, and hardly need to be further amplified here.

It has already been stated that original works of art are the best ill.u.s.trations, and that these are but rarely available within the walls of the college. Instructors in inst.i.tutions which are situated within or near to large centers of population can usually supply this deficiency by arranging visits to museums and other places where works of art are preserved and exhibited; and to artists' studios and to workshops where works of art are produced. Instructors in inst.i.tutions which are not so situated may supply the deficiency, in some measure, by arranging for temporary exhibitions in the museum or other rooms of the department. Rotary exhibitions of paintings, prints, craftwork, sculpture, designs, examples of students' work, etc., may be arranged whereby groups of inst.i.tutions within convenient distances from each other may share the benefits offered by such exhibitions, as well as the expense of a.s.semblage, transportation, and insurance. In arranging for such temporary exhibitions it is essential that only works of the highest quality, of their kind, should be selected.

Selections can best be made personally by the instructor or by capable and trustworthy agents who are thoroughly informed as to the purpose of the exhibition and as to the needs of the inst.i.tutions forming the circuits. Such rotary exhibitions possess a wider usefulness than that of serving as ill.u.s.trative material for the college department of art: they serve also as an artistic stimulus to the members of the college at large, and to the community in which the college is situated.[109]

The work of students outside of cla.s.s has already been mentioned. It consists of collateral reading, the study of prints and photographs, and the preparation of written themes and reports. Notwithstanding the lavish production of books relating to art, there are but very few that are suitable for use as college textbooks. The instructor will usually a.s.sign collateral reading from various authors.

=Testing results of art instruction=

In attempting to measure the success or failure of the work, the teacher must ask himself, What do our college graduates who have taken art courses possess that is lacking in those who have not taken such courses?

The immediate test of the results of the work is in the att.i.tude of mind of the students. Do they think differently about works of art from what they did before entering the courses? Is there a change in their habit of thought? Have they done no more than accept the lessons they have been taught, or have they so absorbed them and made them their own that they are capable of self-expression in making their estimates of works of art? These questions may be answered by the result of the written examination and by the oral quiz.

It must be confessed that the chief purpose of art instruction in the college is to supply a lack in our national and private life. Citizens of the older communities of Europe pa.s.s their lives among the acc.u.mulated art treasures of past ages. The mere daily contact with such forms of beauty engenders a taste for them. Partly through our Puritan origin, partly through our preoccupation with the development of the material resources of our country, we, as a people, have failed to cultivate some of the imponderable things of the spirit. So far as we have had to do with its creation, our environment in town and village is generally lacking in artistic charm.

The study by lay students of the art of the past has one chief object; namely, to train them to understand the works of the masters in order that they may discriminate between what is beautiful and what is meretricious in the art of the present day; to learn the lessons of art from the monoliths of Egypt, the tawny marbles of ancient Greece, the balanced thrusts of the Gothic cathedral, the gracious and reverent harmonies of the primitives, the delicate handicrafts of the Orient, the splendors of the Renaissance, the vibrant colors of the latest phase of impressionism, and to apply these lessons in the search for hidden elements of beauty in nature and art in their own country and in their own lives and surroundings.

Believing, as he does, in the value of artistic culture, it becomes the duty of the college art instructor to teach with enthusiasm unmarred by prejudice; to cultivate in the minds of his students a catholic receptivity to all that is sincere in artistic expression; to open up avenues of thought in the minds of those whose lives would otherwise be barren of artistic sympathy; to cull the best from the experience of the past, and, by its help, to impart to his hearers some of his own enthusiasm; for their lives cannot fail to touch at some point the borderlands of the magic realm of art.

HOLMES SMITH _Was.h.i.+ngton University_

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1910.

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