VI
We will deal with the second aim first, and it may be termed roughly “Educationâ€â€”the process of increasing a man’s ability to enjoy better art. The last phrase embodies our idea of the function of art-education. If education does that—improves the range and quality of his pleasure in the beautiful—it has performed its prime duty. Needless to say, we are not speaking now of that branch of education which concerns itself with the training of practitioners—creative or executive artists. That is quite a different matter, and one of our first quarrels with the present system is that these two types of education are not as clearly distinguished as they need to be.
There are two classes of people who will benefit by education—those who wish to enjoy and those who wish to practise. The needs of the two classes are quite distinct,yet he who would enjoy is often given the instruction provided (or which should be provided) for the others. The disadvantages of this are: (a) the enjoyer approaches the subject from quite a different angle, and practical instruction will sometimes depreciate his appreciative faculties. The outsider sees most of the game, and, moreover, one with knowledge of technical matters will tend to allow technical questions to come before purely aesthetic ones; (b) He will spend a great deal of time to no purpose, and will waste opportunities and leisure which could be more advantageously applied; (c) As he might be, and generally is, entirely devoid of sufficient creative or executive ability to practise to his own satisfaction a certain disappointment and disillusionment will colour his regard for the artistic; (d) It is useless and wasteful to give technical instruction to those who cannot and do not desire to apply it. Neither does the practitioner gain. There is a tendency to compromise, and so he does not always obtain the special purposive instruction he needs, and the personnel and institutions fitted to instruct the practitioner cannot devote all theirenergies to this essential work. Any increased love of art, be it remembered, will cause a much greater demand for professional creative and executive artists. And (e) he probably has neither the time nor the inclination for practical studies, and so, if there are no schemes specially for his benefit, he will receive no education at all.
Therefore there is a great need for systematic education in the appreciation of art. Many more attempts are being made to-day than there were a few years ago; yet the subject—a very difficult one—is still in its infancy. The methods and aims of such education have not yet been adequately formulated and must exercise educationists in the near future. Failing a well-defined plan, they have taken refuge in aspects of art-instruction which are not those best calculated to stimulate genuine enjoyment. This explains to some extent the confusion of practical and appreciative ends. It explains also our addiction to historical and theoretical studies. He who would study the graphic arts must try to draw and to paint; the music-lover must acquire some sort of executive ability, and so devotes enough time to the routine of “practice†to kill all hisenthusiasm; and the student of literature must become versed in its history. The art-lover is probably not getting much harm; the music-lover is now often relieved by mechanical instruments from the necessity for technique; than the historical studies of the last-named, however, nothing more dreary and futile could be invented.
Improvement in the methods of education in appreciation must involve the total abolition of the Examination system. Examinations may be able to show whether a man can draw “correctlyâ€, play the notes of a composition, or is versed in the dates of a number of writers and able to list their important works. But it cannot possibly give any indication whether the education in appreciation is achieving its real aim—the increase of the student’s ability to enjoy more and better things, to find greater happiness and richer artistic experiences. Those who would develop the appreciative faculties of others must take the results of their labours for granted.
As before said, our ideas of how to instil a love of beauty, how to awaken interest in and arouse perception of artistic values, are still vague. It is a matter which cannot be taught by ruleof thumb. It is not concerned with ascertained facts, nor discoverable by ordered experiment. It is an individual matter. Largely, in practice, such instruction will be exemplary rather than explanatory. Much of the time spent will be devoted to introducing to students actual examples of the art, and thereby the obstacles of ignorance and prejudice will be removed. In addition to this, however, some systematic instruction in the principles of aesthetics, of the general criteria of works of art—completeness, congruity, balance, and proportion, the subordination of details, the relation of means to ends—will be evolved. I would suggest as a starting-point the study ofform, of the anatomy or architecture of art. Apart from the moral value of cultivating a sense of proportion, of perspective, of the inter-relation of parts—a sense which is as essential to a sane life as to the appreciation of a picture or a musical composition—nothing could lead more readily to an understanding of the artist’s aims and plan of campaign. In music, for instance, a brief account of the sequence of the main themes, which could be memorized, would render intelligible andwholea composition which otherwise would seem meaningless, shapeless, and dreary.