Craftsmanship and the Art School

IN Twilight of Painting, R. H. Ives Gammell (Putnam, $5.00) has made a serious and sincere attempt to analyze what he considers the deplorable state in which the art of painting finds itself at the present day and to suggest certain remedies. The book contains perhaps too much in the way of sweeping generalities, but the vigor with which these are stated adds to its interest. Its chief value lies in the discussion of the decline of craftsmanship in painting in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and of the emergence and failure of the art school system, until at the present day, from the standpoint of technical performance, the line of demarcation between the work of the professional and that of the amateur is exceedingly narrow. Of particular interest is the unusually clear account of the gradual abandonment of the apprentice system of training in favor first of the atelier and then of the art school as we know it today.

One finds oneself constantly in agreement with many of the author’s statements and one is tempted to quote far more than is appropriate for a review. A single example may suffice: —

The art school is so absurd an institution from the point of view of training painters that it seems incredible that intelligent artists should have wasted their energies teaching in them. The art school inevitably is run on a business basis, and, in order to pay for itself or to justify the support of its sponsors, it must attract and keep as large a number of students as possible. More often than not the administration is quite separate from the teaching staff and chooses the instructors for their ability to bring in students rather than for their ability to teach the austere and difficult art of painting. The great majority of students that support the schools have not sufficient natural gifts to become painters at. all. Indeed, most of them give up art, wisely enough, after having paid tuition for a few years. In each class there may be, at best, three or four students who would have the makings of painters in them, if given proper instruction.

This they cannot possibly get. In the crowded classes they cannot set up their easels in a proper relation to the model. The slovenly standard of work set by the general level of the students inevitably affects their own work. Twice a week the teacher comes in. The task of criticizing so large a number of students is a formidable one. His average criticism is five minutes per student. In the general confusion he has little opportunity to size up the needs of the few students who really deserve his help. He may not even detect their presence. Only the most general of his ideas get across to the class at all.

This certainly should give pause to fond parents who are tempted in their pride to send all talented children off on an artist’s career.

At the same time the book is puzzling in its general point of view and at times exasperating in its prejudices. The contempt for the obvious incompetence shown in much so-called modern painting, as well as in most representational painting of the present day, blinds the author to the at least interesting character of the best of contemporary work, and this is accompanied by an apparent admiration for much painting of the nineteenth century with which it is impossible to sympathize. It is obvious that among the more adventurous and inquiring artists there has been a deliberate breaking down of the plastic or pictorial tradition of the nineteenth century into an experimentation with more abstract modes or with the possibilities of pure design or what is spoken of as non-representational painting.

To lament this experimentation is to take ike position of a person in the third or fourth century of the Christian era who might have lamented a similar breaking down of the ancient plastic tradition — a change of point of view which finally culminated in the mosaics of San Vitale and Haghia Sophia! On the whole, paintings which emphasize a two-dimensional pattern arc more adapted to the rooms in which we live today than the dark and heavily framed affairs of the nineteenth century.

In spite of the author’s accurate description of the changes in teaching that, took place in the nineteenth century, he fails to take into account the fundamental factor which caused these changes: namely, the change in the character of artistic patronage. This may be briefly stated as follows. Down to the end of the eighteenth century, dominance in artistic patronage was in the hands of persons who, in spite of all the variations in fashion, were trained to distinguish between good and bad performance. With the economic and social changes of the nineteenth century, a new class ol persons arose with the necessary wealth to patronize the arts, and this class in its turn became dominant in the control of artistic production. There was a demand for more artists, and the big exhibitions created a chance for fame or reputation on the part of mediocre painters who catered to the taste for the grandiose, sensational, or sentimental. It was the necessity of teaching larger and larger numbers of would-be artists that brought about the gradual change to the atelier and then to the art. school system of teaching.

Much the same state of affairs exists today. Trained persons able to distinguish between good and bad performance either in representational or in abstract types of painting are lamentably few, and incompetence is the general rule. Performance — Craftsmanship — of a level that would not be tolerated, for instance, in music is accepted with little protest. The importance of the patron in all this is not sufficiently stressed by the author.