Flexibility of art expression determines flexibility of art instruction
Art expression has the quality of utmost flexibility. This flexibility appears also in art instruction, and it is for this reason that in no two institutions of higher learning is the problem of art instruction attacked in the same way. There is, consequently, a great diversity in the types of art courses, even in the college.
The flexibility of art instruction is both advantageous and embarrassing. It is an advantage in that it can be adapted to almost any requirement. It can be applied to the occupations of the kindergarten, or it can be made an intensive study suitable for the graduate school. But this very breadth is also a source of weakness in that it tends to divert the attention from that precision of purpose which all formal instruction should have, however elementary or advanced. It is apt to be too scattering in its aims. It is not easy to determine exact values either in the subject studied or in the accomplishment of the student. Estimates in art are, and should be, largely a matter of personal taste and opinion. They are not infrequently colored by prejudice, especially where the judgment of producing artists is invoked. This, again, is as it should be. An artist who assumes toward all works of art a catholic attitude, weakens that intensity of view and of purpose which animates his enthusiasm. It can easily be understood that to a larger extent than in other subjects the nature and scope of art instruction depends upon the personality of the instructor.
Values of art instruction
The flexibility to which we have adverted adapts art instruction to diverse educational aims.
In that it can be made to conduce to accurate observation of artistic manifestations, and to logical deduction therefrom, it may be given a disciplinary purpose. In its highest development, to which only the specially gifted can attain, the ability to observe accurately and to deduce logically demands the most exacting training of the eye, of the visual memory, and of the judgment. As an example of the exercise of this sort of discipline we may cite Professor Waldstein's recognition of a marble fragment in the form of a head in the Louvre as belonging to a metope of the Parthenon. When, after Professor Waldstein's suggestion of the probable connection, a plaster cast of the head was taken to the British Museum and placed upon the headless figure of one of the metopes, the surfaces of fracture were found to correspond.[[103]] The most useful application of this ability lies in the correct attribution of works of art to their proper schools and authorship. Signor Morelli in his method of identification used a system that is almost mechanical, yet the evidence supplied by concurrence or discrepancy of form in the delineation of anatomical details was supplemented by a highly cultivated sense for style, for craftsmanship, and for color as well as by an extensive historical knowledge.
In that art instruction cultivates taste and the appreciation of works of art, it has a cultural purpose. By many persons it is assumed that this is its sole value.
In that it serves to illuminate the study of the progress of civilization, it has an informative purpose.
In that it enables the technical student to correlate his work with that of past and present workers, it aids in the preparation for professional studies.
Difference between technical and lay courses in art one of emphasis