Of reverence, I doubt if there is enough in all the United States to build one great temple. I doubt if there are men enough in all this land with unselfishness enough and love enough to build one great and beautiful shrine for commerce or industry, for liberty or art, for religion—from the bottom up, perfectly good, like an altar upon which the most sacred thing in our lives shall be offered to all the rest who follow.
Gutzon was a poet, but he seems also to have been an observing realist. He continued:
Art applied to utilitarian purpose is, proportionately, a larger interest in our lives than what have come to be termed “Fine Arts.” I see no difference between them myself. I find in my study of art that the real artist is nine tenths of the time a craftsman. It is only in that small one tenth of his time that he rises to the elevated position of prophet and master.
The question of art education in general involves what I call “betrayal by democracy,” though perhaps I speak with the prejudice of personal experience, being one of nine children who had no college degree. When democracy came into the American world the great mass of the people felt that the only advantage aristocracy had was “higher education.” The world has taken that up in as blind a way as it takes up so many other things. While higher education goes on apace, machinery has to step in to supply the instant need of many things that before were made by hand, and all kinds of work that we used in the building of our homes has deteriorated.
In man’s essential world the water color has changed to the lithograph, the drawing to the Kodak, and so on down through life. Man no longer sees. His eyes no longer search the form, line and color of any piece of work. His fingers no longer test the art and finish found on old master crafts.
I never look at a spoon or a knife or a fork, a table or a chair, but I wish to correct and improve it. I think our spoons are badly made. The prongs of our forks are too long and the blades of our knives are too long and badly shaped. It amazes me that such utilitarian articles are not designed for the purposes that they are intended to serve.
Some years ago I was sketching in California. A man wandered by and watched me a little while. “Why do you do that?” he asked. And when I wanted to know what he meant he told me. “I mean painting,” he said. “Why do you do it at all?”
With reference to art, that is the most astute question I have ever heard asked. Why do we do it at all? I hope that those of you who care anything about art will never forget it. That question ought to be put to you in all you do in art, and it ought to guide you in your work.... Why do you do it?
On the subject of art schools he wrote bitterly:
I have said, that the higher education we were promised has failed, for it has taken away from the great body of the people their only opportunity to express themselves. That is why I am hammering on the value of craftsmanship for the real leaders in fine arts. We have taken from the race that great body of workmen from whom artists should come, and in order to supply a place for the man of an artistic temperament we have built art schools—institutions which, so far as I have been able to find any record, had no existence at all in the time of Phidias or during the great period of the Renaissance. We are teaching art as a fine art—a subject that cannot ever be taught at all.