AESTHETICS AND FINE ARTS

The Fine Arts Department, although it is in many ways superior to others in the University, has neglected one of the important aspects of the subject. It has a tendency to teach art from a purely factual point of view, which is both important and necessary, but which ought not to be the only approach. The fundamental basis of fine arts, the value of it, why one object is more important than another, or why people should study art at all, this part is to a large measure overlooked.

Under the present system, a great many students who can boast a knowledge merely of facts, names, and dates are awarded degrees in Fine Arts. Undoubtedly these facts, names, and dates are indispensable, but only as a means to a further end, the complete understanding and appreciation of art itself. Without an understanding of aesthetic value, a full comprehension of art is impossible.

Besides this omission and connected with it, is the history of the criticism of art, or of aesthetic thought. It is obvious that a knowledge of what Ruskin, Pater, or Clive Bell have thought about art, or why the Baroque was condemned a generation ago and is today very much in vogue, is necessary to the student of fine arts.

Two courses which approach these topics treat them inadequately. Fine Arts does give a certain amount of the theory of "line" and of "composition," but it devotes its time principally to elementary drawing. The course in aesthetics in the Philosophy Department deals with psychological and metaphysical theories, but little with their direct application to art.

Both the theory of aesthetics and the history of aesthetic criticism could be combined in one course which would require, as a prerequisite, a thorough knowledge of the History of Fine Arts. Such a course would be an essential and unifying element to the instruction now attempted by the Department.