FINE ARTS

It is generally the hall mark of a live institution that criticism comes from within. Such certainly is the case in the Harvard Division of Fine Arts. Here, criticism occurs because both the professors, collectively, even if not individually, and their critics misunderstand the two-fold nature of a study of the Fine Arts.

Officially the Division approaches its field by the "historical method," a vague phrase meant to suggest perhaps that it is more interested in cultivating gentlemen or scholars, than in training creative artists or enthusing aesthetes. More closely examined their educational system is seen to be a combination of three distinct attitudes towards the Fine Arts. They may be regarded as a set of values to be cultivated for their own sake; they may be studied as an achievement of the human mind, and considered from the point of view of style and of technique; they may be pursued as a branch of History, as a particularly vivid expression both of the ideals and of the general character of a period.

These three approaches are regarded as phases of one subject, and in practice no distinction is made between them. The majority of courses are given confusedly now from this angle now from that. Actually there are two distinct fields of study: style and aesthetic sensitivity; History and Fine Arts. The one is essentially subjective, the other equally objective.

The recognition of this fact demands a division of the courses into two corresponding groups. In the one which deals with the individual's reactions, an integration of the first two approaches mentioned above is essential. Without the livening injection of aesthetic values the student concentrating merely on style development, degenerates into an animated almanac of precise and inconsequential facts; without the control of style, the aesthete intent on whetting his own sensibilities sinks into a condition of hazy introversion, characterized by flowing hair and a precieux smirk. In order that students may derive the greatest possible benefit from the objective view, the Fine Arts Department might look with profit to the example of History and Literature. A new department, History and Fine Arts, is not inconceivable. At present it is a crying need.

The above arguments may appear ethereal, and all too intangible for practical application in such mundane affairs as the University catalogue of courses. But most of them have emanated at various times from the Division itself. Reorganization on the lines indicated above must necessarily be a drastic and perhaps painful change. But it must come if the student is to get the full benefit of his studies in Fine Arts.