FINE ARTS CONSIDERED

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

To those who read your editorial "Arts and the Man" (Friday, March 5, 1954), I would like to offer my reaction to it and a partial justification for the ostensibly unsympathetic attitude of the Department of Fine Arts. First, this editorial, though apparently generalized in discussing "the Fine Arts department's failure to orient its program toward the undergraduate," is surely a masked lamentation upon the departure of the professor teaching Fine Arts 14. The prospect of the absence of a "fresh, interpretive approach to original works of art" seems to have prompted the writer to an excess of emotional slander aimed at this department. If he had said simply that he was unhappy to see this professor leave--a result of appointment to the faculty of another well-known Eastern college--then we might sympathize with his genuine regret. However, Friday's editorializing mixes fact with an engaging, but uncomplimentary, fiction.

To outline, I hope fairly, the case stated by the CRIMSON: although well-adapted to the graduate students, the Department of Fine Arts does not orient its instruction to the undergraduate; Fine Arts 13 (employing a historical, rather than interpretive, approach), along with a few studio courses, was the only introduction to the subject geared to the interests of the non-concentrator until the advent, two years ago, of Fine Arts 14, which, according to the course announcement, emphasizes "such considerations as style, quality, and authenticity . . ."; because of the threatened discontinuation of this relatively new course, it is implied that all-concentrators will be at the mercy of the "middle level courses, open both to graduate and undergraduate students . . . generally oriented toward training professional art historians . . . [and] usually too specialized to arouse much interest. . ."

Do not aspects of this last problem plague each of the departments that cannot poll the greatest popularity? I fail to see that the bad qualities of the middle level courses are restricted to the field of Fine Arts. If the failing of these "specialized" courses is their favoritism to the potential art historian, then why doesn't the same principle hold true in other fields--philosophy, psychology, history, or Religion? The undergraduate who spreads his interests generously among the various departments of his choice always runs the risk of contact with professionalism in these areas. The editorial writer has made a value judgment on art history in which he wants us to believe that specialization here--above the level of Fine Arts 13 and 14--is so painful to the non-concentrator that he must seek elsewhere in the humanities for courses of an intermediate but "general" nature.

Fine Arts requires, more than history or the study of literature, the formation of new modes of seeing and thinking that are seldom hinted at on a high-school level. Granted, professors often fail to realize that the vocabulary of this field is somewhat strange to the newcomer, but this fault is no more extreme than in other fields, like psychology, for instance. It seems to me that the CRIMSON writer objects to the fact thate is no sugar-coated way to success in the Fine Arts department; it suddenly demands of the student new skills hat are not grounded in the easy subjectivism of an "interpretive" course. But most important of all, the alleged art-historical esotericism of the middle level courses seems still to have attracted a creditable number of enthusiasts beyond the 25 Harvard concentrators. "Art of the Nineteenth Century" and "Architecture of the Americas" were well enough attended last term to demand the large downstairs lecture room in the Fogg Museum; more obscure fields like "Mediaeval Art" and "Italian Painting of the Fifteenth Century" had gatherings large enough to be scheduled in the ample upstairs lecture room.

Still, if even these courses seem too threatening, Humanities 113 will bridge the gap between the down-to-earth and the rarified atmosphere prevalent in the Department of Fine Arts. William I. Homer, 1-G

The editorial on the Fine Arts department was intended neither as a "masked lamentation" for the departure of one professor nor as an "emotional slander." Instead, it pointed out that Fine Arts is not getting the number of concentrators, particularly of high calibre students, which it deserves. This lack of quality stems partially from failings at the introductory levels. Though other departments may face a similar problem, Fine Arts can still make improvements.

The suggested improvements included, generally, additions to introductory level courses and the appointment of more professors interested in teaching art to the undergraduate. To equate the addition of general courses to "sugar-coating" is to mistake the purpose and possibilities of the broad course. These courses can be used to interest more students in the professional middle group offerings, which the editorial recognized as unavoidably specialized. They can be sufficiently complex as to attract good students and still serve as introductions. Since "sugar coating" and "easy subjectivity" will not attract better students to Fine Arts, they were not recommended in the editorial.--Ed.