The Harvard Artist's Dilemma

"During my nine years at Harvard, I found that isolation was perhaps the greatest problem facing the undergraduate artist," said T. Lux Feininger, who resigned as Harvard's last teacher of painting in 1962. Student artists agree. They find, as many critics have observed, that Harvard is a community with limited appreciation and respect for non-verbal communication.

Of course, the visually-oriented student can always associate with others of the same bent, but before this year there was no logical place for people interested in art as creators or simply appreciators to gather. As a result, there has been relatively little communication among Harvard's artists. This has prevented them from exchanging ideas and information and has drastically confined the range of criticism they receive.

The Carpenter Center may become their badly-needed focal point. Despite its lack of space for students' own projects, the Center represents a great milestone for the visual arts at Harvard. But the University usually seems most unreceptive to visual creativity. It does offer several courses in design and, since September, one in descriptive drawing. And, as one student remarked, "any course that increases your discipline over eye, mind and hand is good for you." But most students also observe that the present curriculum is very limited. There are no courses in the more traditional disciplines of figure drawing and basic anatomy. More important, students often find the design and drawing courses less than stimulating. Some think that basic disciplines could be gained in a more enjoyable and imaginative way. They believe, as Feininger found during his stay at Harvard, that training in techniques can be combined with creativity.

The University can, of course, aid and support artistic ventures outside of the curriculum. House art classes have been very helpful, at least for the beginner. And, perhaps most significant of all, a plan is now underway to establish quarters in which student artists can work on their own. These students will not receive credit, but, more important, they will have the facilities to develop and receive criticism of their own, personal modes of expression.

Finding the time and space in which to work presents great problems for the undergraduate artist. It is almost impossible to work seriously in one's own room in a Harvard house. Some students rent studios. Others manage to live off-campus. A few simply leave the University. But the student who wants to stay at Harvard and cannot find or afford outside quarters is out of luck.

Fitting in one's painting or sculpting among courses, homework and a reasonable amount of sleep offers further difficulties but it seldom proves impossible. One student sculptor remarked that "anyone who really wants to can make time for his work. It may mean missing the football game on Saturday and not going to the movies, but it can be done. The people who can't do it are the ones who like to just sit around and say 'I'm an artist but I don't have the time to do anything.' Still, for someone who lives in a house, it's very hard."

One can argue that a student who has a burning desire to paint to sculpt and is willing to make sacrifices to do so should not be in a liberal arts college in the first place. That argument ignores those people who have a deep interest in art without being totally committed to it as a career. Few Harvard artists are totally committed They work hard and enjoy their work, but they have not decided to devote their lives to a particular art from.

There are many people, however, who have decided that their vocation must lie in some visual field. These people have little choice at Harvard but to major in Fine Arts. The curriculum rarely satisfies them. In the first place, they complain, Harvard's Fine Arts courses encourage a verbal, rather than visual, appreciation of art. There is too much emphasis on merely collecting and spouting back the material presented in lectures and far too little on actually looking at the works discussed. Students are not trained to see. They learn about paintings and statues as historical events, not as unique creations capable of evoking intense emotional responses. The sensual aspects of art are completely obscured by the intellectual. Of course, not all Fine Arts courses commit these sins (Professor Slive's are frequently mentioned as exceptions), but most do. As a result, students who are interested in the visual arts but have no desire to become art historians develop a rebellious attitude toward the whole academic system.

Rebelliousness, perhaps even some sense of alienation, will not hurt the young artist; they may even help. But he still needs sufficient working space and critical guidance. Now, Carpenter Center and the proposed facilities for non-credit creative work make it likely that Harvard students will get these essentials. The aspiring artist still will not have an easy time. Nor should he. Robert Henri, probably the greatest art teacher America has ever produced, once said: "The work of the art student is no light matter. Few have the courage and stamina to see it through. You have to make up your mind to be alone in many ways.... alone one gets acquainted with himself, grows up and on, not stopping with the crowd. It costs to do this. If you succeed somewhat you may have to pay for it as well as enjoy it all your life.