in the subject studied or in the
accomplishment of the student. Estimates in art are, and should be,
largely a matter of personal taste and opinion. They are not
infrequently colored by prejudice, especially where the judgment of
producing artists is invoked. This, again, is as it should be. An
artist who assumes toward all works of art a catholic attitude,
weakens that intensity of view and of purpose which animates his
enthusiasm. It can easily be understood that to a larger extent than
in other subjects the nature and scope of art instruction depends upon
the personality of the instructor.

=Values of art instruction=

The flexibility to which we have adverted adapts art instruction to
diverse educational aims.

In that it can be made to conduce to accurate observation of artistic
manifestations, and to logical deduction therefrom, it may be given a
disciplinary purpose. In its highest development, to which only the
specially gifted can attain, the ability to observe accurately and to
deduce logically demands the most exacting training of the eye, of the
visual memory, and of the judgment. As an example of the exercise of
this sort of discipline we may cite Professor Waldstein's recognition
of a marble fragment in the form of a head in the Louvre as belonging
to a metope of the Parthenon. When, after Professor Waldstein's
suggestion of the probable connection, a plaster cast of the head was
taken to the British Museum and placed upon the headless figure of one
of the metopes, the surfaces of fracture were found to correspond.[103]
The most useful application of this ability lies in the correct
attribution of works of art to their proper schools and authorship.
Signor Morelli in his method of identification used a system that is
almost mechanical, yet the evidence supplied by concurrence or
discrepancy of form in the delineation of anatomical details was
supplemented by a highly cultivated sense for style, for
craftsmanship, and for color as well as by an extensive historical
knowledge.

In that art instruction cultivates taste and the appreciation of works
of art, it has a cultural purpose. By many persons it is assumed that
this is its sole value.

In that it serves to illuminate the study of the progress of
civilization, it has an informative purpose.

In that it enables the technical student to correlate his work with
that of past and present workers, it aids in the preparation for
professional studies.