is now being introduced into the system of public school instruction.
The scheme as developed by Mr. Dow is decorative rather than naturalistic,
the aesthetic side with "Beauty," as the watchword being in greatest
point. The filling of spaces in agreeable and harmonious arrangement does
not demand strict acknowledgment to natural aspect. Indeed this is denied
in most cases where the limitations of decoration are enjoined. With the
first principle, truth, upon which all education rests, as the basis of
such study, the nature part of this system will fall into its logical
channels. If nature's largeness and simplicity contributes to its value,
then nature should be consulted when she is large and simple. Studies of
trees in gray silhouette, should be made at twilight, either of evening or
early morning, when the detail, which is useless to the decorative scheme,
is not seen. Under such conditions no slight or sacrifice is
necessitated. Nature then contributes her quantity directly and the
student has no warrant in assuming to change her. There are times also
when the face of nature is so varied that the most fantastic schemes of
_Notan_(15) are observed; a harbor filled with sails and sea-gulls, a
crowd of people speckling the shore, the houses of a village dotted over a
hillside. Under a direct light these become legitimate subjects offered by
nature herself to the scheme which, however, she only now and then honors.
The system therefore accompanies the student but part way and leaves him
still knocking at the door of the complete naturalistic presentation of
pictorial art, a development which stretches into limitless possibilities
by the use of the third dimension.
Work in two dimensions by reason of its greater simplicity should
naturally precede the complications involved in producing the completely
modelled forms of nature, and therein the argument for its use in the
early stages of the student's development is a strong one.
SUGGESTIVENESS.
Breadth, so often accountable for mystery, leads to suggestiveness. It is
at this point that graphic art touches hands with the invisible,--where the
thing merges into the idea. Here we deliver over our little two by four
affair with its specifications all marked, into the keeping of larger
hands which expand its possibilities. If then Imagination carries us
beyond the limits of graphic art let us by all means employ it. Upon this
phase of art the realist
|