University of Notre Dame - Dome Yearbook (Notre Dame, IN)

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Arts and Letters Liberal education includes three values: relevant information, operative logic, and imaginative insight. These three values help respectively to overcome three prominent human failings: ignorance, muddle-headed- ness, and crossness. The liberal arts are reasoning, writing, speaking, and reckoning. These arts are as practical as can be. Everybody practices the liberal arts, the only thing is that some people practice them better than others. The liberal arts are so practical and so necessary that even persons who don ' t go formally through liberal education have to learn to practice them the best way they can. A person who has concentrated on specialized education so exclusively as to have ignored totally the liberal arts would not be able to reason even in his own field, or to write clear simple prose, or to talk sensibly, or to associate ideas. But this is really unimaginable: everybody does these things. The fact remains, however, that some do them better than others. Liberal education is not just the liberal arts, but also liberal knowledge. And the areas of liberal knowl- edge are: the Humanities, Natural Science, Social Science, and Philosophy and Theology. How much should a student learn? Everything, or anyway as much as he can. Liberal education does not produce a single marketable skill, like a course in television-repairing. It is not as directly vocational as accounting or en- gineering. Many liberal-college students like to get a specialized education on top of their liberal studies. But whatever the career, liberal education is the basis. READING AND DISCUSSION two skills essential to the pursuit of a liberal education. REV. CHARLES E. SHEEDY, C.S.C., center, dean of the College of Arts and Letters, and assistant deans Devere T. Plunkett, left, and Frank Keegan are found in the Uni- versity Art Gallery. Mr. Keegan ' s post was newly created this year to handle the in- creasing number of students. 91

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t RUBBING AND SCRAPING, a graduate student begins the task of transforming the plaster cast into the polished and finished form. 90

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THE FACULTY offers critical and helpful advice in sculpture class. THE ADVANTAGE OF THE ARTIST: sculpturing from live models begins in junior year. Art Interpretation On the undergraduate level, the Department of Art offers two degrees: Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Fine Arts. Most majors in the department are taking courses leading to the Fine Arts degree. Thus the department places its emphasis on study which will develop skills in drawing, painting, sculpturing and design. The department feels its strong point is design. Whether a student is drawing a cartoon for the Scholastic or a protrait for the Art Gallery he must design well - the image must be well balanced, unified, composed in harmonious lines and colors and so forth. Whatever its graduates hope to become - - painters, sculptors or in- dustrial designers, they must have a good background in design. All paintings begin with drawings. Experience has taught that painters never handle themselves with con- fidence until they first learn to draw in pencil, pen or charcoal. Consequently all majors begin their work with drawing courses. After studying good drawing, students are ready for painting. The department approaches paint- ing with a broad view. Its students never look like they were poured from the same mold. Each painter is en- couraged to follow his natural bent. The department offers problems which exercise the student ' s imagination and skill in such a way that he will discover for himself the natural course to take. 92