La Salle University - Explorer Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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Art is indispensable if I only knew what for? Jean Cocteau The question of purpose has long plagued art. As a vehicle for political and social criticism, purists decry its exploitation and adulteration. Social critics, on the other hand, are horrified by the detachment they perceive in art for art ' s sake. A similar controversy afflicts the liberal arts. The purpose of a liberal education can range from the creation of the well-rounded man (a creature sometimes scorned as a dilettante ) to the development of the specialist (a person often regarded as a mind-numbed pragmatist). Here at La Salle we have faced this question of purpose repeatedly. Each of us is a lib- eral arts student and, in this sense, each of us is an artist. Our choices of college, courses, and career state our position on the issue: some make decisions based on their intended profession; many choose their favorite fields or faculty; most mix these styles. The purpose of a yearbook as (do I dare?) an artwork is to recapture these styles along with the content of a given year. A yearbook must then, with or without judg- ments, imitate life — and this is the essence of art: not simply faces and dates, but atmosphere; not irrelevant trivia, but meaningful details; not a caricature, but the character. The aim of art, wrote Aristotle, is to represent not the outward appear- ance of things, but their inward significance; for this is . . . true reality. The aim of the 1982 Explorer is to go beyond a sterile representation of facts — to transmit a feeling, our experience. This book is, as any yearbook, ageless — capturing particular moments and refusing to let them go — and yet depicts a particular age. We have at the same time attempted to invert this phenomenon by presenting La Salle 1982 in the setting of four different artistic periods: the Greek, Roman, Renaissance, and Modern. By dealing with ages outside our own, we have tampered with history, but our purpose has been to capture, not isolated moments, but a spirit. These ages are only mediums through which different aspects of La Salle are highlighted. We have tried to create a prism of art which could show the variety of La Salle and the relation of parts to the whole. The French author, Jean Cocteau, felt art was indispensable, but could not answer the question why? We, too, feel art is indispensable. As to why, this yearbook is our answer. TR