Massachusetts College of Art and Design - Palette and Pen Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 11 text:

From the Principal year 1930 marks memorable changes in the history of our school. We are completing the last and the forty-third year of happy association in the Old School and opening our long anticipated new building. These important changes are also attended by a change of Principal, who is indeed proud to graduate this Class of 1930. You should carry a rich contribution into the world of art, rare and winning personahty, sound train- ing, worthy ambition, and a will to succeed. Wherever adventure in the field of art may lead you, ever remember that your art is something to be lived. It is the spiritual revelation of an individ- ual soul — the expression of man’s need for the beautiful. In response to this personal and social urge for expression in beauty, cherish and strive to maintain the ideals of your training here in the Massachusetts School of Art, and as both time and experience contribute toward your professional stand- ing add the personal satisfaction of continuous study. Faithfully yours. Charles Edward Newell

Page 13 text:

Good Taste What is good taste? — is a fascinating question, a difficult question to answer — fascinating and difficult because the two words can be interpreted in so many ways. A friend of mine — a Boston painter, once asked a friend of his, a society woman of wit, “What is good taste?” She was quick in answer: “What I have.” A good friend of mine to whom I reported this dialogue characterized the answer given by the witty lady as showing lack of taste. How differing must be your bit of conversation which you give on the street corner to — let us say — a former High School friend, or an aunt, or an admirer, an old friend of your mother’s, or your school janitor. For every- one you must choose a fitting and appropriate greeting and conversation. What you say to one would never do to be said to another, it would be ill fitting — not in good taste. Your frame of mind at a baseball game differs from your frame of mind at church or again at a dance or in a painting class or at Sun- day dinner. Your reactions for any one of these functions would not fit at all for any of the other functions. More than that: do you not find that you actually are a different person in each different situation? It would indeed be displeasing and ill fitting to feel always the same way — no matter what the situation was. Is it then always in good taste to enter into the atmosphere of another person? What then if you meet some one who makes low jokes, is in every way below your dignity — should you conform? No — indeed, for: above all else to thine own self be true! Are you not then put in a difficult situation — this of conforming to others yet of staying yourself? Is the latter perhaps a kind of safety valve, or quick