Rhode Island School of Design - Portfolio Yearbook (Providence, RI)

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“Now, we’re getting an insight,” laughed the Cynic. “It’s all a game of bluff. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a really ugly object, but I touch it—and see how beautiful it is.” “Exactly,” nodded the Artist; “all anything needs to make it beautiful is just that touch, and if it’s bluffing, it is the most divine kind of a bluff, and the man that can so touch it is acclaimed down the ages as a genius id “So a School of Design is a place where one turns out Geniuses, is it?” asked Common Sense. “No,” said the Artist, “not by a long sight. But it’s a place where the things that the genius knows by intuition are taught to those who aren’t so richly endowed, so that they may 2 “May fill the world with burnt-wood pin-trays and dogs done in dia- monds, eh?” The Artist appealed to Common Sense. “You advocate the teaching of English composition in the schools, don’t you, and yet don’t expect a yearly crop of Shakespeares? But the more the students know of composition, and, incidentally, of Shakespeare, the better and more useful citizens they will be. So with technical art training—if the student can be taught something of the laws governing the production of beautiful things, and have his taste trained 2 “And what constitutes taste?” asked the Cynic. “Is it an article of fixed value, or are there maximum and minimum rates, with rebates for those in the ring Common Sense interrupted. “Don’t try too hard to be funny. I really want to know the Artist’s idea about taste. What is it?” “Well, it’s hard to define.” The Artist mused for a moment. “If I said that it’s the power of appreciating in an object the presence of even some frac- tion of the Supreme Beauty you'd say I wasn’t definite enough—and yet that is what it is; and all through the ages, though the manifestations have been different, those things which have possessed the greatest amount of the ideal have been the things most prized, and those able to appreciate them have been the law givers in matters of artistic judgment.” “A sort of close corporation, ch?” put in the Cynic. “We are It, as it were, and you others are all Hopeless Barbarians.” “State it that way if you want to,” said the Artist. “We have no laws to make you like what we like, and the justness of our opinions must be meas- ured by the number of our followers.” “A rather forlorn minority,” murmured Common Sense. “And, therefore, a School of Design,” said the Artist. “It’s a recruiting station from which our ranks may be filled.”

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AS TO SCHOOLS OF DESIGN HE Cynic grinned at Common Sense, as he turned to the Artist. “Here’s a poser for you,” he said, “Why is a School of Design?” The Artist shifted his pipe. “T’ll tell you,” he started quickly, “you see—” “He’s off again,” groaned Common Sense. “Why did you start him? Now we'll hear for the thousandth time all about the awakening of the Na- tional Art Consciousness, when he means the individual artist’s conceitedness, and the uplifting power of the Ideal, instead of the levelling power of the dol- lar, and———” “Oh fiddlesticks!” broke in the Artist, “you pride yourself so on your practicality that you let it blind you to the fact that this world is to be lived in for far other purposes than the mere gaining of a livelihood. But if it can be proved to you that more money can be made from a thing by its having some of that quality you are taught to call artistic, then you will ad- mite the almost human intelligence of the ‘artist chap’ who did it—reduce it all to a money basis, and forget that to do it the artist must have dreamed dreams and seen visions—have been fed in the spirit rather than in the flesh—” “Don’t you think the Artist is getting rather stout?” asked the Cynic of Common Sense. “Yes; and also away from the subject.” “Not at all,” cried the Artist. “If a School of Design were merely a place where the hands were taught to be a little more skillful it might be argued about in terms of dollars and cents instead of ideals and aspirations éf “And pray tell me,” interrupted the Cynic, “what are the idealistic aspira- tions of a man who is weaving cloth for ‘pants’ at so many cents per yard?” The Artist sighed. “He may not have any, but he should have. There is as much difference in the beauty of a good and a bad design for trouser cloth, relatively, as there is in the figure of the Apoxyomenos and ! “And mine, for instance,’ put in Common Sense. “And who is the Apox- yomenos ?” “And the St. Gauden’s Lincoln, I was going to say.” “But I thought you admired the Lincoln,” said the Cynic. “] do, immensely. But it has spiritual beauty, not physical, and it was the ideals and aspirations of the sculptor that made it possible for him to make a masterpiece of an acknowledgedly unbeautiful subject—a man in modern clothes.”

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“I'm surprised that such a cause should condescend to such mundane meth- ods,” the Cynic remarked. “Well, they wouldn’t be necessary, save that the human animal is easily led to forget his divinity and be content with lower things. And he dislikes to use his brain—and there is as much brain work in a satisfactory piece of de- stgn as there is in a problem in geometry, though, as it is akin to the infinite rather than to the finite, it can’t be reduced to such finitely expressed rules.” “But surely,” exclaimed Common Sense, “it isn’t all so up in the air “Ditigble balloon—mostly gas,” chuckled the Cynic. The Artist shook his head. “Far from it,” he said. “It’s based on logic and reason and cemented with solid technique. Though the discussions of the ‘why’ of some things may lead into rather un-get-at-able regions, they’re mostly governed by clearly reasoned laws founded on structural fitness and proper adaptation to use, and the necessity of good technique is never for a moment lost sight of. A building that expresses its structure and function, a piece of design adapted to the object it adorns, a carpet—a piece of furniture—a machine—the school that sees that each one of these objects is designed in ac- cordance with the best standards—both technical and theoretical—is doing an immense work; and in spite of the Cynic’s derby and that scarf pin which Common Sense sports, I believe that some day America will be, by means of such schools, the most artistic nation the world has ever seen.” The Cynic grunted. “Personalities and prophecies are both in bad taste,” he said, Common Sense smiled indulgently. “If I were sure that the work in such a School were founded on logic and reason, I’d be willing to overlook the Ar- tist’s rudeness and say—the more of them the better.” Again the Cynic grunted. “Well,” he said, “I suppose they can’t do much harm.” 9?