|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 11
Such was the English art, whose history is in a sense at your doors,
grown scarce indeed, and growing scarcer year by year, not only
through greedy destruction, of which there is certainly less than
there used to be, but also through the attacks of another foe,
called nowadays 'restoration.'
I must not make a long story about this, but also I cannot quite
pass it over, since I have pressed on you the study of these ancient
monuments. Thus the matter stands: these old buildings have been
altered and added to century after century, often beautifully,
always historically; their very value, a great part of it, lay in
that: they have suffered almost always from neglect also, often
from violence (that latter a piece of history often far from
uninteresting), but ordinary obvious mending would almost always
have kept them standing, pieces of nature and of history.
But of late years a great uprising of ecclesiastical zeal,
coinciding with a great increase of study, and consequently of
knowledge of mediaeval architecture, has driven people into spending
their money on these buildings, not merely with the purpose of
repairing them, of keeping them safe, clean, and wind and water-
tight, but also of 'restoring' them to some ideal state of
perfection; sweeping away if possible all signs of what has befallen
them at least since the Reformation, and often since dates much
earlier: this has sometimes been done with much disregard of art
and entirely from ecclesiastical zeal, but oftener it has been well
meant enough as regards art: yet you will not have listened to what
I have said to-night if you do not see that from my point of view
this restoration must be as impossible to bring about, as the
attempt at it is destructive to the buildings so dealt with: I
scarcely like to think what a great part of them have been made
nearly useless to students of art and history: unless you knew a
great deal about architecture you perhaps would scarce understand
what terrible damage has been done by that dangerous 'little
knowledge' in this matter: but at least it is easy to be
understood, that to deal recklessly with valuable (and national)
monuments which, when once gone, can never be replaced by any
splendour of modern art, is doing a very sorry service to the State.
You will see by all that I have said on this study of ancient art
that I mean by education herein something much wider than the
teaching of a definite art in schools of design, and that it must be
something that we must do more or less for ourselves: I mean by it
a systematic concentration of our thoughts on the matter, a studying
of it in all ways, careful and laborious practice of it, and a
determination to do nothing but what is known to be good in
workmanship and design.
Of course, however, both as an instrument of that study we have been
speaking of, as well as of the practice of the arts, all
handicraftsmen should be taught to draw very carefully; as indeed
all people should be taught drawing who are not physically incapable
of learning it: but the art of drawing so taught would not be the
art of designing, but only a means towards THIS end, GENERAL
CAPABILITY IN DEALING WITH THE ARTS,
For I wish specially to impress this upon you, that DESIGNING cannot
be taught at all in a school: continued practice will help a man
who is naturally a designer, continual notice of nature and of art:
no doubt those who have some faculty for designing are still
numerous, and they want from a school certain technical teaching,
just as they want tools: in these days also, when the best school,
the school of successful practice going on around you, is at such a
low ebb, they do undoubtedly want instruction in the history of the
arts: these two things schools of design can give: but the royal
road of a set of rules deduced from a sham science of design, that
is itself not a science but another set of rules, will lead
nowhere;--or, let us rather say, to beginning again.
As to the kind of drawing that should be taught to men engaged in
ornamental work, there is only ONE BEST way of teaching drawing, and
that is teaching the scholar to draw the human figure: both because
the lines of a man's body are much more subtle than anything else,
and because you can more surely be found out and set right if you go
wrong. I do think that such teaching as this, given to all people
who care for it, would help the revival of the arts very much: the
habit of discriminating between right and wrong, the sense of
pleasure in drawing a good line, would really, I think, be education
in the due sense of the word for all such people as had the germs of
invention in them; yet as aforesaid, in this age of the world it
would be mere affectation to pretend to shut one's eyes to the art
of past ages: that also we must study. If other circumstances,
social and economical, do not stand in our way, that is to say, if
the world is not too busy to allow us to have Decorative Arts at
all, these two are the DIRECT means by which we shall get them; that
is, general cultivation of the powers of the mind, general
cultivation of the powers of the eye and hand.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|