ART FOR CHILDREN

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 254, 23 July 1937, Page 13

ART FOR CHILDREN

New Teaching Methods in Austria PROFESSOR CIZEK’S WORK An outline of the new era in children’s art in Vienna introduced by Professor F. Cizek, who came from Czechoslovakia but was really a German, was given by Dr. Paul L! Dengler. director of the Austro-American Institute ot Education, Vienna, in a New Education Fellowship conference seminar yesterday. Mr. R. Hipkins presided. Professor Cizek’s dream, Dr. Dengler said, had been to become an artist, and, with this idea, he went to Vienna to study at. the Academy of Fine Aits. Through the children of his landlady and of neighbours, he discovered that bis talent lay, not in the practice of art, but in the development of creative ability in others. He became a teacher, but his unorthodox methods did not please the authorities, and he was about to be discharged when he was engaged by a semi-private institution, the School for Applied Arts. In J.S9B he formed his first youth class as a private affair. Free and Happy. Cizek’s first, principle was that the child must be made to feel free and happy. "You can’t expect a child to become a creator in a pyison cell —I almost. wanted Lo say a school-room, ’ sttid Dr. Dengler. So Cizek encouraged the children to beautify the room they used and to feel the joy of living. His second principle was not to impose teaching upon the children; he realised that any attempt to develop technical skill would probably have some measure of success, but that, in the process, it would destroy all that was interesting, new and fascinating in children’s art. His third principle was to concern himself only with those children who were gifted: he was not for mass production, but for the aristocracy in the realm of creative art. “I iiad a boy who went to Cizek’s class,” said Dr. Dengler. "When he came home the first day I asked him, ‘What did Cizek say?’—‘Nothing.’ ‘What did he ask you to do?’—‘Nothing.’ ‘What did you do?’—‘Looked out of the window.’ So my boy dropped out of Cizek’s class, and, although Cizek was a close friend of mine, he did not even notice.” The Austrian public schools had ultimately adopted Cizek’s ideas in a modified form, the lecturer said. The ideal was to keep the child’s freshness of expression, yet try to give a certain guidance. The old guidance had suppressed everything; the new guidance kept everything, yet gave a helping hand. Methods of Cizek. If a child in Cizek’s class said, "I want to draw a fox,” the teacher did nothing to help him. Cizek contended that if he produced a picture of a fox, the child would catch an idea of how to draw it. but that: all the ideas which had led to the desire for creative expression would disappear. In the public schools, the teacher would begin to talk about the fox; one of the children would probably volunteer to bring a picture; drawings would be made and criticised by the class; ami there would be a visit to the zoo. With this free method, remarkable results had been achieved.

It had been found that a class usually divided itself into two groups: Visionaries, or storytellers, who saw and drew an object as a whole, and constructionists, who saw and drew it piece by piece. Where one group had the sense of colour and beauty,, the other had mental soundness. The ideal was to give tu eacli group what it lacked.

Dr. Dengler showed some interesting lantern slides, illustrating children’s art work in various forms, lino cuts, paste work, paper cuts, chalk drawings. and water-colour paintings. Most of the work had been done by children about the age of 13 years, and many examples showed remarkable imaginative power and creative ability. Particularly arresting was a finely-drawn study, “Men on the Street,” in the foreground the tortured, emaciated faces of the unemployed men who thronged the pavement. It had been done by a boy of 14 years, who had remarked, “My father is among them.”