AUCKLAND DIOCESAN CATHOLIC TEACHERS’ CONFERENCE

New Zealand Tablet, 1 June 1916, Page 9

AUCKLAND DIOCESAN CATHOLIC TEACHERS’ CONFERENCE

IMPORTANT PAPERS AND SUGGESTIONS , ** 7——*—— (Continued.) '• > ■; The paper on ‘ The Teaching of Literature in Primary Schools ’ was highly commended. 1 The head teachers were asked to draw up their schemes, in English with a view to assisting secondary work, a base language, well known, being very necessary for pupils studying Latin and French, one or other of which is necessary for a secondary course. Much, discussion took place on the point whether children should choose their own poetry to learn, or have it chosen for them. The general feeling was that a judicious nurture of both methods would create the best taste. The following text-books were added to the list suggested, in the paper;—Carpenter and Boyd’s English, Robert’s Book on English, Chubb’s Teaching of English, Dr. M. F. Egan’s History of English Literature, ■ Dr. Azarins’- Books on Heading. CATHOLIC ART. Catholic art is a wide subject, and has been ably dealt with from many points of view in periodicals and introductory essays. '■ As this paper is a contribution to a teachers’ conference it does not propose to view its title in any but an educational light. . It is written in the suggestive mood, and is offered to the indulgent kindness or fellow-teachers by one who is deeply interested in the subject, and eager that so fair a gate to the kingdom of beauty and truth should be opened as wide as may be to our children in the secondary schools. Rightly understood, the study of Catholic art may be a means of untold good, even to children. Its influence will be felt in ever-widening circles as the current of their school life broadens out into the future. Not to speak, of the many obvious advantages of studying good pictures, right principles of artistic appreciation may be imparted even to childrenprinciples that will guard against the materialistic ideas that seem to infect everything. Still more, it will help them to find in the masterpieces of Christian art a stimulus to faith and love, and will awaken admiration and gratitude towards the Church, which has done so much towards enabling art to reach its perfection. • A. Streeter declares ‘ it is no exaggeration to say that the art of nainting is the creation of the Catholic Church.’ Anyone after ten minutes’ thought would be able to make out a whole list of the good things following upon such a study; how a character is improved by whatever helps to cultivate tastethat is, taste as taken in its widest meaning of a right feeling for the good and beautiful. But I spare you my version of the list, knowing that it is one thing to theorize and another to do, one thing -to admire from the safe position of a non-purchaser, another to pay down the hard cash (perhaps with the prospect of paying a good deal at intervals in the future as well). Think of the crowded curriculum, the breathless time-table, and is a place to be found for this endless, this time-absorbing subject, that has nothing to, show when the examinations come round ? No ;I do not ask for anything like that, I resolutely keep away from curricula and time-tables, and examinations. - All that I do ask of the kindness of the teachers present is that they would listen awhile with leisured minds (Oh, that it might be with minds as free as though Blue Books and Education Boards had never seen the day !); and, perhaps, consider in an unprofessional way, the pleasure, healthy and ennobling, of such a study as Christian art; the immense moral good that accompanies that pleasure and, perhaps, too, conceive a desire to place that pleasure within reach of their elder pupils. If this' could be set going on the right lines and given a firm hold on the right principles of artistic appreciation, there is no saying what possibilities would not be,opened up before them.

What are these right principles of artistic appreciation, and how are they to be implanted in so thin a soil as the undeveloped mind of a child ? . In answer to the first question, it seems that the most fundamental principle of all is that which is revealed by inquiring into the origin of art, seeing how art originates from the need of expressing in visible form . some spiritual meaning that refuses to reveal itself in words i.e., that art begins from within, its true origin is subjective, that its life and force and beauty depend essentially on the idea in the mind of the artist, and only in an entirely different sense on the- form, plastic or pictorial, that he chooses for its embodiment. To secure an understanding of the truth, it .is to secure a position from which the view taken of works of art is sure to be true. It shows that external beauty, harmony of color, or technical skill is not enough l< make a picture truly great. A photograph is not a work of art, not even supposing the power of photographing color to be perfectly acquired, A perfect painted portrait is altogether different from a mechanically produced likeness, even apart from consideration of color. The camera reproduces only those external, sensible appearances of light and shade that affect the sensitive plate, while the artist, the real- artist, reproduces those living, spiritual forces'of mind and heart and temperament and character which, revealed elusively in the outer habit of the man, affect the sensitive plate of his own spiritual soul. He paints what is seen by him, and what he sees may differ considerably from what another person sees. Two equally skilful artists, utterly ■ unlike in temperament and character, would necessarily produce very different. likenesses of the same sitter, given that both knew him intimately. It is not so much the actual model the painter represents, as the mental image he has formed of him, and the mental image varies with the mind that makes it. So that where there is no informing soul in a picture, ( the picture fails, and no degree of perfection, of technique, or anything else, can give it a right ,to be classed among works of art.

This is a fundamental tnfth, a standard of appreciation. Judged by it, how many modern productions would be removed from positions they undeservedly occupied, and with them would be removed much that lowers ideals and corrupts taste. Nor is this all. Such a principle, thoroughly grasped in its moral significance, will prove a safeguard against those forms of the materialistic spirit that tend to esteem only what appeals to the senses, and leave the soul out of consideration. It leads one to seek and value reality rather than appearance in every order of things.

With regard to the second question— as to how such a truth may be impressed upon the child’s mind—perhaps the following scheme may suggest some answer : First, introductory considerations on the four chief alms which may be pursued by art, and on the essential difference between imitative and decorative work and that which is symbolic and expressive. Take, for instance, the painting of flowers. The work would be classed as imitative art if the painter had seemed to aim at as exact a representation of flowers that they might be mistaken for the realitylilies that one would stretch out one’s hand to gather. The test of .perfection is likeness to reality.

But if his object were to decorate a panel by a cluster of lilies, he would not aim at photographic accuracy, but would ‘compose’ his subject arranging his lights so as to secure harmonious blending of color, removing a blemish here, uncurling a leaf there, for since he is aiming at effect, he will make whatever changes will improve his picture. Or, he might conventionalise the flowers, and make them the basis of a design to be repeated in a cornice or capital near -by The first painting would be equally successful were the lilies prettily arranged or not, faded or fresh ; the only question is, are they natural? The second painting requires, first and foremost, that they should be beauti-, ful; it is an example of decorative painting. Both pictures are concerned with external form only, both, then, belong to what may be called, ‘ objective’ art.

When we come to symbolic or to expressive painting, we are altogether on a different plane. T Here external form is only of secondary importance. Lilies, for instance, in the hands of the virgin saints are not there to show the painter’s skill nor to improve the picture. They may be exquisitely painted or not, it matters little, for the raison d'etre is their significance; they are there to speak of purity: they are symbolic, painted because of what they stand for. The abstract idea of purity is expressed by means of a symbol, but one which has no intrinsic connection with that which it symbolises. _ Creative or expressive art goes further; it seeks symbols or forms so intimately connected with the idea that, they not only call it to mind through association, but actually embody it; they are, its ‘ visible incarnation.’ The painter of the symbolic lilies may wish to express the loveliness of the purity by so painting the saint. that the beauty of her virgin soul shines through her face, her posture, her whole person. ‘ This muddy vesture of decay ’ is so irradiated by the glory of her holiness that one feels he has represented the soul more truly than the body. There is no need, of a symbolic flower to tell us this is a virgin saint. This gives some idea of what is meant by expressive, or creative art, so named because the idea is incarnated in the form created to express it. It is the highest achievement of art. Both symbolic and expressive art differ from the two former kinds in that they are primarily concerned with the meaning behind the picture, and so may be called ‘ subjective.’ Some such explanations, will double the interest of following the history of painting, noting how art passes from the crude attempts of the symbolic period to the masterpieces of the expressive, when the outer form was so perfectly fitted to the inner thought that it enabled the idea to shine luminously through it; and then the slow decline, when delight in the beauty of mere form usurped the place of the ideal. The two changed places, their relations were reversed, and art sank back into the decorative and imitative stages. Such considerations put people in the right attitude of mind for approaching the works of earlier periods when workmen were still grappling with the difficulties of technique, and save them from undervaluing the imperfect results. Rather will they admire the living truth, captured and partially revealed, when methods were still so primitive. Then comes the actual history of . Christian art, where these principles are driven home by examples. For this it is better to take for intensive study only one or two works of each period, than to try to see something of all the works of each master. The following are the periods into which the story of painting seems naturally to fall: 1. The symbolic stage, from the time of the Catacombs to the beginning of the great thirteenth century. A study of the subjects chosen, of the underlying principles of Byzantine art, will offer innumerable examples of the right relation between , the two elements in. a picture, bringing out. the fact that the meaning is behind everything. The representations in the Catacombs may be taken as examples of what I mean. During those terrible 300 years of persecution, What did the suffering Christians most • need ? Was it not hope, courage, to hold on to the end ? So their pictures were such as would help them to ‘ lift their eyes; to the mountain whence cometh help All these early representations of our Lord emphasise His Divinity,, showing Him triumphant and majestic. The emblems of the Good Shepherd speak rather of His strength than of His tenderness. That strong young David, with a sheep poised lightly on his shoulders, is not intended to be a likeness of our Lordthere was no need to represent the human nature of the Son of Man, His. ‘ shadow was still, on earth’ —it is a symbol of the Divine pity and almighty power of their Shepherd Leader, strong to save.

2. The era of transition, when the feeling, that beautiful forms, convincing in themselves, would be a more adequate expression of ideals than conventional symbols, led artists to strive to blend the meaning and

its expression into one complete whole. Here we see them beginning the study of natural forms of rules of perspective, and all else concerned with technique. Note, too, how northern art, unhampered by paganism or Byzantine formalism, outstrips that of Italy. Gothic architecture, with sculpture, metal work, and stained glass, had reached its climax before ‘ the father of

modern painting ’ was heard of. 3. The climax of the expressive period, from Giotto to Raphael—an embarnts dt choix among the pictures to be studied intensively, and a period of unending interest as regards the gradually changing relation between idea and form. A new world is opened up when Giotto turned to the human side of the mysteries of the Incarnation. Instead of looking up to see among the fires of the Godhead ‘ One having the likeness of the Son of Man,’ and seeking in language of symbol to speak the ineffable, he turns to work, and his soul thrills with a new joy at the sight of ‘ the fairest of the children of men.’ Henceforth, the perfect human loveliness of the Son of Man becomes his ideal, and he tries to make us see our Blessed Lord as He was on earth, the Brother of our race. One is tempted to stop here and go no further, did not unmistakable signs point only too clearly to the coming decline. 4. The decline of Christian art, beginning with the immediate followers of Raphael, some say with the great master himself. Here are studied the signs and causes of the deterioration, which must not be laid

entirely at the door of the Renaissance; for once considerations of form were given the first place, art gradually became less and less subjective. 5. The decorative stage. . Art ceasing to be expressive drops to the decorative, when beauty of form is all in all a dead beauty, for there is no soul to- vivify. Pictures treating of mythological subjects cannot but be dead : they were living to the old classic painters, but to a Christian' they can mean nothing, except in an allegorical sense..

6. The re-action against this dead formalism, in the more modern schools of imitative art, which is frankly objective. A glance at any catalogue of modern pictures proves it—landscapes, seascapes, portraits, ‘ genre ’ pictures are usually the majority, a few poetical, legendary, and mythological subjects, and still fewer sacred pictures; but which of these can bear comparison with those of the golden ages of faith ? I seem to end in a minor key, but those who have a right to judge foretell a brighter future when the impressionist school shall have found its way to excellence and still more when artists turn to. seek their inspiration fit the only true sourcetrue religion. In the course, such as I have tried to describe, one must keep in mind and bring clearly before the children’s minds the part taken by the Church in the development of art. Its splendid period is that of its greatest material power and influence : every page of history shows Churchmen as art patrons; the subjects, too, show clearly whence they drew their inspiration. They painted, that is the best of them, because they were so smitten with the radiant loveliness of the truths faith unveiled, that it were a small thing to spend their lives trying to make others see the sights that had carried them out of themselves. Take away the Church, blot out the names of Popes, and Cardinals, and what is left of the history of art? Only the divinely appointed Guardian, the Pillar and ground of Truth,’ could have lifted art to such sublime heights. Such a course of study affords ample opportunities of impressing deeply the fundamental principle of the between idea and form, and should enable 'students to see in the sacred masterpieces new manifestations of -God and holy things, and to feel some- " thing of the glow of the love that burned so warmly ■, in the hearts of the great Christian painters. As a test of the children’s grasp of these principles, I would suggest that pictures unnamed should i be presented for their appreciation, and' these appreciations discussed at length. Here tactful care is needed to preserve honesty and independence of judg-

ment, for often children quite unconsciously tend to express mot the actual impression made on them, but what they feel they are expected to say, or what* they ought to say. Modern pictures might with advantage be submitted to the same criticism 'and discussion. One remark before closinga wish that all sacred representations in our schools were such as would tend to chasten and elevate the children’s taste, as well as to lift their hearts to the truths of their holy faith. ‘Oh the pity of it, lago; the pity of it’ one sighs on seeing the poor gaudy prints sometimes hanging round a class-room. They were, hung with the best intentions in the world ; probably there was nothing else to hang. But could not something be done to propagate copies of the best sacred pictures in our schools The Medici Society might prove a useful ally. ' This paper was much admired by the conference, which expressed an opinion that the lust for the rubbish served up at picture shows was but an indication that there was very great need for a chastening in the children’s tastes regarding art. If the municipal authorities would- prohibit children going to any but very special picture entertainments, where scenic, industrial pictures, and others illustrative of deeds of heroism, were screened, an uplifting in the tastes of the next generation would be assured. This could be done by not giving a license to those shows that admitted children 'promiscuously. There is no reason why picture proprietors could not have children’s evenings from 6 to 7, instead of coaxing them out to mix, till late hours, with the vulgar folk who thirst for questionable amusement. * Old pupils should be induced to provide the ways and means of decorating the school walls, the choice of pictures to be left to competent judges. It was also stated that a quarter of an hour now and again, spent in pointing out the soul that the artist has worked into his picture, would be a great help in fostering the child’s taste, making it contemplative and appreciative. (To be continued.)