SECRETARY'S MINUTES FIRST SESSION.-WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 1899 The session was opened at 2: 30 P. M. in the Jewish Synagogue, with the president, William A. Mason, Philadelphia, Pa., in the chair. After the president's address, a paper, " Decorative Composition: Its Educationa. Value," was read by Henry Talbot, special teacher of manual training, New York city, which was discussed by Miss Mertice MacCrea Buck, Dearborn-Morgan School, Orange, N. J. Miss Katherine M. Ball, supervisor of drawing, San Francisco, Cal., read a paper, "Problems in Artistic Rendering." Discussion by Walter A. Tenney, supervisor of drawing, Fresno, Cal., and Miss Eda Parrish, supervisor of drawing, San Bernardino, Call The following committees were appointed : The meeting was then adjourned until 2: 30 P. M., Thursday. SECOND SESSION. THURSDAY, JULY 13 The meeting was called to order at 2: 30 P. M. by the president. 66 The first speaker, Dr. Herman T. Lukens, State Normal School, California, Pa., read a paper on Drawing in the Early Years," which was discussed by Miss Ada M. Laughlin, State Normal School, Los Angeles, Cal., and Miss Esther M. Wilson, State Normal School, Chico, Cal. Then followed papers, "Art Instruction in High and Normal School," by Miss Josephine A. Greene, State Normal School, Plattsburg, N. Y., and "Art Instruction in the University," by Professor Henry T. Ardley, University of California, Berkeley, Cal. These papers were discussed by Miss Frances E. Ransom, Training School for Teachers, New York city; and Miss Gratia L. Rice, state director of drawing, New York. Dr. Langdon S. Thompson, supervisor of drawing, Jersey City, N. J., presented the preliminary report of the Committee on a Course of Study in Elementary Art Education. It was read and adopted. The report of the Committee on Resolutions was then read and adopted: The Committee on Resolutions begs leave to offer the following: It is the sense of your Committee on Resolutions that we convey to the rabbi and the board of trustees of this beautiful synagogue our thanks for their courtesy and generosity in giving to us so appropriate a place of meeting. To the Committee on Arrangements, Miss M. Louise Hutchinson, Mrs. C. P. Bradfield, Miss Ada M. Laughlin, and Miss Frances Sterrit, we extend our thanks for the complete arrangements that their forethought and industry have provided. To the officers of this department for their uniform courtesy, and fair conduct of its program and meetings, we extend a hearty "thank you." To the officers and people of this city and this state, for the royal greeting, the generous hospitality, and the many evidences of their kindness, and thoughtful provision for our comfort and happiness, we say: "You have won our hearts, and our capitulation to you is unconditional." D. R. AUGSBURG, Chairman. The report of the Committee on Nominations was then called for. The report was as follows: For President - Miss Frances E. Ransom, New York city. For Vice-President - Professor Henry T. Ardley, Berkeley, Cal. The report having been duly adopted, and the nominees declared elected for the ensuing year, the department adjourned. MARY A. WOODMANSEE, Secretary. PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS BY WILLIAM A. MASON, DIRECTOR OF DRAWING IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, If it were not for the flexible nature of the subject of art education, the amount of experimentation which it has undergone would not have been tolerated. In art education we have passed thru the stage of uniform development for purely utilitarian ends, to the stage of individual development for creative ability and self-expression. We began some twenty years ago in the purely industrial, or commercial, spirit, basing our work, along with the three R's of the old curriculum, on the belief that the child must be fitted for an occupation; and that in drawing his hand simply required to be trained in exercises developing only manual skill along the lines of so-called industrial art. He was therefore given a purely automatic drill, chiefly in geometric or conventional forms, resulting in making his hand very skillful in imitating, but leaving the mind barren of real creative activities. Later, however, under the impulse of modern psychology and child. study, we saw the study of drawing widening out into art education. Then for the first time we began to see the full value of the subject in awakening the perceptive, creative, and expressive faculties of the child. But for a long period these vital functions of thought were circumscribed in their activities, while the great original fountains of inspiration, from which all art impulses have always sprung, were almost wholly ignored. Slow, indeed, has been our emancipation from the traditions of the past; and long, indeed, have we been in discovering the natural child and his simple needs. However, we were on the right track, for we were beginning to perceive that all expression - whether literary or graphic— to be genuinely educational must grow out of the child's own experience. Moreover, we have discovered that, properly to stimulate and enrich his mind, we must approach the child on the side of feeling and enter his thought thru the channels of interest. Any scheme of education, more especially in drawing, that emphasizes the disciplinary side, to the sacrifice of the interest and the feelings of the child, will lead away from the true approach to his intelligence-the emotional or æsthetic door. Consider for a moment the unnatural conditions that surround the city child. Where he requires activity we exact inactivity and unthinking compliance; where he needs initiative we compel imitation; and where he demands the things of nature we give him the things of man. I believe it is our mission, as teachers of the aesthetics, to ameliorate these conditions, and to revert to simpler and more fundamental methods, at least in our own specialty. It seems to me that the conflict is between the conventional and the natural, and that the solution of the problem lies in the proper reconciliation, all along the line of education, of these two factors. I will not presume, as a teacher of drawing, to trespass very far beyond the confines of my own subject; tho I feel that our work makes for general intelligence and culture quite as much as the other branches of study, and much more so than some. But I am convinced that there is demanded a more natural procedure in all subjects, a method more properly related to the nascent periods of the child, and one that recognizes the aesthetic element to be as important as the intellectual, at least in the early years, where, indeed, it is undoubtedly more important. I believe that in the reverent, sympathetic study of nature and of the things of nature we have a promoter of all those activities that are so indissolubly bound together in the effort of knowledge getting-the perceptive, conceptive, and imaginative faculties, which externalize knowledge thru creative expression in words and actions. No one can have failed to observe the magical charm which poems and stories of nature exert over the minds and hearts of children, to a degree possessed by no other kind of literature. "Hiawatha," "The Barefoot Boy," Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson—these are the children's epics. The spirit of nature breathes thru these works. green, sloping fields, the wooded uplands, the sparkling meadows with the sleeping ponds reflecting the blue vault above, and over all the joyous sky bearing its rich argosies of fleecy sails-all such picturse of outdoor The life electrify and animate the child. The free, natural, wholesome life which they portray imbue him with an exhilarating love for natural things and natural phenomena - the "knowledge never learned of schools." For, eschewing books and tasks, Face to face with her he talks. This sympathetic study of nature excites the wonder of the child; wonder leads to admiration; admiration to a desire to know and understand; and these are the beginnings of knowledge. If it is true-as I begin to believe it may be-that all the acquired knowledge necessary for a young child to learn in the first few years may be imparted with nature as a text-book and an inspiring teacher for a guide, it is doubly true of art education. Art has sprung from nature. Nature is its original and constant source of inspiration; and there can be no true art that is not based on her everlasting principles. Two-thirds of all pictorial art is simply nature herself - pictures of the landscape or of the sea, with no particular story except the "wondrous tale" of earth, sky, and water. Children are perennially interested in such pictures; and their interest is heightened if there is in the picture some object or objects that touch their own experience, whereby they may transport themselves thru the action of the picture into the fascinating life of nature, which is the natural life. Such is the inspiration of nature study. I believe it should be the groundwork of our studies in art education in the elementary schools. It may be contended that natural forms are too complex and too difficult; and that the child should first learn the "alphabet of drawing" before essaying the drawing of concrete objects. But not all natural forms are complex. Nature affords an infinite variety of forms for all stages of progress; and the wise teacher will grade her exercises to suit the capacity of her pupils. We no longer teach grammatical construction before reading or composition is begun, but long after the child has learned to express himself fluently in his mother-tongue, both orally and by writing. We do not even teach the analysis of the word the letters- until after the child knows the word, or even the short sentence, as a concrete object of thought. So, also, in drawing we have given up the analytical method, and are beginning to learn the desirability of the pupil drawing the concrete object at once, instead of halting and stumbling over the scientific construction of it. This latter study should be a later phase of the work, introduced after the child has secured fluency in co-ordination of subjective and objective ideation and motor action. Someone has wittily said that "nothing succeeds like success.' Surely, in drawing, nothing succeeds like drawing; not analyzing nor dallying with the theory of drawing, but graphically -picturing things as they are perceived by the eye or conceived by the mind. Nor do children require, as some people believe, a period of manual drill preliminary to, and apart from, their first efforts at pictorial representation. Drawing and thinking must be related. Technique must be subordinated to thought-expression. Mechanical skill is gained at the cost of creative spontaneity. Linear execution from the very first is infinitely in advance of a child's conception of form and of its relations. Consequently emphasis should be placed on those exercises which will tend to develop and strengthen these important faculties. Manual dexterity will be the by-product of genuine object-drawing; a means, not an end. Happily, the advocates of the "point, line, and plane" theory are rapidly becoming gray; and the dangers of this method are disappearing. There is, however, a subject which in all of its bearings is as yet in the polemic stage. Man's application of nature in the manifold embellishment of his handiwork has compelled certain processes and procedures, more or less mechanical, and based on conventional usages. Mechanical processes of reduplication, which cheapen and popularize objects and the decoration of objects, have imposed a certain style of art which we denominate conventional. It is the obeisance that nature has to pay to this branch of art a kind of mincing minuet of regular steps and formal attitudes, a method of behavior, as it were, very necessary in certain places and on occasions, but withal a final polish or veneer over the more substantial and sincere natural qualities. This conventional drawing, being a phase and an adaptation of natural forms, would seem to demand a sparing use in the early years, notwithstanding the simplicity of its elements, and to be introduced systematically only late in the course. This seems wise, both because this logically appears to be the proper order for it, and because its practice is prejudicial to the young pupil's correct observation of the individual characteristics and of the infinite variety of natural forms. It is well recognized, however, that children's early drawings are largely imaginative, even when they draw from the objects before them. This is unfortunate in the interest of truthful representation. But, inasmuch as it seems to be the natural mode of graphic expression of the very young child, and corresponds with his naïve romancing in language, we should cultivate his spontaneity of expression rather than check it either by requiring him to draw conventional forms too early or yet by a rigid insistence upon perspective appearances. The perspective difficulties of objective representation of solid objects should be introduced only gradually, by easy exercises, so that they may react upon, but not replace, subjective expression. Just here lies the |