ART
Art and the Public Schools - IN viewing the exhibition of Public Schools Art which is now being held at the Imperial Institute, it is of importance, before passing judgement, to examine the conditions under which art is produced at these notoriously Philistine institutions.
Firstly, it must be observed that the opportunities vary very
considerably from school to school. Whereas the time, equipment and instruction allotted to the majority of subjects are relatively uniform in schools of equal standing, you may find at one of such schools a visiting Art Master in attendance twice a week; attempting to teach in a converted shack under conditions of indescribable gloom and discouragement ; at another, two full-time men working in an up-to-date building almost as efficiently equipped as the science laboratories. Secondly, since art is a subject of such complexity that even a full-time student can only hope to approach a few aspects of it, at a public school it will follow that the Art Master (or Art Mistress) can only try to develop at the most one or two methods of self-expression. The choice of these is not the least diffi- culty confronting the teacher. Should it be sculpture as at Blundell's and Bryanston, design as at Cheltenham Ladies' College, or imaginative painting as at Bedford ? Every Art Master will have to solve these problems in his own way, and the somewhat heterogeneous effect of the present exhibition results from the great variety of solutions attempted.
It is also not yet very clear what is to be considered the primary object of the exhibition. Is it to educate the parents or to encourage the exhibitors ? Is it to enlighten the Art Masters or to impress the Head Masters ? Or, since the proceeds are to be devoted to the Dockland Settlement, is it frankly a charity concern ? Time alone will show which of these purposes is to be most usefully served by an exhibition of this kind, but, for the moment, there can be no doubt that interest is being aroused, and there are hopeful signs that by degrees art will perhaps be allowed to take its place as an important part of Public School education, instead of being what it has so often been in the past, an excuse for keeping the Lower School out of mischief for an hour a week.
I myself believe that the education of the parents may well prove to be the most useful outcome of such exhibitions, for, when all is said and done, the public schools must ultimately cater to some extent for the kind of education which the parents demand. If inspecting parents can be persuaded to investigate the Art School, the Music School and the Library with the same thoroughness with which they at present enquire into the Scholarship List, the Football Record and the Sanitary Block, we may one day arrive at a position where it will be necessary, from an advertisement point of view, for all public schools to put up at any rate a convincing facade of sympathy for the Arts.
Turning to the exhibition itself, two things strike one
immediately ; that a number of schools which contributed good work last year, Rugby for instance, are not represented this time ; and that the former method of arrangement by schools is much more satisfactory than the present grouping according to the medium employed and the type of work produced. Without devoting a whole afternoon to it, it is almost impossible to appraise the various schools according to their relative merits. Certain facts emerge, however, and a number of individual exhibits deserve mention. The sculpture exhibited by Blundell's and Bryanston reaches, as it did last year, a very high level both technically and artistically, especially a portrait (No. 461) by N. B. Clegg (Blundell's), and Monkeys (No. 487) by D. Barker (Bryanston). The excellent designs by girls of the Cheltenham Ladies' College compare only too well with the adjacent Victorian work, and the bold tempera paintings of Warwick School make effective decorations. Harlequin by J. M. Milburn (Haileybury) is conspicuous among the oils, and drawings and sculpture from Doon College, India, hint that interesting work is also being produced overseas.
If the exhibition as a whole does not quite succeed in reaching
the level of last year's, it should be remembered that this time half the work contributed is by boys and girls under sixteen, and that no exhibitor is represented by more than one work. The exhibition is therefore far more representative than the previous one, and, to that extent, more valuable as a field for studying the condition of art in the Public Schools today.
WILFRID BLUNT.
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