ART
6, Nos Braves Anciens Grecs . . . "
YET another attempt is being made to alleviate the unhappy position of the schoolboy who is compelled to study Greek, but can only read the great works of classical literature at such a speed that he has always forgotten the first scene of a play before he has reached the last. The Warburg Institute has arranged in the Imperial Institute Buildings an exhibition of photographs of Greek works of art illustrating various aspects of ancient civilisation, and it is hoped ultimately to make these photographs available for the use of schools in the form of a book or by some other means.
This is, of course, by no means the first attempt of the kind. It has long been realised that the schoolboy must be shown ancient works of art in some form or other. The evidence of the first stage of this theory still lingers in many classrooms in the form of dusty plaster casts, which must have inspired in many of us an ineffaceable distaste for Greek art of every kind. The matter has, of course, been treated in a more up-to-date manner. There are many volumes which contain good plates of Greek statues, but these are usually chosen on a purely aesthetic principle. There are also books illustrating the main points of Greek literature, religion and philosophy by means of- reliefs or vases. But these are only too often made up of the gloomiest, line drawings after vases, interspersed with photographs of Roman copies after Greek originals, together with the half-dozen most familiar works of the Best Period.
These aids to the study of the classics are based on the assumption that the eye is more easily appealed to than the ear. But it follows that the eye is also very sensitive to the manner in which things are presented to it. The eye of the schoolboy may be entirely put off by seeing a dry line-engrav- ing or a poor half-tone even of the finest statue, and will prob- ably prefer a striking photograph of a far inferior object. The organisers of the Warburg exhibition have therefore taken great pains only to get very good—and very big—photographs, and as far as possible, to avoid showing Roman copies, so that the eye of even the most casual visitor will be lured to the exhibits and not turned away from them. Moreover, the schoolboy is apt to be impatient, and soon gets bored with the few master- pieces which are repeatedly shown to him. His attention can often be caught by an unfamiliar object, and it is for this reason that many of the most popular works of Greek sculp- ture are left out in the present exhibition, to be replaced by a vase or a bronze less often seen.
Moreover, schoolbooks reproducing Greek works of art are almost always arranged either to illustrate the development of the art by itself, or else to illustrate the texts which the boys have to study. The organisers of the exhibition at the Warburg have assumed that the eye is the equal of the ear, in the sense that they have made the works of art chosen illustrate the fundamental features of the Greek attitude towards life, without too much reliance on the written word of the Greeks. The photographs are arranged in such a way that, with the aid of only the shortest captions, they tell the story them- selves.
The sections illustrating the development of Greek religion, or the evolution of the Greek town, tell a story which is parallel to that which can be read in the poets and historians, but which can be followed here without reference to them. The schoolboy is encouraged to draw from this sequence of images, which he can study with relatively little effort, a general conception of certain basic ideas in the Greek attitude towards life which will make it easier for him to understand the Greek plays or poems which he has to read in school.
To understand what Renan calls " the Greek miracle " it is essential to visit Greece itself ; but for those who cannot do
so an exhibition such as this, in which Greek ideals in all fields are presented in their most immediately appealing form through the visual arts, provides some consolation. It demon- strates, at any rate, how the Greek idea of humanism developed out of a primitive and not at all humanist civilisa- tion, to arrive at that view of life which has coloured all later European culture, and which is as relevant today as at any earlier period. AN-rxoNv BLUNT.
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