How to Paint the Chinese Way by Jean Long (review)

Books 239 Her ability to teach adults who are not artists to draw artistically is beyond dispute, and her achievementhas made her book oneof the most widely read of the past 10 years in U.S. art pedagogical literature. That Edward‘s methods provide direct accessto the right hemisphere of the human brain is doubtful. Her suggestion that the hemispheres operate independently in an activity ascomplex as drawing is a premise that, with the advantage of hindsight, we should view with scepticism. While completing her doctoral studies during the mid-seventies, Edwards adapted contemporary work on lateral specialization of the brain by Bogen, Gazzaniga, Ornstein, Sperry and others to rationalize the phenomena she observed in her teaching situations. Unhappily she and often her sources overlooked indications that the normal unsevered brain functions as a unit, a fact that her critics since have hastened to emphasize. Many art educators have accepted Edwards’s unsubstantiated claims of teaching the right hemisphere at face value because it fits their intuitive understanding of the artistic process. Although the functions of the right brain arerelativelynew discoveries,art teachers havetalked for years of undoing preconceptions and learning to see anew. Edwards’s drawing exerciseshave a familiar ring, adapted asthey arefromthose of Nicolaides and others used successfullyin many art schools. Edwards’s pedagogical sources are a catholic mixture of empirical science, humanistic psychology, education and art, ranging from Zen through Krishnamurti, Persig, Huxley and Bruner to old favorites of art teachers such as Grosser’s The Painter’s Eye (New York Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1951) and Henri’s The Art Spirit (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1923).In her search to find pragmatic solutionsto problems of teaching the visual arts, Edwards has moved toward constructing a psychologyof art from the artist’s point of view, as opposed to that of a psychologist. Edward‘s attempt is commendable and should be noted despite her distracting misinterpretation of split-brain research. How to Paint the Chinese Way. Jean Long. Blandford Press, Poole, Dorset, U.K., 1979. 127 pp., illus. €5.95. Reviewed by Jeffrey S. Erickson* ‘How to ...’art books nearly always run the risk of fostering the notion, if only implicitly and by their nature, that they contain all the keys necessary to the learning of an artistic discipline. This attitude is symptomatic of a general lack of knowledge of what art truly is or should be, along with a lowering and levelling of standards in many areas of human endeavor. At work, too, is a wide-spread prejudice in favor of being able to achieve goals and accomplish tasks with a minimum of difficulty or commitment of time, effort and self. Whereas once an artist could come to know the most profound truth about himself and the world through the careful learning and practice, and eventual mastery, of a craft, now the arts have less to do with truth and life than with salesmanship and fashion [11. On the other hand, the proliferation of art courses and methods in all art media (including the ‘crafts’), and in all their forms and possibilities, may be viewed as evidence of the failure of the contemporary arts and, by extension,societyat large,to meet certain human needs-specifically, and at the very least, that of having accessto forms which are beautiful and harmonious [13. Along these lines, it is interesting to note the coincidenceof the ‘logarithmic’development of evermore sophisticated technological systems and methods, with the urgent need felt by many people to recover and maintain traditional ways of doing things and living one’s life. This is evident in everything from gardening to the plastic arts. One traditional way (which is apparently undergoing a resurgence even in its native land) is the Chinese art of brush painting, as applied primarily to the landscape, and Jean Long’s How to Paint the Chinese at instilling in a Western audience some of the es of this ancient art form. Readers already familiar with the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (Chieh Tzli Yuan Hua Chaun) [2] will note, if not specific borrowings on Long’s part, at least an implicit acknowledgement ofthe primacy of that sevcntanth-century work,of which the present...