The Visual Artist and the Law, and: Art Censorship: A Chronology of Proscribed and Prescribed Art by Jane Clapp (review)

276 Books Change in Art Education. Dick Field. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London,andHumanitiesPress,New York, 1970. 138 pp. Reviewed by: Peter LipmanWuM * Research into the state of art education on an elementary and secondary level is surely of great interest,sincethe important role of art in the education of young people is still not fully recognized, especiallyin America. Field bases his investigation on his many years of experience in England. He provides a good background and evolves ways of possiblereformandgivesavision of a new approach to such education. A large part of the book is concerned with the historical development of teaching art to children and the influence of the advances of contemporary childpsychologyonteaching. Theroleoftheteacher is well defined: his approach to teaching and how and what he should teach. Field proposes that the practice of art and the discovery of art should be combinedin ‘thetwin senses of use and grasp’. He questionsthe understanding of art without ‘making art’ and he describesthe necessityof teachingart to youngpeoplenot exclusivelyasa skill,a practicethat was fashionablein the past, but rather as a means of kringing youngsters to the notion of the creative process. Consequently, he bemoans the overemphasis on the teaching of crafts. Theauthordelvesintothesourcesofcreativityand the chapter ‘Making and Shaping’ is, perhaps, the most successful in the book. His eight points of teaching, such as fluency, flexibility and ability to redefineand rearrange,represent an excellentbreakdown of the teaching process. Field doubts that over-emphasis on doing and creating at the expense of general knowledge about art is healthy and he callsfor a balanced curriculum of practical art, art history and art appreciation. In the chapter ‘Art Education in the Future’, he organizes his ideas under six well-defined headings. First discussed is the experience of making art objects through a diversified, multi-leveled activity. Second, the work of a student is analytically evaluated . Third, a studentisintroduced tothe historical development of art and its philosophical framework . Fourth, the relation of art to the student’s own position in life is discussed. Fifth, about which I have reservations, the student is asked to verbalize his art experiences. Sixth, a goal is set of exposing a student to the combinationof all facetsof art. A parallel teaching of music, theatre, dance and the visual arts, such as Field proposes, is an ideal program but, in this reviewer’s experience, not easily achieved. In the first place, it is difficult to organize a harmonious team of teachers and, secondly, the time necessary for successfullycarryingout sucha program cannot easilybe found in the framework of a school’s over-loaded curriculum. Field does not say if a teacher should be able to produce a viable work of art or if he is solely to be * Art Department, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY 11530, U.S.A. trained as a teacher. In my view, the former requirement is necessary, if the teaching of creativity in art education is to be successful. The author offers a lot of good ideas but tries to cover them in too short a space. Some solutions of teaching problems are only vaguely suggested and the introduction of peripheral material sometimes overwhelms the author’s own good ideas. There is an excellent bibliography for those interested in the problems of art education. The Visual Artist and the Law. The Associated Councilof the Arts, New York, 1971. 100pp. Art Censorship: A Chronology of Proscribed and Prescribed Art. Jane Clapp. Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, N.J., 1972. 582 pp., illus. $16.00. Reviewed by: Ira M. Low and James J. McGiIlan* Though one would possibly like to isolate the artist from the mundane struggles of everyman, his physical presencehere in the real world makes that unrealistic. Two new books testify to the involvement ,howeverinvoluntary,of the artist in the sometimes distasteful and often confusing world of the bureaucracy,the law and its spokesmen. Both books, though relevant to the life of the artist and to those who dealin or with art, havelittle to say about color and composition. The former is a compact, little legal manual and the latter is a chronology of censored art dating from 3400B.C. to the present. It would be useless to judge one book more important than the other...