Art: An Introduction by Dale G. Cleaver, The Visual Dialogue: An Introduction to the Appreciation of Art by Nathan Knobler (review)

Books 281 Creative parents respect the individuality of their children , grant them considerable autonomy and encourage their independence, while exercising consistent and predictable discipline. These parents are somewhat aloof and move their abode rather frequently. Like many other authors, Lytton overlooks the importance of inner drive and determination that I believe are essential elements of creative lives and need to be researched. Riding the wave that was popular some years ago, Lytton pleads for schools that train children to discover, manipulate and transform information in their own way. He reveals, however, that to learn arithmetic the highest achievement results from the combination of low teacher ‘creativity’ and low pupil ‘creativity’. The combination of low teacher ‘creativity’ and high pupil ‘creativity’ yields the worst results. An appendix shows some of the tests that Lytton has used to identify ‘creative’ eleven-year-olds. The book ends with a good bibliography but the absence of an index impairs ready access to this otherwise handy little text. Art: An Introduction. Dale G. Cleaver. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1972. 375 pp., illus. The Visual Dialogue: An Introduction to the Appreciation of Art. Nathan Knobler. Holt, Rinehart &Winston, New York, 1971. 501 pp., illus. Reviewed by Barron M. Hirsch* Most college art departments have two primary functions: the training of studio artists and the training of art scholars and historians. An adjunct to these goals is a third and more controversial one, that is the teaching of art appreciation . The name itself tells the problem. It is assumed that teaching about art will make a student appreciate it. Both artists and educators have questioned this assumption . Louis Mumford feels that only by growing up in the presence of great art, such as in Florence, can one hope to develop any art appreciation. Leonard Bernstein has stated that only some 2% of the population is capable of appreciating any of the arts and Hans Hoffmann has concluded after a lifetime of trying that art cannot be taught at all. Despite these reasonable arguments and acknowledging the difficulties involved, I do think that it is a worthwhile effort to attempt to pass on to young people that which we feel is significant in the history of mankind. While we cannot teach students to appreciate art, we can, I feel, give them a working knowledge about it that may hopefully result in their future support of the arts when they enter the adult world. It is to this cause that these two books are devoted. Before discussing what has gone on and is going on in art, one must teach students how to see. Anyone who has attempted a foundation course in the elements of art knows how difficult this can be. Cleaver covers this foundation in the first part of his book titled the ‘Principles of Art’. Here he discusses the visual and tactile elements, design, subject matter and techniques used by artists, ending with a section on the problems of value judgment. Part two, the larger portion of the text, is a trip through art history from 4000 B . C . to the present. It is an impossible task, yet the author accomplishes it with reasonable success. The book covers many of the high points in art, including architecture as well as painting and sculpture. The illustrations are good, some in full color, and, while it resembles a twoweek tour of all the cities in Europe, for a small book it contains a lot of material. Knobler in his much larger book does not separate his material so neatly into compartments. Rather than presenting a historical approach that is a trip through time, Knobler tries to show the relationships and similarities of works from very different periods. His point is that in the use of composition, color and the like, art of various times Cleaver’s book points out another problem. is more similar than it is different; and especially that contemporary American art, which the author feels called upon to defend, is not really very different from art of the past. The book is organized according to media and their use in art expression and provides many detailed examples of pictorial analysis. The text is lavishly...