Art as Experience

Science and life are not always the best friends. They are sometimes competitors, even as are theory and practice. In school we can see this in teaching the science of nature. We as children had to learn natural history, which tried to classify or dissect the phenomena of nature. But soon we underwent the experience that pressed herbariums are not nature at all and the herbalist is a dry man, like his specimens; or, that anatomy has to do mostly with dead bodies.

After this funereal experience with dried leaves and stuffed owls and squirrels we felt a deep need of going out-of-doors to get, instead of the separated parts, the connection between them; instead of scientific systematizing, the events of life, the vital functions, the conditions essential to life—in short, to get life.

Life is change—day and night, cold and warmth, sun and rain. It is more in-between the facts than the facts themselves. Rules are the result of experience and come later, and discovering the rules is more life-full than their application. Linnaeus, the botanist, built his classifications after many experiences and much investigation. How could we have begun children's botanical studies with his final results!

I believe it is now time to make a similar change of method in our art teaching—that we move from looking at art as a part of historical science to an understanding of art as a part of life. Under the term “art” I include all fields of artistic purposes—the fine arts and applied arts, also music, dramatics, dancing, the theatre, photography, movies, literature, and so on.

If we review what is being done now, what directions our art studies take in relation to the past, the present, also the future, the answer is clear: We over-accentuate the past, and often are more interested in drawing out a continuous line of historical development than in finding out which of certain art problems are related to our own life, or in getting an open mind for the newer and nearer and forward-looking art results of our period.

Do not misunderstand me. I admire the earlier art, particularly the earliest art. But we must not overlook that they do not belong to our time and that the study of them has the purpose of understanding the spirit of their period or, what is more important, to get a standard for comparisons with our own work. What went on is not necessarily more important than what is going on.

I think we have to shift from the data to the spirit, from the person to the situation, or from biography to biology in its real sense. As regards art results, from the content to the sense, from the “what” to the “how”; as regards art purposes, from the representation to the revelation.

To speak in a more practical way: We should try, for instance to see a chair apart from its functional characteristics, as a living creature and, if you wish, perhaps as a person, such as a worker, a servant, a peasant, or an aristocrat; and apart from its stylistic characteristics, as an apparatus willing to hold us, to carry, to surround or embrace us, to give us a rest, or to show or to represent us; that we recognize the different needs of a chair in our living-room, on the porch, at the table, or at the desk.

To speak in general terms: We should discover for instance that music, too, has to do with proportion and the values of line and volume; also that literature can be static and dynamic, and can have staccatos and crescendos, and poems can have color; that the play on the stage has not only dramatic climax but also an optical and an acoustical one; that there are musical qualities in all art—that every art work is built (i.e., composed), has order, consciously or unconsciously.

To say it essentially: Everything has form and every form has meaning. The ability to select this quality is culture. If you agree with me that religion worked out only on Sunday is no religion at all, then we must be united in this opinion, that seeing art only in museums, or using art only as amusement or recreation in lazy hours, shows no understanding of art at all.

If art is an essential part of culture and life, then we must no longer educate our students either to be art historians or to be imitators of antiquities, but for artistic seeing, artistic working, and more, for artistic living. Since artistic seeing and artistic living are a deeper seeing and living—and school has to be life—since we know that culture is more than knowledge, we in the school have the duty to remove all the fields of art from their decorative sideplace into the center of education—as we are trying to do at Black Mountain College.

To intensify this purpose, we have to bring about in school a nearer connection, or better, an interpenetration, of all the art disciplines and artistic purposes in school life, which will show that their problems are very much the same.

Then we will learn through the parallelism of their common problems—for example, the problems of balance or proportion—that they are tasks of our daily life too.

As academic separatism is passing, we in school have to connect as far as possible the scientific fields with the artistic fields. Isn't it true, for instance, that some historical periods are better identified through their architecture or pictures than through their conquerors and wars? And do not some costumes tell us often more than many queens? Generally, history should regard life as more important than death, and culture more serious than politics.

How in school would you value an economist, chemist, geographer who lives only in the nineteenth century? Or a writing class which never shows contemporary problems? And what about an artist, a language teacher or a musician of the same taste! Let us be younger with our students and include in our consideration new architecture and new furniture, modern music and modern pictures. We ought to discuss movies and fashions, make-up and stationery, advertising, shop signs and newspapers, modern songs and jazz. The pupil and his growing into his world are more important than the teacher and his background.

Our aim is a general development of an open-eyed and open-minded youth seeking out the growing spiritual problems of our days, not closed to his environment; and forward-looking, with the experience that interests and needs are changing; a youth with criticism enough to recognize that so-called “good old forms” sometimes can be over-used, that perhaps some great art important to our parents does not say anything to us; one who has reverence for earnest work and working, even though it seems at first new and strange to him, and is able to withhold judgment until clearer perception comes; who knows that one's own experience and discovery and independent judgment are much more than repeated book knowledge.

We know that a short time of school studies cannot produce competent judges of art. Therefore, we at Black Mountain are content when our student, for instance, sees a connection between a modern picture and music by Bach, or a relationship between patterns of textiles and music; or, if he is able to differentiate the form-character of a china pitcher from a glass pitcher, or an aluminum pitcher; or to recognize the difference between an advertisement of 1925 and one of 1935; or, when he finds out that in art we still can experience revelation and wonder.

We want a student who sees art as neither a beauty shop nor imitation of nature, as more than embellishment and entertainment; but as a spiritual documentation of life; one who sees that real art is essential life and essential life is art.

Editor's Note: Two years ago, Mr. Albers came from the Bauhaus in Dessau to Black Mountain College in North Carolina to teach art. At the Bauhaus, it is common practice to coin words and invent phrases to express those meanings for which there seem to be no adequate provision in the German language. Mr. Albers made use of this technique in his article, written in English. The excellent manuscript put the Editor in a quandary. Mr. Albers had something to say. He said it in his own way and he said it forcefully. Attempts to tinker it into more smooth English detracted from meaning and power. The article is therefore presented virtually as Mr. Albers wrote it.