U.S. Specialist Report: Report on a Course in Basic Drawing, Design, and Color Given at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm

My Courses at the Hochschule für Gestaltung at Ulm

1. Introduction

From the correspondence which I had before coming to Ulm with both the US Government and the Geschwister-Scholl-Stiftung, Hochschule für Gestaltung, the establishment of which was made possible by a donation of 1 million DM out of the McCloy Fund, I concluded that my main task would be to advise the Hochschule für Gestaltung as to the curriculum organization and teaching methods and to demonstrate teaching in the following specialized fields which are considered here as basic training: basic drawing, basic color, and basic design. The courses were given every weekday morning from 8.15 to 11.30, except Saturdays. Besides these class hours of practical exercises I frequently went to see the students in the afternoons when they did their homework and also visited the workshops of the department of industrial design. Several times I visited the building grounds on the ‘Kuhberg,' until bad weather prevented the continuation of construction.

Shortly after my arrival in Ulm and repeatedly during my stay here I had conferences with members of the Board of Directors, Rechtsanwalt Helmut Becker, Kreebronn, Dr. Roderich Graf Thun, Jettingen, and Oberbürgermeister Pfizer of Ulm, and with future teachers on the program of the school.

Before going into the details of my experience I should like to explain the principles of my teaching method, in particular why my methods differ from the traditional methods in teaching art.

2. Principles underlying my courses at the Hochschule

The longer I teach the more I learn that art cannot be taught, at least not directly. Art—as I see it—is visual formulation of our reaction to the world, the universe, to life. If such definition is acceptable, the two basic aspects we have to deal with in teaching arts and in which we can offer help are seeing and formulating, or vision and articulation. That the development of these faculties provides tasks for more than a lifetime has been repeatedly stated by the masters. Since vision and articulation are the parents of art, self-expression in art, which is to reveal purposely something through visual formulation, is possible only at an advanced level, that is, after vision is developed and articulation is acquired, at least to some extent.

Consequently, self-expression is not the beginning of art studies. I am aware that many art teachers are not sympathetic to such conclusions. I come to my conclusions through the following premises.

As there is no verbal communication before we can produce sounds and words, as there is no writing before having letters or type, for the same reason there is no visual communication as long as there is no visual articulation.

Nobody considers inarticulate sounds of a child a language, and nobody accepts his scribblings as writing. But curiously enough many are inclined to accept such scribblings as self-expression and so—as art. But finally art teachers are beginning to discover that self-expression is something other than self-disclosure.

Following my conclusions, I do not believe in self-expression as the first or the principal objective of art studies. We will understand this better in applying the German educational terms Beschäftigungstrieb (the urge to be occupied), and Gestaltungstrieb (the urge to formulate, to build).

Compare also the usual art teaching with teaching in other fields, imagine the four ‘R's taught without direction, without systematic training; or language, history and music studies consisting only of self-expression without systematic and continuous exercises.

It is a psychological error to believe that art stems from feeling only. Art comes from the conscious as well as from the subconscious—from both heart and mind. If art is order, it is intellectual order as well as initiative or instinctive order. Unfortunately there are people, teachers and students, afraid of the training of the conscious in art, afraid of the understandable in art. For those I should like to say that clear thinking will not and cannot interfere with genuine feeling; but it does interfere with prejudices, so often misinterpreted as feelings—and that's all to the good. As in any other field of human endeavor, so it is worthwhile also in art to see and think clearly in teaching art, particularly basic design. I have tried to organize a method which provides a preparation for all visual art, a practical study of principles underlying and connecting all arts.

Before going into detail it might be interesting to see first how architecture for instance—and in a similar way also typography—have regained a significant and leading cultural position, more, probably, than any other branch of art today.

Since the Beaux-Arts system is abandoned, since retrospective analysis and copying of ancient achievements are no longer the beginning nor the dominating concern of architectural apprentices, since present needs and new as well as old possibilities of construction are the point of departure and the main content of study, a contemporary new architecture is growing again—performed in our own articulation, demonstrating our own mentality.

3. The courses

A. Basic Design has a similar direction, as just pointed out. Our start is not retrospection, nor the ambition to illustrate, to embellish, or to express something. We try to learn, i.e. to see, that every visible thing has form and that every form has meaning—and we learn this by producing form. Therefore our workshops are rather laboratories than ateliers, studies or lecture rooms.

We simply begin with material and try to shape it. We observe how it looks and what we can do with it. We do not think of making useful things right away. We do as music students do, namely we learn to get acquainted with the instruments, that is to get means and hands under control before we care about theory and history. We do exercise before making compositions we rehearse before performing.

In order to open the way for discovery and invention, which are the criteria of creativeness, I prefer materials little known or normally not used for visual formulation. We are using material in a way students have not thought of before. In order to avoid mere application of theory and technique, I prefer the inductive method—that is coming to conclusions after having made exercises, after having gained experience. We choose new problems and attack them in a new way not for the purpose of being new or different, nor for the sake of novelty-craze, but for the purpose of constant observation, and continued self-criticism. In this way we try to counteract habitual application, the strongest enemy of creativeness.

B. Basic Drawing. For practical art studies I consider freehand drawing the most comprehensive training. By drawing I mean a visual formulation achieved by strictly graphical means, that is mainly line. I therefore exclude consciously all techniques which are just in-between painting and drawing, as for instance charcoal drawing. Charcoal drawing, like any type of drawing, aims at the three-dimensional volume, but in addition at a quite superfluous painterly effect, achieved by indication of modeling and shading. I also do not believe in beginning with life-drawing from the nude, as in my opinion this presents one of the most difficult tasks. Instead, particularly in the beginning, we do a number of technical exercises in order to get eye and hand under control and to achieve distinct effects. Also right from the beginning, I make the students aware that we do not see with the eye only. Particularly in relationship to direction our motoric sense is more competent than the eye. We draw a lot in the air, also with closed eyes, and always above the paper before we touch the paper at all. This aims at seeing the shape of form before it appears on the paper. We say: just as thinking is before speaking, so seeing is before drawing. Here are some typical exercises: reversed, repeated and extended shapes (radial and lateral), reversed and distorted curves; a few typical letter constructions, seen forward and backward, downward and upward, then letters—both constructed and script—so that they appear as having volume, in various positions.

Our figure drawing we start with the draped figure. And for the studies of drapery, particularly the folding, we represent first broad paper ribbons mounted on the wall in a flag-like movement. Here we differentiate, first visually, then graphically, the actual line (that is the edge of the paper) from the illusionary transition line. After this we draw details from garments in their plastic movement; how a collar moves over the shoulder downward, how for instance the folding of the trousers is related to the knee, starting there or returning there. Only later, after more training (hats and shoes), will we study heads and hands. In further technical exercises we present three-dimensional illusion in two ways: by gradual increase and/or decrease of the intensities of lines as well as by gradual increase and/or decrease of distance between lines. From here we come organically, easily, to the drawing of plants, and twigs, and flowers. Also to sketches of groups of figures just as the drawing class presents them, saving hereby models.

As to sketching we make a special effort to avoid the commonly used ‘boxing-in' contours. This is to say that our main concern is to present three-dimensional effect with strictly two dimensional means.

C. Basic Color. My color course also presents a learning through experience instead of a learning through application of theory and rules. It is a laboratory study aiming at specific psychic effects. We almost never see in our mind what color physically is, because color is the most relative medium in art. This is the result of both the interdependence of, as well as the interaction between color and color, color and form, color and quantity, color and placement. After having recognized the physiological phenomenon of the after-image (simultaneous contrast), it is always a great excitement for the class to demonstrate that one and the same color with changing conditions can look unbelievably different. In a similar discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect we make very different colors look alike, we make opaque colors look transparent, change the temperature within one color from warm to cold or vice versa, change dark to light and light to dark, make two colors look like three, or three colors like two, etc.

We produce illusionary mixtures as well as optical mixtures. We study the conditions of mixture through the Weber-Fechner law, which teaches us the interdependence between geometric (physical) and arithmetic (psychic) progression of mixtures. The more we see that color always deceives us, the more we feel able to use its action for visual formulation.

Like students of music our students are encouraged to cultivate a free play of their color fantasy in the so-called free studies, which alternate with the laboratory studies. Both laboratory studies and free studies are done almost exclusively with colored paper instead of paint, because paper, being a homogeneous material, permits us to return to precisely the same tint or shade again and again. It avoids all disturbing accidents like brush strokes and changing mixtures and applications. A brief study of color systems—of Goethe, Munsell, Ostwald—occurs at the end of the course (not as usual at the beginning), because—to say it again—the ability to see color and color relationship is more important than to ‘know about' color.

So in drawing and color we have been able to cover almost the whole range of problems. Whereas in basic design we could concentrate only on a few materials: paper, representing visually a two-dimensional material, and wire, representing a linear material.

4. Final Comments

I am impressed with the pioneer spirit manifested by students and teachers. I admire in particular the intensity with which the two originators of the project, Frau Inge Aicher-Scholl and her husband Otl Aicher, work for this new institute. I have the highest respect for their exceptional human qualities and base my hopes for the Hochschule für Gestaltung particularly on the great artistic abilities which Herr Aicher and Herr Bill, the Rector of the school, possess. Max Bill has been a consultant to the two former for several years, after the original idea of the Hochschule für Gestaltung was brought up.

It was a pleasure for me to work with the group of students at the Hochschule. They were twenty in number and came from six different countries. It was interesting and stimulating for both teacher and students to have people from such different backgrounds as Great Britain and Brazil among the group. It was amazing to see how in spite of the marked differences in background and temperament all pulled toward the same aim: the search for our visual language.