|
|
|
Arthur Wesley Dow In 1899, Dow produced a manual that would change the teaching of art in this country for nearly half a century. Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers became a standard text for the study of art and design, and Dow's methods inspired generations of artists in many media. It is widely recognized as having laid the stylistic foundation for the American Arts & Crafts movement. Over his thirty years of teaching at various institutions including the Pratt Institute, the Columbia University Teachers College, the Arts Students League, and his own Ipswich Summer School of Art, Dow taught his methods through the disciplines of pottery, design, photography, painting, and printmaking with equal intensity.
The above text was sampled from the following page: |
Dow was inspired by the aesthetics of East Asian art as well as by the British Arts & Crafts movement championed by William Morris in the mid-nineteenth century. The latter stressed the fine quality of the hand-wrought object; workshops, art colonies, and art classes emphasizing these ideals proliferated throughout the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, offering classes in every medium with equal emphasis. Dow championed the Arts & Crafts aesthetic and never considered crafts inferior to fine arts. He taught his students to appreciate the elegance of design that was based on nature but never replicated it, placing precedence on no one particular technique over any other, as long as the final result was beautiful.
Word of Dow's teaching methods spread widely, not only through his teaching and writing, but also through the work of his students, many of whom later became art instructors themselves. As art training became a part of kindergarten, elementary, and high-school education, and more women began looking for careers that would use their artistic skills, students sought out programs such as those at Pratt Institute and Columbia University which emphasized practical skills in design and the decorative arts as well as teaching qualifications. Dow's lasting contribution was to teach art with an eye to both beauty and utility. His converts were many and his methods gave form and direction to American Modernist thought.