DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18975#0388
344
THE LAWS OF FESOLE
The moral effect of these monstrous conditions of orna-
ment on the mind of the modern designer is very singular.
I have found, in past experience in the Working Men's
College, and recently at Oxford, that the English student
must at present of necessity be inclined to one of two
opposite errors, equally fatal. Either he will draw things
mechanically and symmetrically altogether, and represent
the two sides of a leaf, or of a plant, as if he had cut
them in one profile out of a doubled piece of paper; or he
will dash and scrabble for effect, without obedience to law
of any kind : and I find the greatest difficulty, on the one
hand, in making ornamental draughtsmen draw a leaf of
any shape which it could possibly have lived in; ^ and, on
the other, in making landscape draughtsmen draw a leaf
of any shape at all. So that the process by which great
work is achieved, and by which only it can be achieved,
is in both directions antagonistic to the present English
mind. Real artists are absolutely submissive to law, and
absolutely at ease in fancy; while we are at once wilful
and dull; resolved to have our own way, but when we
have got it, we cannot walk two yards without holding by
a railing.
6. The tap-root of all this mischief is in the endeavour
to produce some ability in the student to make money by
designing for manufacture. No student who makes this his
primary object will ever be able to design at all; and the
very words " School of Design *' involve the profoundest of
Art fallacies. Drawing may be taught by tutors: but
Design only by Heaven ;" and to every scholar who thinks
to sell his inspiration, Heaven refuses its help.
7. To what kind of scholar, and on what conditions,
that help has been given hitherto, and may yet be hoped
for, is written with unevadeable clearness in the history of
the Arts of the Past. And this book is called TAc
o/' because the entire system of possible Christian
* [Compare the experience recorded by Ruskin in VoL XII. p. 89 ?!.]
^ [Compare the preface to o/ § 6.]
THE LAWS OF FESOLE
The moral effect of these monstrous conditions of orna-
ment on the mind of the modern designer is very singular.
I have found, in past experience in the Working Men's
College, and recently at Oxford, that the English student
must at present of necessity be inclined to one of two
opposite errors, equally fatal. Either he will draw things
mechanically and symmetrically altogether, and represent
the two sides of a leaf, or of a plant, as if he had cut
them in one profile out of a doubled piece of paper; or he
will dash and scrabble for effect, without obedience to law
of any kind : and I find the greatest difficulty, on the one
hand, in making ornamental draughtsmen draw a leaf of
any shape which it could possibly have lived in; ^ and, on
the other, in making landscape draughtsmen draw a leaf
of any shape at all. So that the process by which great
work is achieved, and by which only it can be achieved,
is in both directions antagonistic to the present English
mind. Real artists are absolutely submissive to law, and
absolutely at ease in fancy; while we are at once wilful
and dull; resolved to have our own way, but when we
have got it, we cannot walk two yards without holding by
a railing.
6. The tap-root of all this mischief is in the endeavour
to produce some ability in the student to make money by
designing for manufacture. No student who makes this his
primary object will ever be able to design at all; and the
very words " School of Design *' involve the profoundest of
Art fallacies. Drawing may be taught by tutors: but
Design only by Heaven ;" and to every scholar who thinks
to sell his inspiration, Heaven refuses its help.
7. To what kind of scholar, and on what conditions,
that help has been given hitherto, and may yet be hoped
for, is written with unevadeable clearness in the history of
the Arts of the Past. And this book is called TAc
o/' because the entire system of possible Christian
* [Compare the experience recorded by Ruskin in VoL XII. p. 89 ?!.]
^ [Compare the preface to o/ § 6.]