Studio: international art (53.1911)

The Lay Figure

THE LAY FIGURE : ON TRAIN-
ING THE MEMORY.

" I always wonder why more attention is
not given in art education to a proper system of
memory training," said the Art Critic. " It seems
to me that the student whose powers of memory
have been developed from the first methodically and
regularly is more likely to be efficient than the one
whose memory training has been left more or less
to chance."

"But the object of every decent system of art
education is to train the student's memory," cried
the Art Master. " Why do you imply that such a
vital matter is neglected ? "

" I am glad you admit that it is vital," replied
the Critic, " because if we are in agreement on that
point it will be easier for me to make you under-
stand what I mean. In a sense you are right in
saying that all systems of art education aim at the
training of the student's memory, but I contend
that this aim is in most cases very imperfectly
realised because the student is not properly
directed."

" You mean that memory training is only
incidental to the system, and not the main purpose
which it has in view," broke in the Man. with the
Red Tie.

" Exactly, it is so absolutely incidental that more
often than not it is not attended to at all," agreed the
Critic. " The student is left to find out for himself
certain tricks of memorising, he is not taught how
to record and classify his impressions or how to use
his faculties intelligently."

"What then is he taught?" demanded the Art
Master. " Is not the course of study which is
followed in every school of art that deserves to be
taken seriously a thing carefully schemed to lead
the student on step by step to a full knowledge of
his art ? If the system gives him this knowledge
must it not also store his memory with those
matters which he will need for his guidance in after-
life ? "

" That depends upon the system," laughed the
Man with the Red Tie. " You may fill up his
memory with so many things that are unimportant
that possibly you may leave no room for those
which he ought to know."

" There you have hit upon the very thing that is
troubling me," said the Critic. " I feel very strongly
that what is called storing the student's memory is
apt to be a rather deadening process. There is, as
I see it, a danger of clogging his faculties by giving
him' too many things to remember, by filling him
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up with a mass of ill-assorted knowledge; if you
teach him too much you destroy the elasticity of
his mind and take away his receptivity. You
make him in fact a slave to a hard and fast system,
not a thinking being with a personal and indepen-
dent outlook."

" Of course a great deal depends upon the
character of the system and the intelligence of the
teacher," returned the Art Master; "but still you
must put things into the student's mind in some sort
of order, and you must do your best to make him
understand and remember the mechanism of his art."

" The mechanism of his art ' " exclaimed the
Critic. "You surely do not call the study of
executive devices memory training ? Do you really
wish to impose your methods upon the student for
the rest of his days ? "

" No, I recognise that he will have to find his
own way in art when his student days are over,"
answered the Art Master, "but it will do him no
harm to remember the things he was taught at
school. The knowledge he acquired there, if he
has really taken advantage of the training offered
to him, will keep him in the right path when he
goes out into the world."

" How do you know that you have put him in
the right path, anyhow ? " inquired the Man with
the Red Tie.

" Yes, how do you know that your teaching
system deserves to be reckoned as infallible ?"
asked the Critic ; "and how do you know that you
have supplied that student with any of the know-
ledge that would be likely to suit his particular
temperament? You have taught him the things
you know and you have made him either a copy of
yourself or a bitter rebel against your authority ;
but have you trained his memory ? I say you have
not. To me the essential of memory training is
the development of whatpowers of observation and
selection the student may naturally possess, the
cultivation of his instinctive preferences in art, the
widening of his outlook upon nature. You do not
want to force him to remember your precepts, you
ought rather to show him the way in which he can
be independent of you and trust to his own taste
and intelligence for the mental storing up of the
things he wants to know. If you have taught him
to think there will not be much the matter with his
memory."

"At any rate you will have taught him how to
select for himself the things he wants to remem-
ber," said the Man with the Red Tie ; "and that, I
take it, is the best sort of training."

The Lay Figure.