On the Relevance of Early Modern Art to Contemporary Education

Abstract

It seems impossible to determine what constitutes a proper education in contemporary art. This is due largely, though not entirely, to the history of modern art where the success of the outrageous has made cowards of us all. The one weakness to which art professors are no longer prone is that of asserting the safe perpetuity of their own tastes. One of them, Lester Longman, has written that under these conditions, where permanent criteria of value are lacking, “art cannot in any sense be taught, although we still get paid for going through the motions.” If that is so it is also true that the motions have become correspondingly more spectacular. And in this connection the relation between what we call innovation and what we call creativity is a matter of immense importance.