The Skilled Eye in a Skimmer's World

Jacques-Louis David’s painting, The Oath of the Horatii (1784)

The Skilled Eye in a Skimmer's World Author(s): Patrick D. Hazard and Mary Hazard Reviewed work(s): A Primer for Playgoers. By Edward A. Wright. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1958. 270 pp. $6.50. Learning to Look. By Joshua C. Taylor. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1958. 152 pp. $4.50.

A humanities primer for adult students should do at least one of two things: provide the vocabulary for an art and a knowledge of its technique, or point up its big questions of significance and outline the major partisan answers fairly. Of these two new handbooks, A Primer for Playgoers does neither well, and Learning to Look does the first so well that the student begins his own formulation of the second.

A Primer for Playgoers examines the vocabulary of the theater by assigning each component of the drama a separate chapter and by appending a glossary. At his best, Edward Wright suggests the implications for the drama of such technological innovations as the electric light; at his worst he dismisses "image" (this in the day of Tennessee Williams) in his glossary as "picture appearing on the television screen." His more usual line is his first "requirement of lighting": "The stage must at all times be sufficiently lighted to make for visibility without strain."

Playgoers can learn with experience many of the technical aspects of drama, but many an experienced matinee fan remains ignorant of the larger questions of value and significance. Mr. Wright is aware that these are important questions, but his definitions and subdivisions merely rephrase the issues.

Thus he expands his "Ten Commandments of Dramatic Criticism" and pontificates that "We might favor the theatre that is a teacher and an art, but we would not dismiss that which only attempts to amuse or to excite." Unbelievers--and students, we should hope, here qualify de facto--might question the catholicity of that "We." Wright never suggests that one function of the critic may be to question some of the conventional categories and given functions of the drama.

When Wright moves into the biggest issue in the drama, the "morality" of the play, he once more invokes the shibboleth of "objective analysis." Having seen the shortcomings of his objective study of technique, we might raise some questions when he presents his fundamental principle that "we must always measure the play in terms of life" (italics his), asking specific questions which, he says, may open it to charges of immorality.

Among the questions: "Has the author permitted any evil or wrong to be rewarded? Have the wicked achieved their goal because of or through their wickedness?" In terms of life, one of the greatest evils is smug complacency about one's ideas of right and wrong. Built into Wright's "analytical" questions is a conception of morality as shallow as that of the Motion Picture Production Code. A primer for playgoers, especially with chapters on movies and television, would be a useful thing indeed--if it were not a naive catechism.

Joshua C. Taylor, on the other hand, wisely concedes that "seeing... is sometimes more difficult for the student of art than believing." Learn to Look is the handbook and introduction for the art portion of the humanities course given at the University of Chicago. It serves as a guide to the visual arts which suggests all there is to see in a painting or sculpture. Proceeding from simple observation such as the emotional effects of color to the relatively complex analysis such as the implications of the artist's choice of medium, the book uses a cumulative technique of instruction.

Dr. Taylor warns in the preface that the book is used in conjunction with many other visual materials at the University, but two color plates and thirty black and white reproductions and many sketches illustrate the principles in the text. Dr. Taylor suggests that the reader test his generalizations about the meaning of organization in a work of art by covering different parts of the Perugino reproduced in the book and observing the changes in the feeling evoked by the painting.

In the same manner he demonstrates how some of the accepted, but unexamined, impressionistic descriptions of art can be analyzed. His sketches of the contrasting exteriors and radically different treatments of space in a Palladio villa and a Frank Lloyd Wright house illustrate the judgment that Palladio's organization is "formal," while Wright creates a "causal" feeling.

For students confused by the all too frequent kaleidoscopic history of art course (a hop, skip, and a jump of a Cook's tour of culture), Dr. Taylor substitutes a microscopic view of one painter. He outlines the development of the work of David, showing how several paintings reproduced in this volume represent major departures in his technique. Plates of other contemporaries' work suggest the traditions which David rejected as well as the influences he felt. This selective approach to one artist guides the student to formulate meaningful questions that he can ask of the whole history of art.

Unlike Dr. Wright whose questions are essentially distorting lenses, Dr. Taylor fashions a prism so discriminating that the student may himself study the elements of the visual arts. Dr. Taylor offers no judgments of taste, morality, or significance; he simply tries to equip the student with the discriminatory powers for later making such judgments himself. In a world where skimming is encouraged by all the dominant media, the virtues of the practiced eye are to be highly prized and praised.