Word: fine
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...lecture-goers were turned away yesterday afternoon from a Fogg lecture room in which Professor Robin Feild was extolling the merits of Mickey Mouse and associates. Each of the five hundred bore witness to the wide interest which has been evoked by the summary dismissal of the department of Fine Arts' most popular professor. The spontaneous outburst of student indignation and the formation of a Fine Arts Concentrators' committee to make formal protests are other danger signals indicating that the Feild Case is by no means closed. Much as it would like to, the department will find it difficult...
Aside from the clash of personalities inevitably involved in a case of this sort, Professor Feild's concluding appointment is the result of a fundamental difference of opinion within the department. At present, overwhelming stress is laid on the historical and factual approach to the Fine Arts. Students are filled with names and dates, are taught to recognize famous pictures, to distinguish the works of one master from those of another. While there is a branch of the department devoted to design and actual drawing, it is isolated and disconnected from everything else, and no one seemingly knows...
...Fine Arts department thus fails to accomplish what should be its highest goal to teach a student the method by which he can judge art for himself, to show him the universal essentials which lie behind all art. The attainment of such a goal entails far less emphasis on facts and chronology--these become a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. It means greater stress on practical art and design; and more than this, a close integration of practical work and history. It means the coordination of art with other branches of knowledge. It means finally...
...introduction of such ideas would involve revolution in the Fine Arts department. It is this revolution of which Professor Feild is the tribune. But the revolution cannot come, and Feild must go because of Harvard's teacher-tenure and departmental-autonomy systems. By these, the committee of six permanent fine arts professors are entrusted with the final decision as to who shall teach under them. Thus they are able to choose their own successors, perpetuate their own ideas, prevent any change, and eliminate unwanted personalities. So long as they remain in control, the department will be static...
From a strictly literary point of view the book is consistently fine. Although much of the material is of a rather technical nature, the reader's interest never lags. Particularly effective is the chapter dealing with the heroic campaign of the English in Belgium. Nowhere does the futility of war seem more apparent than in this account of the British loss of 100,000 lives for the sake of retaining a few square miles of disease-infested swampland...