The Case for Creativity

A RECENT visitor to Harvard observed that the new Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts "looked out of place." Uncomfortably squeezed between the stately Fogg Museum and the Faculty Club, the Le Corbusier building does seem to be fighting for room and a place in the University.

The two buildings that flank the VAC clash with its architecture, but more important, they represent institutions that have long been antithetical to the purposes of the new structure To the traditionalists of the Fine Art Department in the Fogg, the Carpenter center is a dangerous innovation which encroaches on the supremacy of the study of art history. For some scholar in the Faculty, creative activity is in compatible with the academic concern of a liberal arts college.

The VAC was not located between these two antagonistic elements accident. It was meant to be a challenge to them, and an invitation to the University to advance beyond 19th century concepts of what comprise the liberal arts. Unfortunately, the invitation has been only partially and some ways reluctantly accepted; challenge remains.

Soon after his appointment to presidency, Mr. Pusey recognized the Harvard painfully lacked create activity. Three years later an Own seers Committee chaired by John Nicholas Brown '22, articulated this vac and strongly urged the University provide both intellectual and finance encouragement for the creative an Partially as a result of this report, of Mr. Pusey's insistence, the La Drama Center and the Carpenter Center were commissioned. But while Harvard was willing to spend the money to construct these buildings, it has so far been singularly stubborn about deciding realistically what is to be done with them.

As with the Loeb, the future of the VAC is much in doubt. It is not inconceivable that the Center could become a glamorous and powerful monument to an idea frozen to death by a chilly Harvard atmosphere. The building did not appear overnight, but during the long period of its construction and planning few conclusions were reached on a program for the Center. Only a handful of courses in the visual arts will be offered next Fall, and even these seem to be largely experimental ventures, without a coherent program to guide them or indicate further classes.

Harvard apparently is still uneasy about admitting creative artists to its community; the dramatic statement of purpose in the Le Corbusier building almost seems to frighten it. The VAC and the men who may instill it with life are treated as dangerous intruders in the sacred halls of the Academy. The lack of definite plans for future courses, and even the present classes, are indicative of this uncertainty. Before any meaningful use can be made of the center, the University must carefully evaluate its own aims, and clearly determine where the creative artist stands in relation to those aims.

George Wald, professor of Biology, wrote in the report on the Visual Arts at Harvard (the Brown Report of 1956), that "what divides man from the beast is knowing and creating." He pointed out that "it is man in his aspect of knowing that we find enshrined in the university."

Medieval traditions upon which universities are built stressed "talking about knowing" as the business of a college. The university is delighted to ennoble the men in the past who have added to knowledge (both through scholarship and creativity), but it has long been suspicious of the contemporary innovator. Experimental science fought a long, difficult struggle for acceptance and did not win it until international pressures emphasized the need for its achievements.

Today it would be ridiculous to propose that only the history of science belong in the university. Science is learned not only through reading of past experiments, but by conducting laboratory work as well. It is usually the case that a man actively at work in scientific research is a better teacher and makes a greater contribution to the community than a person who is merely steeped in the knowledge of previous scientists. A chemistry course without labs would be miserably inadequate. In the same way, a historian who is practicing his profession is apt to be more stimulating than a man who only reads the texts of others.

The laboratory is the workshop of the scientist, and meters, test-tubes and other apparatus are his tools. He cannot do research without them. The historian's workshop is the library; he can neither teach nor do research without one. Similarly, the artist works in a studio. He may study color, design, and the works of other artists, but to do his own work--and to encourage creativity in his students--he needs a studio. If it is accepted that artistic creativity is a proper use for man's intellectual powers, then the artist--and his studio--belong in the university. But is it accepted?

While Wald pointed out important similarities between artistic and scientific investigation he also noted a major difference: "Science is organized knowledge. Art, whatever its intrinsic ends, express the beliefs, aspirations, and emotions of the whole culture. The one is a severely limited, the other an unlimited, enterprise. From this point of view, the artist in the university takes on something of the position of the philosopher. His is the voice through which all of us must speak."

The artist then, with his forms and color, not only reflects his culture, but speaks to it. His message is as important as that of the philosopher who uses words. The creation of visual art is as legitimate a use of the mind as the study of history, English, economics, or physics. In its fundamentals it is no more "professional" than those subjects, and no more vocational than a science course with labs.

Although the interest of the university in creative arts may be evident to some, the desire of the creative artist to be in a university has raised problems. Many art instructors claim they teach only to support their families, that their art is adversely affected by loss of creative time. And for the art student, the conflict of time between his art work and academic pursuits is sometimes irritating.

But these two problems are often more rhetorical than substantive. As for the second, A. Whitney Griswold, who as president of Yale was a strong champion of creative arts in the university, wrote that the "creative artist is a human being, and what improves him as a human being will improve him as an artist." While technical art schools may be more effective than university art departments in imparting technique, a liberal education can give the potential artist a breadth of experience to draw on for his work.

The teachers, also, can benefit from the milieu of the university. In colleges such as Yale, where art is taught, the faculty members of the art department enter into the intellectual life of the community: they can provide important humanistic influence and learn from contact with faculty of other disciplines. Scholars in the social sciences find it useful to mix with men from other fields; the artist and his students are no different in this respect.

Griswold found another reason for artists' interest in the liberal arts college: "the enlightenment of his audience." He wrote that "great art depends on great patronage of art . . . it depends on high standards measured against universals, upon good taste and informed criticism." The liberal arts college, which attempts to set standards of excellence in scholarship, should also wish to instruct its students in what Harvard's Eduard Seklar calls "visual literacy."

If the university is fully to benefit by the presence of creative arts, however, and if the artist is to be comfortable in the university, the university must not treat the arts as a peripheral concern. An artist-in-residence now and then, and a few course offerings, do not constitute a meaningful or even useful creative arts program. Yet that1