The Problem with Barnstone, Color Theory

One of the books that I read and re-read and analyzed is the book "The Enjoyment and Use of Color" by William Sargent. You might recall that this was the pseudo-assigned text for Barnstone's color class. The book is really really fantastic. Considering how critical I am, you can take that as high praise. Interestingly enough, the book explained much more clearly some of the things Barnstone was teaching. In fact, I can work backwards from Barnstone, and show you an example of how my reading has clarified much of my "learning".

It goes like this...

Barnstone teaches his color palette based on the text of Fletcher. Fletcher's theory is not as unique as Barnstone would have us believe. The idea of a "color key" (as Fletcher talks about ) is simply the color bias that occurs when one uses a SPLIT COMPLEMENT palette. A split complement palette is one where some  color (for example, yellow) forms one point of a triad, with the other two points being on either side of the complement of this first point (in this case, the complement is violet). To the left of violet on the color wheel is RedViolet or Red. We cannot go so far as Red Orange, because that contains yellow (which takes us too close to the first point). To the right of violet is Blue Violet  and Blue (we cannot go so far as Blue Green, because that too contains yellow).

Fletcher's theory insisted that if you start with Yellow, then you can choose as your split-complements either RedViolet (one step to left of violet) and Blue (two steps to right of violet)... or else Red (two steps to left of violet) and Blue Violet (one step to right of violet). By insisting that one split-complement be one step from the complement, and the other two steps... he was attempting to add another level of color bias by moving one of the split-complements closer to the first point. The first point of the triad (yellow), is called the KEY.

This all sounds so scientific and theoretical. But it is simply an expansion of the split complement palette... and perhaps an overly complex one at that. At root, the split complement is common knowledge... certainly useful, but NOT worthy of the god-like love Barnstone throws at it. By reading Sargent's book I was able to debunk the teachings of Barnstone to some degree.

Also on this point... I also was reading Juliette Aristede's book "Classical Painting Atelier", in which she talks about Open Palettes vs. Closed Palettes. Closed palettes are ones where you mix all your colors before you begin painting... open palettes are ones that you mix as you go. Barnstone's approach was a completely closed palette. This approach has some benefits, but the downside (which Barnstone never mentions) is that it can be (a) too time consuming (b) lead to color palette that doesn't really match the subject and (c) lead to paintings that all have the same look and feel. This author (Juliette Aristedes) goes on to say (interestingly enough) that this closed palette is good for impressionistic approaches. When you consider that Barnstone is an OPEN advocate of British Impressionistic painting (and his assignments were impressionistic in nature)... you begin to see a BIAS in Barnstone's teaching. By the way, Juliette Aristedes was a student of Barnstones, and had gone to Pafa... so her perspective here is quite enlightening.

So by reading these two texts and cross-referencing... the meaning and context of Barnstones teachings could be fleshed out. And so on and so forth. And in general, as I engage in this project of looking for clear views on these things by way of reading... I am able to figure out what is going on.  These cross-references do not necessarily invalidate Barnstones teachings... they simply invalidate the ABSOLUTISM of his teaching... and remove all the ATTITUDE that attaches to what he says. And in general, when all the cross referencing ends, much of the bullshit of much of what we are taught gets sheered off... and what is left are the essential issues. Once you distill things down to these essentials... you can begin to order and arrange them, and understand them. At least this is my hope, and I'm having some success at this approach. Again, time will tell.

Mike

The Problem with Barnstone, Having Drawn

I was in New York recently,  achieving clarity by drawing some sculpture in the Greek and Roman room at the Met. Later, as I walked down 5th Avenue, a thought jumped into my head regarding Barnstone. It occurred to me that Barnstone doesn't teach you how to draw. Notice how little actual drawing goes on in his class. What Barnstone teaches is not how TO DRAW, but how to HAVE DRAWN. It sounds funny to say it that way… but it is the only way to put it. He is only interested in what you should HAVE DRAWN, not what you actually drew.

His critiques always reference a preordained result that you should HAVE DRAWN. In this sense, Barnstone is only interested in the ANSWER… but not the QUESTION… and he has very little interest in the work you put into what you produce. Imagine that you used this approach to teach someone how to think clearly. Employing the Barnstone method, you would give the student the answer and all supporting arguments, and it would be up to the student to simply repeat the argument and conclusion. The students thinking skills would then be criticized if they failed to deliver the preordained content.

The student would not learn how to think in this way. The student would only learn how to repeat the answers they were given.  Learning how to give an answer through mimicry is not equivalent to giving an answer that arrives from thought. It's not even correct to say that thinking skills are being critiqued, because thought doesn't actually happen. It's the students memorization skills that are critiqued, along with their willingness to do be cowed by authority and do what they're told.

Barnstone would argue that it is better to mimic the correct answer than to come up with your own, incorrect answer. But if the goal is to learn to think, then even an incorrect answer that arises from actually thinking is superior (as thought) to an answer that you mimic (non thought). That is, if your goal is to think for yourself.

Barnstone might further counter-argue that mimicking the correct answer puts you on the right path… so that even if you aren't actually thinking when you mimic it… that you will somehow absorb the correctness of it into your mind, and it will then trickle down into all your future thinking… and make all that future thinking correct. This Barnstone-trickle-down theory makes some sense, but at the very least it still shows that while you are memorizing stuff,  you are not actually learning to think… and it is not at all clear how memorizing the right answer will find its way into your future thinking. In as much as memorization is NOT the same as thinking, then I don't see how memorization necessarily leads to anything except a head full of what someone else told you. And since Barnstone does not provide the linkage between mimicry and thought, he really can't claim the latter.

The fact is, that thinking is a tricky process… full of false starts, dead ends, and mistakes. It is only by struggling through these difficulties that we construct an understanding of the world.  The only alternative to this effort, is to be given the answer. But what use is an answer when you don't know the question? It is of no use. If you are given answers, you might ask.. "What is this an answer to… is it correct… is it relevant… what does it relate to…etc". But i the absence of thought, you will never know. You will rely on the same authority figure (in this case Barnstone) to supply you with the answer, and so on and so on… the cycle of dependency never ends.

If we substitute "drawing" for "thinking" in the above example, it pretty much describes Barnstone's  drawing classes. All answers, no questions, and no thinking.. or should I say.. All perfect drawings, no individual input and no struggling with the real issues of drawing.

I don't think it is coincidental that there was so little drawing done in Barnstone's class. His only strength is as a lecturer of abstract ideas. The ideas he asserts are generally quite valid on the face of it, but the manner in which he demands you engage these ideas works against their being properly understood (as opposed to being memorized). His distaste for the honest effort of trying to draw is apparent, as he storms around the drawing room getting pissed off when someone isn't doing it exactly the way he thinks he described it. He sets aside only a small amount of time for actual drawing, but even at that the drawing session breaks up quickly enough, and it's back to the lecture room for more talk. After all, why "waste" time "trying to draw"… when he already gave you photocopied hand-outs on what you should HAVE DRAWN.

This is typical of Barnstone, and I no longer have any interest or desire to take any class he teaches. Aside from the negative vibes and harshness of his personality and of the environment he creates, I think it really doesn't make any sense in the end. Just as you can only learn to think by thinking, you can only learn to draw by drawing. Teachers of thinking or drawing need to engage you positively in the act of your thinking or drawing… assess what your level is, and develop you from there. That is how you develop with a teacher. Just because modern art schools don't have a strong structure for teaching drawing or painting DOES NOT mean that Barnstone's rote, authoritarian approach is correct.


 In General Then...

The problem with being given "an answer" ahead of time (i.e., ahead of the actual thinking process), is that you don't know what an answers is an answer to. You don't know what question is answers because you have not formulated the question. Without thinking for yourself, the only way to approximate knowing the relevancy of an answer is to "just be told" what the relevancy is.  Of course, being told the relevancy is to be given another answer, and so this just puts you deeper in the hole, as you are now two layers deep in answers with no questions. You are now well on your way to requiring that answers be supplied to you from outside of your own mind. You will grow dependent on external sources of answers, and will spend all of your mental energy memorizing and automatizing these answers. You will construct entire systems of thought that are not your own, with no way of checking it against physical reality, or against your own mind and emotions. You can even have a very complex hierarchical system of answers, where not only the answers are supplied, but also the relationships that make it a hierarchy.

This description of the situation seems direful, and I am tempted to say by proceeding this way, you will be alienated from your ideas. However, in as much as you are adept at accepting answers that do not come from your own thought, then you will come to experience yourself in terms of these externally given systems. This means that your sense of identity can be taken over from outside influences. Now that sounds bad, but I wonder if it is unusual. Certainly, many ideas we hold are of this sort, especially the ideas we accept when we are young. But even as adults, we are continually bombarded with answers, where we never asked the question. In a complex work or social environment, we assume there is relevancy to these answers. And as I theorized before, the relevancy of an answer is given to us as yet another answer, and so on. And so it seems somewhat natural to construct complex hierarchies of thought based not on questioning reality, or ourselves... but instead by absorbing assertions from other people, i.e., from society. Social metaphysics gives rise to social epistemology.

But if one is studying to be an artist, one must ask themselves if they want to be molded from the outside in this fashion. It is a warm-and-fuzzy idea to think that a young person can put themselves in the hands of the master, and be molded into a mature artist. But beware, most of those who are molded exist forever in the shape of that mold, never achieving independence of mind or spirit. That fits many just fine, in fact, I think it fits most. The question is, does it fit you? Be honest.

The Problem with Barnstone, Overview

Myron Barnstone runs a private art school called The Barnstone Studios, in Coplay, Pennsylvania, which is outside of Allentown.

This series of essays is intended to shed some light on the reality underlying Myron Barnstone's school and his teachings. I think that Barnstone is subject to both unfair criticism, and unfair praise.  Though the comments in what follows are mostly critical, I would like to recognize at the outset that there is a core set of ideas that Barnstone teaches that I have found very provocative, interesting, and even useful. However, I don't believe that the value of these teachings justifies the negative aspects.

Normally, one does not write multiple essays to analyze and criticize someone that one disagrees with. This is especially true in art, where poor teaching seems to be the rule. Why not just move on then, and forget about it? The reason is this... that Barnstone has taken upon himself the image of a kind-of latter day Renaissance Master, who defies the ignorant contemporary art scene, and trains would-be artists in the true knowledge of what real art is. Or something like that. There are many ways to express the same idea, many of which are pinned to his studio walls in the form of newspaper clippings, where the reporter gushes over how ingenius his school is.

Barnstone revels in this massive ego trip, and self promotes it shamelessly.


Some patience is required in what follows. The negatives aspects of Barnstone's teachings are not necessarily obvious. It took my quite a while to put together this critical overview.

I feel qualified to make critical judgments for two reasons. First, I attended 3 of his of his courses. I attended his basic drawing course twice (as is recommended) and his color course. Secondly, I have quite a bit of art education under my belt. I went to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts as a full time student for 2+ years, and also had received an associates degree in art from Montgomery County Community College. So I had a lot of studio instruction under my belt, as well as a lot of art history and theory.

I found out about Barnstone's school when I was casting about for an alternative to the art education I was receiving. I think I first heard about him via a reference in Juliette Aristedes book Classical Drawing Atelier. Aristedes had attended the Pennsylvania Academy (where I had heard her name mentioned), and had studied with Barnstone as a teenager.

What once looked like an interesting studio school with a gruff but likable old timer at the helm, has revealed itself to be more of an art copying factory, with a miserable cuss spending his last days on earth being pissed about how lame everyone and everything is. His occasional expressions of admiration are reserved for either unassailable master artists of the past (with whom he is in some kind of spiritual union), or else those artists of today that he has trained personally, and who use his methods.  

Every question you ask him is either cut off before it ends, or else is misunderstood by him... as he desperately seeks to superimpose some pre-ordained answer he has long since memorized. In either case, the answer more than likely misses the point of the question (which he didn't listen to anyway), and the tone he takes in answering it… directing his answer to the room, not to the one who asked the question… serves as a mocking reminder of how you know nothing. The bravado contained in that moment would be thrilling if he were an were a bullfighter, or operatic tenor, unleashing a crecendo of emotional turmoil in song. But seeing the so called teacher there, beating the question into submission for the pure thrill of being a know it all… the pure, naked ego defensiveness is sad. 

He has erected and maintained a useful art school far from the clutches of the evil modern art world. But apparently the effort to do so has turned him mad, like the evil scientist in the movies, who turns his powers to destruction because of some past injustice that an "ignorant society" had perpetrated against him. Instead of being a steady mentor, who disseminates his wisdom with a calm hand… he has become a bully, to whom anyone who does not toe his line (to the letter) represents an infidel in his midst. 

The content of what he teaches, and his methods, are in stark contrast to the modern art school. He is strict, where they are lax. He explains the ideas, where they are unconcerned with conceptual content.  He demonstrates what he explains, where they only occasionally demonstrate without much explanation. He has structured home work, and a plan to build knowledge over time... where they have only 14 weeks of sitting in a studio with the occasional pointer or two whispered in your ear as your plug away at the art.  

But, the power of all that he has arranged there seems to disintegrate due to a series of corrosive attitudes that aren't immediately apparent. The number one problematic attitude is that, though he strives to explain the idea of things, in actual practice, he doesn't want you to "understand" what you do so much as he simply wants you to do what he told you to do.  

 The presumption is that by doing what you are told… that is, by doing specific exercises, in very particular ways, in a specific order… that you will come to understand the nature of the art problem that those very exercises are designed to teach. In union with his explanations, this is generally true. His system of doing things does indeed cause you to understand some fundamental ideas.

 The problem arises when you consider that he wants you to do it exactly one way. In his mind, it is the right way… and being the right way, why would you want to do it any other way than that. But in practice, the energy required to do something exactly as you are told is so complete, that it seems to leave no room for your mind to actively think about what you are doing. Absolute doing in this way makes you reject your own mind, in favor of the requirements that another mind has given you. This kind of annihilation… the shutting off of my active mind in favor of doing what I am told to do… I just can’t do it.

In Barnstone’s view, the doing is the end in itself. In my world, the comprehension of what you are doing is the most important thing. Of course, you can’t comprehend what you haven’t done… so the doing is needed. But I want to first comprehend the thing in a general way, so that I have a conceptual grasp of the idea. This allows me to connect it to the broad base of experience and knowledge I have. Once I have that comprehension, I can decide for myself if I need to push myself to a more exacting execution of technique. But I do not presume that some exacting execution is my goal.

 Barnstone’s approach makes exacting execution the goal. You are not required (nor are you encouraged) to form ideas along the way. All he wants if for your homework to look exactly like the homeworks of former Barnstone Champions that he has pinned to the back of the room, or that he shows in his slides.

 As an example of the mindless I give you the following scenario… two weeks ago in class I asked that young guy named Sam a question. I asked him what Barnstone meant by a certain procedure of mixing. Sam looked at me funny, as if he didn’t even understand my question (which was clear enough I think). He tells me that I can watch him if I want. So I said to him… “In other words, you don’t have an explanation”.  Then I told him that I could watch him, but still not understand what was going on. In my mind, just watching an action doesn’t explain the reason for the action, and certainly doesn’t connect the action to any broader picture. He just looked at me with a scared expression and said… “I can only do what I was trained to do”.  To unwittingly express your epitaph at such a young age is sad. He can only do what he was trained to do.

But in Barnstones view, that’s what art is. It is to be well trained in the practices of making certain paintings in a certain way… his way.. the Barnstone way. Although the lectures contain plenty of explanation of the concept of the things, he demands an absolutism that is inconsistent with understanding. For all of his talk of ideas, I believe that his school reduces to rote training, an emphasis on technique, and thereby locks the minds of his disciples into a rigid way of thinking. Their way of thinking allows them to dutifully learn and execute a collection of techniques that will make correct and reasonable pictures. But at what cost? When your mind is taken out of the equation, you aren’t even a human being anymore, let alone an artist.

The Problem with Barnstone, Absolute Doing

Yeah, I've thought it through all right.  These thoughts have been building since halfway through that first drawing class, so it's not simply that I became instantaneously pissed a week or two ago. I was originally very excited by the ideas he taught. I feel his lectures are generally very good. But his manner of assigning and evaluating homework has always rubbed me the wrong way.  I have struggled to make sense of it.  The email I sent you was my attempt to make sense of it... to produce a singular critique of Barnstone, and although I brought up some good points and examples to myself, I don't feel like I quite put my finger on it.  

The closest I came was was the term I devised for the critique called absolute doing. More blunt ways of putting it might be to call it robotic, or mindless, or drone-like, etc... all of which are valid. But I like the term absolute doing because it is super abstract, which makes it useful, because then I can decompose the problem of Barnstone more generally. And in this general view of things, the problem is not  simply Barnstone himself... the singular individual who tortures people on wednesday nights. He simply is a perfectly crafted adherent to a certain way of thinking about things. It is his way of thinking about things that is the problem. His way is absolutist, and that is not simply inconvenient, or personally hard for me to deal with... rather, absolutism is wrong thinking.

Absolutism in any cognitive activity is not just a problem with the domain of that activity, but is a general problem, a problem of the mind... a philosophical problem. Absolutism is, by it's very nature, anti-conceptual. Conceptual activity is, by it's nature, an activity of generalizing experiences and thoughts so as to retain them in your mind in relation to other things that you already know. Absolutism, by it's nature, is not a generalizing behavior. It is a mental behavior that desires to have the content of the mind be equivalent to various absolute statements that you simply store in your mind, and repeat when called upon. It is memorization.

Memorization is useful at times. For instance, I memorize that the AMC channel on my cable box is channel 235, and that I left my shoes in the living room. That kind of knowledge isn't really knowledge at all. It is simply recall, simply a memory. It is stored in your brain, but it is not conceptual. You do not have to engage in generalization in order to remember that AMC is channel 235... and conversely..."knowing" that AMC is channel 235 isn't conceptual knowledge. We say that we "know what channel it is"... but really, we simply recall what channel it is. The ability to recall things, or to memorize things... is not itself knowledge, but it is a pre-condition to knowing. The reason is, if you couldn't remember anything, you would have nothing in your mind to generalize from.  But memory is memory, and thinking is thinking, they are not the same thing.

Barnstone's methods operates in this gray area between rote memorization, and thinking... leaning almost totally (or maybe just totally totally) towards the rote. He thinks that by cramming memorized absolutes into your mind (or fingers), that you will (some day in the future), be able to tap into the power that these absolutes are supposed to represent. The problem is... the absolutes don't mean anything. They mean no more than recalling that 235 is the AMC channel.  Being able to recall that 235 is the AMC channel is useful when it comes time to watch a movie playing on the AMC channel, just like being able to mix a pile of paint EXACTLY like Myron told you, is useful when you are painting a painting that myron tells you to paint. But beyond that, no claim can be made to it's meaning. To grasp the meaning of mixing a pile of paint , one has to consider the paint mixing conceptually.  But Barnstone is not about the conceptual.

Supposedly you can be conceptual later, long after you have left Barnstone's school. In theory this seems possible. But in practice, I find it hard to believe that any disciple of Barnstone is going to be able to get around the lock that absolutism has on their minds. They will simply look for more and more "correct" answers, and then dutifully execute them. There is a market for that sort of thing, and a subculture in this world that wants such things.  It is art that looks like what art is supposed to look like.

So the problem of Barnstone exists on two levels... the level of the man himself, and the impact we allow him to have on us when we go to his class.. and on another level, the problem is that he represents (what I think) are bad ideas. The idea of absolute behavior instead of conceptual behavior. We can solve the first problem by not going to his classes. The second problem is more insidious. It is the idea that absolute execution of the absolutely right thing (as he defines it) is the key to art. If he were to define it more loosely.. such as... generally correct execution of generally correct things.. then I would agree. But he doesn't really say that... and he certainly doesn't accept it in any of the work you do around him.

The problem with Barnstone, History

I was wondering about how Barnstone supports his rigid view of geometry in design, etc. Aside from the usual thoughts on that (that Barnstone is dogmatic), I have some new insight into how one does arrive at such dogmatic views. And it goes like this...

When I was in New Orleans, I went into this used bookstore and picked up two cheap used books on art. One of them was this book called "The History and Philosophy of Art Education". The title turns out to be misleading, as it is primarily about the growth of art education in England. The book is actually quite boring, as it details one historical fact after another. The only thing that makes it possible keep reading, is that one can find in these details, a direct correspondence to the present day. The other thing that emerges is a cultural blueprint of the British mentality to art and life. This is the Barnstone connection.

The book beings by acknowledging that England was never really an art culture. English artists would go to France or Italy to receive training, though this represents an insignificant minority of British people, so there was really no professional art education in England prior to the late 1700s (when the Royal Academy was founded) There were also no museums open to the public, as it was considered below the commoners station in life to view works of fine art.

This seems odd, as I always think of the English as being a craft-centric people. But whatever level of craft the English do possess, they do not equate it with fine art. Craft is for the working man.. the artisan... the tradesman, etc. The fine arts are for the upper class. And the two do not intermix. This dichotomy between art and craft in England seems to stem not from a philosophical dispute over the nature of the two, but on the sociological connections of art and craft to the social strata which they inhabit.

In the late 18th century, the Royal Academy is founded in England, whose purpose is to advance art and design in England. That rather democratic mission statement doesn't come to anything, as the Royal Academy quickly becomes an exclusive organization dedicated to establishing and preserving the social and business interests of a select few British artists. Most British artists in the Royal Academy are trained in France or Italy, and they return home to become members of the Royal Academy... or "Royal Academicians"... to have the knightly "RA" placed after their names... and to thereafter have access to the members of the upper classes from which they will receive portrait commissions.

The school of the Royal Academy approach teaching by way of rigid copying "From the flat", and then "From the round" (casts)... and from architectural ornament... from sculpture, etc. This approach is NOT the approach that was used in France and Italy. In the academies of those countries, the students engage in life drawing fairly quickly, and work from life and from natural observation. The British do not. Though the Royal Academicians were trained this way, when they have the opportunity to set up their own schools, they do not teach that way. They fall back (I suppose) into a more deeply seeded mentality... a mentality of structure, order, and system.

Another influence on their approach to teaching, is the British obsession (especially at that time) of classical culture. The British are in love with Greek and Roman classical antiquity. Their higher education system is based around learning Greek and Latin. The consider Greek and Roman models (in all fields) to be indisputable, perfect examples of beauty, not to be deviated from. Rigid and obsessive copying from Classical models was considered to be direct contact with perfection.... such that any deviation from it was to fall into corruption.

In this view it is clear that working from life, or working from an individual perspective... is simply to discard the history of perfection, and to sink into barbarism. Joshua Reynolds, as president of the Royal Academy, is noted for asserting that the key to creativity is complete adherence to copying. Of course, copying as and educational method is not invalid, but it seems clear that in the hands of the British mentality, it goes from being a means... to being the end.

In the early 19th century, there arises in England a problem... the English merchants are importing (at great cost) the majority of their designs from France, as the designs from that country are known to be far superior to anything being produced in England. This fact is the catalyst for a crusade to establish art and design schools in England, in order to wean the country off their dependence on French design. This crusade is led by the noted history painter Benjamin Haydon (trained in France), who is also an opponent of the cultural death-grip that the Royal Academy has on art training in England. His crusade succeeds in eventually establishing an art school in London and Manchester. However, social politics raises its ugly head again, as the administration of the schools is given to Royal Academicians, who move quickly to establish very strict training regiments, whose purpose it is to make sure that fine art is not taught in these schools... but rather, only art as related to industrial design.

The artisans and tradesmen who attend classes after their work day, are not considered of a high enough class to partake in fine art. They are subject to rigid drawing instruction that is more akin to mechanical drawing and drafting, the idea being that industrial design is a mechanical and scientific pursuit. The students are required to sign a document, where they promise to only pursue a career in industry, and to not attempt to be fine artists (a station they are considered unfit for, at any rate).

These schools are come into existence in the 1830s, and over the next 30 years nothing but debate rages over how to train the students. In actual fact, the schools are failing, since they fail to produce designers who can compete with French design. As it turns out, French designers are trained as artists. They go through the same basic training as fine artists. In France, they awareness of art, and of art training goes much deeper into the social fabric. It is not connected to social class the way it is in England. The pervasiveness of aesthetic sensibility comes through in the manner of life of the French vs. the English. The English are stiff upper lipped administrators, who can run a global empire, but the virtues of administration cannot support the required state of mind required for the development of fine art.

Despite the continued failure of the government art schools, they continue to grow.... as their cause is taken up by one ambitious upper class opportunist after another. Of course, those who "run things" in England are from the upper classes, and thus from the same conservative mindset, and set out to cure the problems by ever more rigid means.

Throughout the mid 19th century there are produced many many "drawing method" books, officially sanctioned descriptions of how to teach drawing. They are circulated amongst the schools. They are programmed instruction, relying predominantly on copying from the flat... on copying outlines of greek columns, of architectural ornament, etc. They are also geared to the perceived needs of industry... of design. The schools attempt to model themselves on the German schools of the time (early for-runners to the Bauhaus idea of a unification of art and craft). However, the English taking up the German model is more about the English preferring a system that focuses on craft. The Germans were not trying to avoid fine art training... the English are obsessed with it.

One last observation… the English believed that the teaching of art could be reduced to a sequential series of steps, learned in the manner that one might learn science. The "method books" mentioned above are a product of this belief in the ability to record (in language) the abstract ideas of art. This helps explain (to me at least) the overwhelming analytical approach that exists in art books (from the 19th century, or early 20th century) that we read. For instance, "The Practice and Science of Drawing" by Harold Speed is in this vein. Though it isn't one of the "method books" referred to above, it stems from the British practice of conceptualizing and ordering things.

And so the history of all of this staggers forward through the 19th century. I haven't read the book all the way through, but several things stand out to me regarding Barnstone's attitude to teaching.

1) Barnstone went to art school in England. That fact means a lot. Barnstone's imperious, domineering, rigid attitude either came from that (or more likely) was reinforced by that. I'm sure he partnered with it very well.

2) Barnstone is obsessed with the idea of the golden section, which is a product of classical antiquity (a British obsession).

3) Barnstone see's art as something that can taught systematically by way of rigid assignments that allow of no deviation ( a British mentality outlined in the book)

4) Barnstone teaches drawing by using orthogonal perspective (vs linear perspective). This focus on orthogonal is an architectural focus... which is a designer focus (not fine art)…. and it is also a classical antiquity focus. But even at that architecture traces it's roots NOT so much to Greek humanism, as it does to systems of geometric measuring and abstraction going back to the Egyptians. You cannot build a temple or a pyramid without a plan, and the plan must be based on a geometric system. Architecture also requires 'a priori' planning. You must know what you are building ahead of time… so you must define everything up front. The building doesn't emerge from a process of building, but the from a plan.

5) Barnstone's (aforementioned) orthogonal drawing assignments begin with a bottle. A BOTTLE!!! Barnstone revels in manufactured items, and he often talks about the beauty of a the bottle. However, the beauty of the bottle is quite different than the beauty of a natural form. Since it is man made, it's conception must arise in the mind, and must reflect ordered thought...i.e., some geometric basis. The beauty of manufactured items is also an industrial design focus, a industrial focus... which is the focus forced on the art schools of the English by the establishment (as outlined in the book).

6) Barnstone's cap-stone drawing assignment in the first drawing class is to draw a plant. This echos the British love of botany, particularly in the Victorian era. Every description of drawing instruction that the book mentions has a large part of it reserved for drawing plants and architectural ornaments based on plants. Barnstone's approach to drawing the plant focuses on aligning all the natural tendencies of the plant (it's edges, clumps, stalky-bendings, etc) to some aspect of the geometric armature of the rectangle. Nature is contained and ordered by an 'a priori' system of enclosures and partitioning of space, as if the image plane is a plan view of a building.

7) Barnstone's color class proceeds from a system of color mixing. The system is exceedingly conceptual, and requires the artist set up and maintain a complex palette. The impracticality of this approach, and the dubiousness of "a priori" assumptions about palette (before you even begin painting) seem to me to be classic a classic British approach to art education. Heavy on theory, indifferent to the needs of the actual work of art. It strives for a conceptual control at the cost of application.

The perfect as the enemy of the good, finds expression in such a mindset.

The question of how Barnstone would defend his commitment to geometric design wasn't meant to invoke a history lesson like this, but rather to invoke an answer based on the truth or falsehood of some relevant facts. But the problem is that Barnstone's worldview is seems so deeply entrenched in the types of biases that I outline above, that there is no way for him to really have that fact based conversation. He might throw a few fact based ideas out there, but if pushed by a capable intellect, he would fall back to asserting cliches like.. "Without design there is no art". Such an utterance doesn't prove anything, but in Barnstone's mind it validates the analytic and conceptual worldview completely, and gives him carte blanche to assert design abstractions without being questioned. Of course, since he lectures to the the uncritical and (art historically) untrained in a school that he dominates, he lives completely insulated from critical reproach.

In reading this book, I was blown away by the correspondence between British educational theory and Barnstone's approaches. To see the effect of culture and ideas on how art is taught is a real lesson on how human knowledge can be so completely dominated by cultural attitudes, to the degree that a person is not even aware that they are operating under it's influence.