Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

Overcrowding is, undoubtedly, a heinous offence, for its sole cause is lack of taste. In this country, lack of resources meets with ready sympathy, and it has, of late years, been met with adequate help but this lack of taste merits nothing but unqualified condemnation. Mr. Richards is of opinion that the so-called Art Nouveau,' with its awful contortions in furniture design, was a direct attempt to be original. It is not, therefore, surprising that he considers that deliberate originality should be discouraged," whilst frequent reference should be made to the best work already accomplished by man." The recommendation that the principle of correlation be applied to the teaching of drawing brings to mind the striking theories held by W. E. Ford on the application of this principle to the whole school curriculum. If attention to the subject of lettering were eventually to raise the standard of printing in the country, it would indeed be well worth while. Anyone who has a taste for a good-looking book cannot but find it difficult to buy the shiny-covered, badly printed volume such as is offered to the Welsh reading public. Perhaps the most striking of all the suggestions offered by Mr. Richards in his report is the introduction into every school of a Sixth Form Room. From this room, the desk and the usual class-room paraphernalia should be banished, and instead the room should pass through its adolescence, as it were, and become a place where reason- able human beings may work under human conditions and be happy." Here is a place where artistic feeling and aesthetic appreciation should be cultivated by the students and encouraged by the Head Teacher here per- sonality should be strengthened and individualism deve- loped;" here all that is best in literature, music and art should be placed before the students. Such a room, which need not be a costly room," would surely help 44 to set up in the minds of the students a standard to which they could refer to help to beautify their own future rooms and thus improve the taste of some of the homes in the Principality." This last is an important point, for, as Mr. Richards says in an earlier part of his report, the beautiful old Welsh house with its well-made furniture is fast receding into the realm of the antiquary our villages are being modernised by red brick, bay-windowed villas, as pretentious as they are out of place, which ape those of a London suburb to the very names on their gate- posts." Anyone who questions the claims to beauty of the old Welsh home-stead would do well to study The Old Cottages of Snowdonia, by Harold Hughes and Herbert L. North, book that might perhaps deserve a place among the books of reference recommended in this report. It is a matter of fact that the pupils of the schools are them- selves conscious of the need which would be satisfied by the type of room suggested by Mr. Richards. Surely this proposal will meet with nothing but enthusiastic approval. It is difficult to believe that the Sixth Form of any school would fail to appreciate such a room. The characteristics peculiar to each individual school would find expression in considerable variation in the detail of the room. There might be found in it a piano; music, both modern and classical a few periodicals of a type that would'not appeal to the users of the general school reading-room, for instance, The Round Table The Bookman The Journal of the Welsh Folk-Song Society a first-rate art journal papers of a similar standing for the students of modern languages and for the science students. In addition to being a worthy "last harbour" in the school life, this room would give to pupils a foretaste of the best in the life of a college common-room. For many pupils, it would, of necessity, be a not too inadequate substitute. This last suggestion is of a strikingly catholic nature to find in the report on one subject of an expert specialist; but it is characteristic of Mr. Richards's attitude. Instead of relegating art to two or three art schools and to one or two picture-galleries," he would have the nation act on the principles enunciated by Professor Lethaby that Art is many things-service, record and stimulus. It is not only a question of high genius genius is produced as the crest of a great wave rising from gifted communities, and without the flood of common work-art, you cannot have the crest of genius. Art, too, is everything that was ever rightly done, made or expressed. By art we live and move and have our being, and if a nation has not art, it must perish everlastingly. Art is activity, cleanliness, tidiness, order, gaiety, serenity, mastery. Art is the right way of doing the right things, and the evidence thereof is beauty." It would be well for the nation were Mr. Richards's views on War Memorials assimilated by every public body in the country. He has put a high ideal before the nation in these words: "Best of all, let our memorials take some form in which real life can vibrate, some means by which progress and development may carry the nation a step forward something that marks the dawn of new ideals rather than sets the seal on the old ones." It is depressing to turn from this to the thought that the Hedd Wyn Memorial may, in idea and execution, be earnest of numerous similar efforts still to come. The design, as advertised in the form of a coloured picture-postcard, is extraordinarily bewildering and lacking in reticence and good taste. The whole question of War Memorials needs the sure touch of an infinite delicacy of feeling. Of Mr. Richards's many suggestions for memorials, not one can fail to win approval. They have, too, the further merit of being practical. Patiently and insistently, he demands a high standard of thoroughness in the actual raising of any kind of War memorial If it be a seat, let it be of good wo' kmanship- comfortable and placed in a pleasant spot where one would naturally wish to rest." For a school, no better war memorial to Old Boys can be desired than Mr. Richards's Sixth Form Room." It is, doubtless, within the power of the richer schools in the country to carry out the sugges- tion but, for many schools, the only hope lies in a grant from a private benefactor. It is possible, if not probable, that a campaign of art teaching, such as is indicated in this report, would in- culcate in the mental economy of the educated Welshman, a certain sense of discrimination in which, at present, it is sadly lacking. A young poet, of ability and inspiration, will writefverses on so inadequate a subject as an extract from a superficial novel of prodigious popularity, seemingly