The History and Philosophy
of Art Education

From as far back as we can trace, art was considered as craft and skill. Hemwt, the word for art in ancient Egypt, was depicted as a mason's drill, and later, in the Classical era and the Middle Ages, the Latin ars signified the skill of working according to definite rules for a particular pursuit, trade, or profession; for example, ex arte dicere meant speaking according to the rule of oratory. Similarly, the mediaeval derivations, the French l'art, the Italian l'arte, the Spanish el ate and the English art, were synonymous with skill, profession or trade, hence the English and French artisan, and the Italian artefice used by Vasari. Likewise the German Kunst signified trained skill or trade. The achievements of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael made it impossible to classify painting and sculpture as mere Mechanical Arts, unfit to rank with the Seven Liberal Arts. The very meaning of the word 'art' was changed. [p. 17]

In Ancient Egypt
Art was essential to the struggle for immortality and, being an important official pursuit, thousands of young artist-craftsmen had to be constantly in training, learning the traditional formulae for representation which were safeguarded by the priests. De Rachewiltz informs us that the inventory of the Temple library inscribed at Edfu includes the Book of Prescriptions for mural painting and of the proportions to be given to the figures. [Rachewiltz, Boris de An Introduction to Egyptian ArtSpring Books, London, 1966 [p. 99]] [pg. 17]

All art, architecture, engineering, and technology were looked upon primarily as craft, and the Egyptians held craft in very high esteem. The world itself was a piece of craftsmanship formed by the god Ptah of Memphis, the Great Artificer, 'the sculptor of sculptors, the potter of potters', the task of fashioning humans on the wheel being delegated to the god Khnum. The Egyptian master craftsmen, the architects, such as Imhotep and Sennemut, usually held high rank in the priesthood, the chief priest of Ptah having especial control of art training as the "Great Chief of Artificers' [ Uer-kherp-hemtu ], the living form of Ptah [Shorter, Alan W. Everyday Life in Ancient EgyptSampson Low, Marston & Co., London, 1932 [pp. 64-5]; and Weigall, Arthur The Glory of The PharaohsThornton Butterworth, London, 1923]..... [p. 17-18]

Artist-craftsmen and apprentices were formed into a huge colony near each great temple or necropolis under construction, a permanent colony of workshop, with its own police and services under the control of the chief workman, who was responsible to the chief priests and ultimately to the Pharoah's vizier, who supplied the craftsmen with free food and clothing.

In addition to the temple papyri of instructions, there were sketchbooks passed down from master to master, full of approved outlines for their apprentices to square up, and transfer, enlarged, to walls, ready for the master's attention. Life could not have been very pleasant for those apprentices whose masters had been conscripted by the vizier to work by oil lamps hundreds of feet from daylight in the dust of subterranean tombs. Their greatest pleasure must have been to execute original sketches from nature, which, if approved, were added to the official drawing books.... [pg. 18]

Greek and Roman philosophy
Greek and Roman philosophy is most strongly expressed in Plato's tripartite schema for society in his Republic :the philosophers, the spirited auxiliaries or guardians, and the toilers for gain or existence. Not even the second category of his ideal society, the guardians, might take notice of the manual crafts, the practice of which he described as degrading. All arts must serve a moral purpose, music being used to express prayer to the gods, instruction of a neighbour, or the 'accents of brave men in warlike action ' - not the laconic Spartans, we presume. The flute was unsuitable, its wide compass being superfluous for the limited melodies appropriate for a life of courage and self-control. Practical art had similar perils, and Plato affirmed: "We must supervise craftsmen of every kind... and forbid them to leave the stamp of baseness... on painting or sculpture.'

Artists in Greece worked for money, and in addition they took fees from their pupils. This, in Plato's view, debarred them from recognition as liberal educators. In Plato's Protagoras,Socrates asks Hippocrates:

'And suppose your idea was to go to Polyclitus of Argos or Phidias of Athens and pay them fees for your own benefit, and someone asked you in what capacity you thought of paying this money to them, what would you answer?'

'I should say, in their capacity of sculptors.'

'To make you what?'

'A sculptor, obviously.'

Then, comparing letters, music, and gymnastics with art, Socrates declares: 'You didn't learn these for professional purposes to become a practitioner, but in the way of liberal education, as a layman and a gentleman should.' [Plato, Protagoras and MenoPenguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1956 [pp. 41,49]] [pg. 18-19]

...Plato mentioned that youths studied painting under Zeuxippus at Heraclea. We also know that Pamphilos, the master of Apelles, instructed a school of painting at Sikyon. Under these masters young artists acquired rÚXum, the Greek term for a professional skill, especially in art or craft. According to Pliny they first received some theoretical instruction in accurate drawing, geometry, and art appreciation. Fine rhythmic outline, spacing, symmetry, and proportion were considered the most important attributes. Drawing competitions, such as those organized at Teos and Magnesia, were probably judged mainly on finesse of outline, as in the famed competition between Apelles and Protogenes.

The Greek view that only philosophical and theoretic studies were worthy of the intelligentsia passed on to the Romans.... [p. 19]

The mediaeval
The mediaeval concept of liberal arts for the education of freemen or gentry, as opposed to mechanical arts for the training of trademen or workmen, was rooted in Greek and Roman philosophy.... [pg. 18]

The classifications of artes igenuae[or artes liberales] and artes sordidaewere current in classical Latin, and proved a foundation for Augustine, Capella, Bethius, and Cassiodorus, who formulated the schedule of the Seven Liberal Arts, finally classified by Isidore of Seville [A.D. 570-636] as the Trivium of Grammar, Rhetoric, and Dialectic, and the Quadrivium of Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music. It was to be expected that music was preferred to art, for the Greeks and Romans had already denied the quality of ethos to the representational arts, though attributing it to music. Painting and sculpture, if mentioned at all by mediaeval educationists, were classified with craft-trades such as tailoring and leatherwork, and rated beneath agriculture, hunting and medicine. This low rating was due to the belief that painting and carving were merely craft-skills, acquired by apprenticeship to the master of a shop, who, like baker or candle-stick maker, bought raw materials, and then sold for a profit articles produced by the 'mysteries' of his craft. In the age of chivalry, as in the age of heroes, such tradespeople were often regarded as knaves, which, if we can believe Cellini, they were. [pg. 19]

The change in attitude came quite suddenly in the High Renaissance as the demand arose for intellectual artists capable of conceiving imaginative historic, religious, and poetic compositions. Thus Giorgio Vasari, the son of a potter, who started his own career as a painter of stained glass, was able to declare: 'I have lived to see Art arise suddenly and liberate herself from knavery and bestiality.' [pg. 19-20]

Unless he was a monk, the mediaeval artist-craftsman was a member of a guild. Guilds or gilds were first mentioned by Saxon and Frankish scribes in the eighth and ninth centuries, and originated as associations for mutual aid and protection. From its foundation in Norman times the powerful guild merchants had craftsmen members, and up to the twelfth century there was little distinction made in Britain, or on the Continent between merchants and armourers, carpenters, workers in stained glass, carvers, and so on.

Due to the rise of the craft industries in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, exemplified by decorative Gothic churches, armour, and costume, numerous separate guilds developed to control each craft. Each guild, company, or 'fellowship of crafts and mysteries' [termed a fragliaor compagniain Italy, métierin France, and zunftin Germany] had its oath and charges of acceptance, entrance fee, annual subscription, common purse, insurance scheme, ordinances, and patron saint - St. Luke in the case of painters. The greatest artistic guilds were the companies of masons and glaziers, and of these 'masonry has the most notability, a masonic manuscript records. [Cooke Manuscript British Museum Additional MS 23198.]

During the erection of great buildings, such as cathedrals, abbeys, or palaces, works departments or ministeria were formed with offices provided for the architects and master builders; the masons' and carvers' guilds would form lodges. Each guild employed had a strict hierarchy; for example, the masons were ruled by the principal master mason, then 'the master masons who have stick and gloves in their hands [and] say to the others "Cut here and cut there"' [Baird, Nicolas De MS c. 1250, quoted from Gimpel in Encyclopedia of World ArtMcGraw-Hill, New York, 1967.].....the nearest equivalent to the modern sculptor was the free-stone mason, who worked the intricate carvings in limestone, sandstone, and marble, often executing completely original and non-religious subjects. [p. 20]

As the masons and glaziers produced the most conspicuous crafts of the Gothic period, most aspiring artists entered their guilds. Painting was decorative in Northern Europe, confined mainly to gilding and using flat colors within outlines for enhancing sculpture and spacefilling. There was probably, however, more painting than art historians have given credit for... [pg. 20]

The guilds declined as the baronies, townships, and manors lost power and privilege in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Strong monarchs with strong central governments would brook no local or party power over the national trade or economy. In England, for example, a statute of 1437 ruled against 'unlawful and unreasonable ordinances' formulated by guilds 'for their singular profit and to the common hurt and damage of the people.' Under the Tudors, guilds' ordinances were made subject to royal approval, their power over journeymen and apprentices was restricted, and their religious endowments confiscated. In Italy, the Pope, the powerful clergy and local nobility had grown impatient with guilds' restrictions upon the artists they employed, and reduced their power; for instance, in 1539 the sculptors of Rome were exempted from membership by the Pope, and in 1577 the fine artists of Florence were exempted by a local degree. The rise of new industries such as the hardware and textile trades contributed to the downfall of the guilds. Strictly-bound apprenticeships survived until the nineteenth century, but the guilds' leading role in producing artists-craftsmen had ended three hundred years before..... [p. 21]

An integral part of the mediaeval scene was the idle or industrious apprentice, clothed and boarded by a master, aspiring to that master's daughter's hand or his model's body, toiling and sleeping in his master's shop, and royhstering outside on holy days. Bound apprenticeship usually commenced at thirteen or fourteen years of age, and if the youth gave satisfactory service for five to seven years, and reached a fair standard of craftsmanship, he obtained a certificate from his guild and could then work as a journeyman. Sometimes a master paid his apprentices a small salary, sometimes if he were famous the youth's parents paid him. On occasion a youth of good family was allowed to study in a master's shop without being bound to him. Benvenuto Cellini, the famed goldsmith, related: 'When I reached the age of fifteen, against my father's will I placed myself in a goldsmith's shop with a man called Antonio di Sandro, who was known as Marcone the goldsmith... My father would not let me be paid like the other apprentices, in order that, as I had adopted this craft from choice, I might be able to spend as much of my time designing as I liked.' [8] [p. 21]