Arthur Lismer: Visionary art educator

McGill Journal of Education, Winter 2003 by Spicanovic, Vladimir

The first part of the book also introduces Lismer's seminal work at the Art Gallery of Toronto, where he occupied the position of the supervisor of education from 1929 to 1938. It is remarkable how, during the years of the great depression he was able to establish and ran Saturday art classes for children. Grigor suggests that, "his first objective was not to train artists but to encourage children to enjoy art through their own 'creative experiences' " (p. 92). While working at the gallery, Lismer was also able to engage in numerous educational activities outside of Canada. For instance, in 1934 he attended the National Education Fellowship conference in South Africa, which also attracted influential thinkers such as John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Bronislaw Malinovsky, Helen Parkhurst, Harold Rugg, and Wilhelm Viola. Two years later at the invitation of the government he was invited to teach and lecture again in South Africa. In 1937 he attended the NEF conferences in New Zealand and Australia as well as the subsequent conference in Honolulu in 1938. In the same year he was also appointed visiting professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The second part of the book, Arthur Lismer's Ideas in Education, provides a great deal of insight into Lismer's pedagogy - its underlying philosophical foundations, methods and objectives. Lismer's interest in the democratization of art and museum education finds its roots in the work of Victorian thinker John Ruskin, whose contextualist theories about art and society were further developed by William Morris and John Dewey. Ruskin's ideas helped Lismer to envision a holistic approach to art teaching, an approach that was open to naturalistic and pictorial aspects of art as much as to social awareness. During his appointment at the Victoria School of Art and Design, he stressed the importance of drawing, which he saw as a basis for all art. He believed that through drawing students can learn how to see while also being engaged in expression and self-discovery. Grigor also examines the relationship between Lismer's pedagogy and the work of the American painter and a formalist teacher of art, Arthur Wesley Dow. He was also known for his influential texts, Composition (1899) and Theory and Practice of Teaching Art (1912). Lismer's teaching stressed the principles of compositional design and drawing, leaving me with an impression that his teaching philosophy accommodated both notions of the innocent (Ruskin) and trained (Dow) eye - the concepts which were foundational to modernist teaching of art.

Lismer's sense for social responsibility is exemplified in great detail in the second half of the book. Grigor introduces Lismer as a teacher who was also critical of modern society. She reminds us that "industry as a subject for art was a twentieth-century idea based on the concept that art was more concerned with life than conventional beauty," as exemplified in the work of Fernand Leger and Antoine Pevsner (p. 261). However, although concerned about the meaning of art and human life in the industrialized world, Lismer's drawing classes often involved field trips to industrial areas, factories and docklands. Grigor also writes that Lismer believed that expression is what comes first and that skill should be acquired in process. Thus, during the 1920s, while teaching at OCA, he was seeking a fine balance between encouraging self-expression and providing students with technical skills. While teaching at the Children's Art Centre at the Art Gallery of Toronto, Lismer's pedagogy was informed by the ideas of Austrian artist Franz Cizek, who was a contemporary of the painter Gustav Climt and influential Vienna Secession group. Grigor provides a great insight into the work of Cizek's which privileged children's expression over all other technical and skill oriented concerns. One may also assume that it was Cizek's work that influenced Lismer to believe that artistic ability was innate and that ultimately, art could not be taught - an issue that has been revisited recently by James Elkins (2001), in his book Why Art Cannot be Taught: A handbook for art students.