rebirth of creative power." Zest in creation then often becomes a stronger
incentive to work than any pleasure or profit to be derived from the finished
product, so that in this the propitious conditions of the first golden age of
childhood are repeated and the deepest satisfaction is again found in the work
itself. At about fourteen or fifteen, which is the transition period, nascent
faculties sometimes develop very rapidly. Lukens[4] draws the interesting curve
shown on the following page.
[Illustration: Motor, creative or productive power. Sensory or receptive interest
in the finished product.]
The reciprocity between the power to produce and that to appreciate, roughly
represented in the above curve, likely is true also in the domain of music, and
may be, perhaps, a general law of development. Certain it is that the adolescent
power to apperceive and appreciate never so far outstrips his power to produce
or reproduce as about midway in the teens. Now impressions sink deepest. The
greatest artists are usually those who paint later, when the expressive powers are
developed, what they have felt most deeply and known best at this age, and not
those who in the late twenties, or still later, have gone to new environments and
sought to depict them. All young people draw best those objects they love most,
and their proficiency should be some test of the contents of their minds. They
must put their own consciousness into a picture. At the dawn of this stage of
appreciation the esthetic tastes should be stimulated by exposure to, and
instructed in feeling for, the subject-matter of masterpieces; and instruction in
technique, detail, criticism, and learned discrimination of schools of painting
should be given intermittently. Art should not now be for art's sake, but for the
sake of feeling and character, life, and conduct; it should be adjunct to morals,
history, and literature; and in all, edification should be the goal; and personal
interest, and not that of the teacher, should be the guide. Insistence on production
should be eased, and the receptive imagination, now so hungry, should be fed
and reinforced by story and all other accessories. By such a curriculum, potential
creativeness, if it exists, will surely be evoked in its own good time. It will, at
first, attempt no commonplace drawing-master themes, but will essay the highest
that the imagination can bode forth. It may be crude and lame in execution, but it
will be lofty, perhaps grand; and if it is original in consciousness, it will be in
effect. Most creative painters before twenty have grappled with the greatest
scenes in literature or turning points in history, representations of the loftiest
truths, embodiments of the most inspiring ideals. None who deserve the name of
artist copy anything now, and least of all with objective fidelity to nature; and