Book Review

More Pictures to Grow Up With  (1946)

by Katharine Gibson

   

    Most know that I am a used book aficionado.  No, I don’t mean rare books or first editions.  Not even pedestrian art critics make enough money for that sort of lifestyle.  Rather, I mean those books which are classics based on having been passed between at least two generations.

    In the world of art books, I found that going back to the pre-WW II days brings a refreshingly straight-forward perspective to the field.  You see, back in the day, art was understood by a relatively egalitarian populace to belong to all people – and all people were expected to have at least a basic understanding of art.   I find that two fields have declined precipitously since the war – being visual arts and poetry, but that much of the fault lies with the critics, the private galleries and the artists who arguably have cultivated a less approachable, highly elitist environment that has benefited only the gallery owners.

    Katharine Gibson’s pleasant book is aimed introducing art appreciation to the middle elementary school student.  She does not talk down to the reader but does rather, find aspects of art that might be more appealing to children.  Gibson starts with pets – introducing children to the world of art and its concepts through the agency of animals while dealing with complicated concepts such as the difference between art and design, artistic intent, choice of medium, and so on.  I greatly appreciate her review of the concept of narrative within a work of art, whether it be an Italian Renaissance painting, a French tapestry, and Egyptian tomb motif or a Greek vase.  By the end of the first chapter, a child (or adult for that matter) is well prepared for his or her first enjoyable trip to the gallery or museum.

   

    “The Italian painter, Giovanni Bellini, tells of the vision of Saint Francis of Assisi.  Saint Francis stands before the rocks that have blossomed to make his home.  If you would like to know this picture of Saint Francis in Ecstasy more fully, look at it with your pencil.  It is a wonderful picture from which to draw.  You will find that by enlarging the smaller objects, you can discover many complete pictures – the town, the listening donkey, a pattern of worn stones, or delicate plants.  Little by little you will begin to feel that something of the serene beauty which Bellini made belongs to you,” (p 48).

    While the book’s strength lies in over 100 reproduced works of art, each patiently described around a general theme and yet each individually strengthening the child’s innate senses of observation, judgment and interpretation.

   

     The major topical divisions of the book are Animals and Birds, The Artist Tells a Story, Outdoors, Indoors, Boys and Girls, and The Artist Dreams a Dream.

    Animals and Birds focuses on observing first in nature and then moving beyond what you see to consider what you feel and how vision and feelings interact.  Then the child is asked to consider tools, mediums and styles and how they might be used or manipulated to convey both what you see and how you “feel” what you see in nature.

    The Artist Tells a Story introduces the concepts of narrative and movement within the art frame, as well as introducing some of the major movements or epochs of art production, such as the Ancient Greek, the Renaissance and the Modern, and how each age is created out of innovation, but that each age also builds upon that which has come before (tradition).

    “This painting by the contemporary American artist, Alexander Brook, expresses solitude and loneliness in many ways.  The little work horse, without the companionship that horses so particularly need, lingers near the abandoned house.  The old engine, now but a crow’s nest, long ago lost the pride it had in the days when all the country ‘round came out to see it pass.  Notice how the painter has given you the feeling and texture of the different kinds of rough grass growing in this Pasture at Elk, the unkempt coat of the horse, the rusting surface of the engine, and the cool windless covering of the sky,” (p 72).

    Impressively, Gibson offers the clearest, most concise definition of abstract modernism, “In our time, artists have made many experiments with new combinations of line and shape, new kinds of design, and new ways of putting on color.  More and more they have gone inside themselves and painted their own ideals and dreams,” (p 41).

    Outdoors deals, obviously, with matters of perspective, space, placement and the relationship between the general and the particular.  “… The world is always changing, never still.  You must decide how you will translate what she has to say onto your little space,” (p 66).  We also begin to deal increasingly with the difference between realism, surrealism, expressionism and the abstract.  Within the descriptions we move beyond how the individual image makes you feel to how the various elements interact together to make you feel a certain way.

    Indoors is less useful for viewing art and more useful for understanding how to move beyond merely viewing to apprehending and comprehending the consequences of art for sociology, theology and anthropology.  Gibson challenges the reader to consider the content of the elements and their represented material construction and what they tell us about the artist, the subjects and their respective worlds and value systems.

    Gibson delves even more deeply into matters of apprehension, comprehension and interpretation in the section Boys and Girls.  “… The likeness or the feel of a person in a portrait is not just a matter of the shape of a nose or the color of eyes.  It is also a matching of the quality of that person with the right kind of brush mark, a line made by the edge or tip of a pen or the smoothness or roughness in the laying on of paint,” (p 105).

    Finally, in The Artist Dreams a Dream, Gibson deals with moving beyond the world of the natural and the observed to create your creatures, worlds and impossible narratives.  She gives a few practical methods for brainstorming one’s way into a new world and how those dreams both reflect our past, our present condition and our hopes and aspirations for the future.

    “The weight of water, the movement of waves as they reach the top of their roll and burst into spray, the sense of danger and of night are all in Black Reef by the American artist, Henry Mattson.  Turn the painting so the sides are top and bottom and you will see, with a fresh eye, the changing path of its patterns of light and dark,” (p 83).

    In all, Gibson’s More Pictures to Grow Up With is the type of book one wishes more adults had access to read.  Gibson’s approach is simple and direct while being comprehensive and educational in its tone.  She never talks down to children and so her book is approachable also by adults.

    Some decades ahead of her time, Gibson was also aware of the value of a rich and varied exposure to art beyond the classic Western tradition and epochs.  She includes Native American, Indian, Japanese, Islamic and the art of ancient civilizations as her examples – each on an equal footing with all others.  Though in doing this, she does commit the smallest error in direction in that the non-Western art is approached and understood through the eyes of an Anglo-American viewer.  Were it written today, one would hope for a bit more challenge to the reader in the form of considering how art forms, purposes and interpretations vary from culture to culture and between historical ages within each individual culture.  But, a single book cannot be all things to all people.  That being said, this is a very good book with which to start.

 ~ Piedac