Author Description

Arthur Wesley Dow an American painter, printmaker, photographer and influential arts educator. Dow teacher at three leading American arts training institutions. The Pratt Institute, the New York Art Students League then he founded the Ipswich Summer School of Art in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Also a professor of fine arts at Columbia University Teachers College. His ideas were quite revolutionary; he taught that rather than imitating nature, art should come from the elements of the composition, like line, mass, and color. He wanted leaders of the society to see art is a living force in ordinary life for all, not a sort of traditional decoration for the few. Dow suggested this lack of interest would improve if the way art is presented to permit self-expression and incorporate personal experience in creating art. His ideas on Art are published in this book Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers. This book reveals the concept upon which the method here presented is founded the composition of lines, masses, and colors to result in harmony. Composition, building up of peace, is the central process in all the fine arts. A natural method is of exercises in progression, first building up basic harmonies, such a method of study, it includes all kinds of drawings, design, and painting. It offers a means of training for the creative artist, the teacher or one who studies art for the sake of culture.