Excerpt from "Canons and Values in the Visual Arts: A Correspondence" by: E.H. Gombrich and Quentin Bell

E.H. Gombrich (Ernst) wrote on May 13, 1975:

...I recently was invited to talk about "Art" at the Institution for Education of our University. There was a well-intentioned teacher there who put forward the view that we had no right whatever to influence the likes and dislikes of our pupils because every generation had a different outlook and we could not possibly tell what theirs would be. It is the same extreme relativism, which has invaded our art schools and resulted in the doctrine (which I have read in print) that art could not possibly be taught because only what has been done already can be taught, and since art is creativity (they used to call it originality) it is not possible to teach it. Q.E.D. - I recently asked my history finalists what "Quod erat demonstrandum" means and they did not know...

Quentin Bell responded on May 15, 1975:

...Your teacher at the Institute, is he really a relativist? Isn't he a kind of religious zealot? I used to teach school children. With me there was a much better teacher (better in that she could interest and control a class and organize things and was in fact a very admirable and sensible person). One day she came into the room where I had been teaching and found a series of (to my mind) the most surprising and beautiful water colors. "What are these?" said she. I explained that they were copies of Raphael made by eleven and twelve year old children. I would have gone on to explain how interested I was by their resemblance, not to Raphael but rather to Simone Martini, for they had all the shapes beautifully right but none of the internal drawing or the sentiment, but I was checked by her look of horror.

"You've made them copy from Raphael?" she said. Her expression was exactly that of someone who had been casually informed that that I had committed a series of indecent assaults upon the brats. And in fact in subsequent conversation it appeared that this was very nearly what she did feel. For her, what she called "self expression" was as precious as virginity.

© 1976 by The University of Chicago. All excerpts appear in Critical Inquiry, Volume 2, Number 3 (Spring 1976). This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of US copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice is carried and that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or reduplication of this text in other terms, in any medium, requires both the consent of the authors and the University of Chicago Press.

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