art & the sources of freedom

National Art Education Association

Art &the Sources of FreedomAuthor(s): Ernest ZiegfeldSource: Art Education, Vol. 15, No. 6 (Jun., 1962), pp. 4-6+22Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3186660 .

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art

& the sources

of freedom

by ernest ziegfeld

In the recent Broadway

play, "Rhinoceros," by Eugene

Ionesco, we are presented with

an apparently normal and un-

exceptional group of citizens

who one by one are know-

ingly and willingly transform-

ed into rhinoceroses. At the 4 ART EDUCATION



end of the play, only one man, determined to retain his human individuality, has resisted this metamor-

phosis. This theme of man's willingness--even his

eagerness-to be rid of his individuality and his freedom is one which we encounter frequently in contem-

porary thought. When Hitler was at the height of his

power, Archibald McLeish wrote a radio drama, "The Fall of the City," in which the inhabitants of the city hailed the dictator who delivered them from their freedom. In Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm deals at

length with modern man's urge to take refuge in con-

formity. And in The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman is concerned with basically the same phenomenon when he describes the behavior patterns of today's "other- directed" personality. Two of the works cited here are works of drama, and two are socio-psychological docu-

ments, but they all concern themselves with free men in a free society who use their freedom for a final act of self-destruction.

This suggests several lines of thought about the nature of freedom and the sources of freedom. In its most elementary sense, freedom may be understood as the absence of restraint. The first of a number of

dictionary definitions is "exemption or liberation from the control of some other person or some arbitrary power." Its antithesis is restriction or imprisonment, whether this be physical, intellectual, or moral. The idea of freedom implies a wide area of potential action. When a man is imprisoned, he is deprived of his freedom not only to go away from his place of confine- ment but, more importantly, to go to other places. In the physical sense, freedom means the ability and the right to relate oneself physically to whatever environment one chooses.

From this purely physical standpoint, Americans

today are, without question, the freest people who have ever lived. First, there are notably few outside re- strictions on our freedom to move about and travel. Even more important, we have, to a notable degree, developed the means for achieving physical mobility in our system of transportation facilities. And finally, our high earning power makes it possible for us to avail ourselves of these means of movement. This is

obvious, of course, but the reason for stating it here is to emphasize the fact that the mere right to move about has little effective meaning unless it is comple- mented by the means for free movement.

This is equally true when we speak of intellectual freedom and creative freedom. At this level, freedom means the ability and the right to explore and to relate oneself to the widest possible range of ideas and experiences, as well as the right to express, without fear of restraint, the understandings, concepts, and values which have developed out of experience. But again, the mere right to act freely is of little conse-

quence unless there is a wide area of potential action

and the individual has within himself the means for action. After all external restraints have been removed, freedom is still limited by the range and depth of

experience available to the individual and by his

capacity to react to experience with intelligence and

feeling. To a person who has never learned to read the privileges of the New York Public Library will have little meaning.

Assuming the right to act without external re-

straint, we may concern ourselves with the question of how to achieve effective freedom of action and

thought. From this standpoint, freedom may be

thought of, not as something the individual either has or does not have, but as something which is in a con- tinual process of growth and enlargement as his range of experience is increased and his capacities for experience are developed. Harold Taylor has spoken of a world order "in which every human being alive will have the chance to transform the raw materials of his

personal character and talent into the most that it can

become."' By providing rich experiences and develop- ing human capacities we make available to every individual the maximum freedom which he is capable of

achieving. Too often, freedom of expression in the arts is

thought of almost entirely in termis of freedom from external restraint. Certainly there is no intention here to deny that this is of the utmost importance. The calamitous effects of rigid external control over artistic

expression have been more than amply demonstrated in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union. But, as in any other area of action, achieving this freedom from external restraint is only the beginning of artistic freedom. So freed, the artist, or the art student, or the third grade child may be set free in a virtual vacuum of experience where his capacities must atrophy because of a lack of nurturing experience. Or he may find himself in a world crowded with vital activities to which he can only partially respond because his

capacities for response have not been fully developed.

This is of particular significance in the field of edu-

cation, and especially art education, for it confronts us directly with the problem of how this capacity for freedom of action can be developed. Too often in art education, freedom has been understood only in its most elementary sense as absence of restraint. We have told our students that the choices of subject matter, materials, media, and techniques are theirs entirely and then have congratulated ourselves on having ex- tended to them complete freedom of expression. Ob- viously, such choices should be made by students wherever and whenever possible, but as we allow them these choices we must be certain that we are also

equipping them with the means whereby they can make

JUNE 1962 5



them with increasing sensitivity and understanding. Otherwise we might as well tell legless men that they are free to walk wherever they choose.

The entire process of education may be thought of as the ongoing process of freeing the student to inter- act with intelligence and feeling to an everwidening range of experience by helping him to develop his

capacities for such interaction. This demands of us a

great deal more than simply telling him that he is free to do whatever he wishes. Specifically, in art

teaching, we must help students to develop their sensitivities to the world they live in and we must help them develop the technical skills which will be ade-

quate for the expression of what they know and feel. In short, freedom can be attained only to the extent that it is built on a firm foundation of discipline.

It has been said that discipline is not a means of

teaching but rather a result of teaching. What is meant here by discipline is not the elaborate framework of

repressions and proddings that supports so much of our education but rather the internal direction and control that are integral to freedom of mind and

spirit. In this respect our field has special pertinence, because the essential source of any valid art experience is the inner life of the individual. Art experience, properly understood, has both a liberating and a dis-

ciplining effect. On the one hand, it can open up new areas of thought and feeling and provide new insights into the world of the individual, thus widening his

potential area of action and response. On the other

hand, his sensitivities will be sharpened and refined, and he will be capable of responses which are keener because they are more disciplined. Clearly, the extent to which this occurs will depend upon the intensity of the art experience which, in turn, is contingent, at least in part, upon the manner in which the individual is able to relate it to the total fabric of his experience.

The teacher's responsibility for nurturing freedom revolves primarily around this fact. To withhold all direction and support in the belief that this represents complete freedom for the student is, in many cases, merely to place him in such a confusing situation that he is unable to respond or relate himself significantly to anything in the situation. At the same time, some experiences, although carefully structured by the teacher, may have so little relation to the student's present concepts and understandings that he is unable to make any real contact with them. If the student is to have opportunities to exercise his freedom, ex-

periences provided by the teacher will, first, have a challenging relationship to the student's present concepts and values and, second, be of such a nature that they allow for a wide variety of individual re-

sponses. The teacher must provide a framework with-

in which freedom of action is not only stimulated, but

is demanded by the nature of the situation itself. Harold Taylor, in speaking of liberal arts education, has said that "the college of liberal arts must be or-

ganized in such a way that the student is continually thrust into situations from which he must extricate himself by his own efforts, with such help as may be useful to that end."2 It is only this kind of learning situation which will develop the student's capacity for

independent action and freedom of expression. The teacher who is skillful in providing this kind

of situation will not only accept diversity of response but will encourage it, not merely for the sake of di-

versity, but because each individual's response, if it is

really his own, must be different from anyone else's. And he will encourage and even demand excellence of response. It is true of most of us that our efforts are in direct proportion to the external demands of a situation. Some few are capable of a very high level of achievement without external pressures or motiva- tions. But the great majority of us are sensitive to what is expected in a situation and will do what we can to meet such expectations. The student who is not chal-

lenged by expectations of excellence will frequently be content with acceptable mediocrity; thus unchal-

lenged, his capacities for individual response will

atrophy. Mention has already been made of the importance

of providing learning situations to which the student can relate himself positively on his own terms. Erich

Fromm, in Escape from Freedom,3 develops the con-

cept of two types of freedom, negative and positive. Negative freedom, according to Fromm, is what has been spoken of here as freedom from restraint. It is freedom from the confines of a restricting situation or from doing what one does not wish to do. Positive

freedom, on the other hand, is freedom to relate oneself creatively and spontaneously to one's environment. It is his thesis that negative freedom by itself is a sterile and self-defeating concept, for its final result is total isolation of the individual from any vital rela-

tionships with his world. Unable to endure such isola-

tion, the individual embraces the values of the crowd and becomes an "other-directed" personality. By be-

coming like everyone else he rids himself of his sense of aloneness and, in a desperate effort to find identity with his environment, he relinquishes, as though it were a burden, his right of free and independent action. Thus, Ionesco's rhinoceroses and the freedom- stricken people of "The Fall of the City."

There are many forces in our contemporary world which conspire to produce such other-directed behavior. The partial or complete automation of many

job activities through which individuals were once able to achieve a sense of selfhood, the widespread standard-

continued page 22

6 ART EDUCATION



FREEDOM . . from page 6

ization of most of our products and services, and the

increasing size and impersonality of our social institu- tions are three of the most important ones. In the face of these inescapable forces, it is imperative that we discover and use every possible means by which the individual can establish positive, creative relationships with his world and can thereby exercise, with assur- ance and with joy, his rights of freedom of action.

As other avenues to self-realization are blocked, and as the standardizing pressures in our society make it

increasingly difficult to develop and realize our capacities for freedom, the arts take on a new significance. The experience of art is, in essence, personal and in-

dividual, for it is possible only when the individual has succeeded in creating, on his own terms, just such a

positive relationship with some aspects of his world. Each new understanding of the world brings with it a new understanding of the self and a new relationship between world and self. Art experience is the exercise of freedom. It is one of our most powerful weapons against the forces of conformity which men- ace the world of today.

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Ernest Ziegfeld is Professor of Art Education at New Jersey State College, Jersey City, N. J.

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Ppa" owl 1From an address by Harold Taylor to the faculty of Jersey City State 'College, February 20, 1961.

"2Ibid. "3Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Rinehart

& Co., 1941).



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