In addition to the proposed workshop courses already mentioned, the Arch. Sci. Department's five courses in studio practice (Arch. Sci. 20, 21, 30, 31, and 40) will be taught from now on in the Visual Arts Center. These courses teach such things as texture, color, form, and manual dexterity, through practice and experiment.
According to Dean Trottenberg, the program as outlined above is only a beginning. "We aren't springing into existence full-blown," says Trottenberg. "We expect to grow into many areas." Just where this growth will occur is anyone's guess. It may come about in the form of links with other departments.
Dean Franklin L. Ford considers it "possible" that visual studies courses may eventually count for concentration in Fine Arts, thus encouraging Fine Arts concentrators to take courses at the VAC. Dean Trottenberg expresses enthusiasm about the possibility of using the facilities of the VAC for scenery and lighting design for the Loeb Theater.
And Sekler states that, in view of the VAC's interest in furthering the visual arts as a means of communication, "the departments of anthropology, government, psychology, social relations, the graduate school of education, and the centers for urban and cognitive studies may be expected to have an obvious interest in the new venture." Mention has been made even of the possibility of working with television channel 2, Boston's educational TV station.
The growth of the VAC will undoubtedly involve new courses and new activities. There is no way of knowing what future courses may form on whether any particular approach to visual studies may come to receive greater emphasis. The future activities that are spoken of include fairly definite plans for an extensive program of exhibitions in the third floor exhibit room and strong hopes for a series of visiting artists who might use the fifth-floor studio. The visiting artists would normally remain at the Center for six months to a year, and would quite likely be permitted to arrange courses and activities largely as their own discretion. As envisioned by Ford, the program for visiting artists might include artists from a wide variety of areas from painting to filming and television.
The Committee on the Practice on the Visual Arts has agreed that extra curricular work should generally be discouraged at the Center, yet it possible that some supervised individuals and groups may work at the VAC. Several people, particularly Dean Trottenberg, Sekler, and Robert G. Garner Coordinator of the Light and Communications Center, are anxious to start a collection of historically important photographs and exhibit them regularly.
Growth could conceivably even come in the form of the establishment of a concentration in visual arts. According to Dean Ford, this suggestion "has come up but is not being pushed strongly." He notes, however, that it "will no doubt come up more often in the future."
Perhaps an ever bigger question than the direction in which the VAC will grow is the question of how much the artist, as opposed to the person taking creative courses for the sake of improving his understanding of visual experiences, will be encouraged. Here, statements by people involved with the Center have not been altogether consistent.
Peter D. Schultz, executive secretary of the Center, emphasizes the intellectual content of the courses, which he feels are primarily concerned with the "analysis of elements of visual or artistic experience." The program, he says, should "teach students to learn to see rather than to become great artists."
Sekler, on the other hand, suggests that one aspect of the program will be "creative activity" for its own sake. In his statement on the Program of Visual Studies, he writes: "Naturally the same search for quality applies in visual studies that prevails in scholarly and scientific fields throughout the University. On their highest levels these studies may reach the domain of art, but it seems a wise humility not to set out on a program that is restricted to the highest possible achievement only. Instead creative activity will be encouraged in the manipulation of forms to an end without aspiring to the production of works of art--though hopefully not excluding that possibility."
Dean Ford seems to have rather strong hopes that particularly talented student artists will work directly with the artists in residence. He also states that the studio courses will not be primarily service courses for academic fields, though this may be of "incidental value." They will be courses for people "interested in the creative arts." An indication of this policy is the fact that the man nominated for appointment to teach drawing and graphics is not just a teacher but an active artist. It seems likely that the degree of emphasis on creativity may depend not so much on policy (apparently rather flexible) as on the number of especially creative students who work at the Center and on how much time they can spend at their art.
Clarity of purpose is obviously not one of the centers hallmarks. Some degree of uncertainty in a new program of such broad scope as the Visual Arts Center is, of course, inevitable. But that this uncertainty might grow into complete aimlessness represents a danger which, hopefully, the C.P.V.A. will carefully guard against.
The building itself was designed to accomodate the uncertain intentions as to how it would be used. In fact, says Sekler, "the program for the Visual Arts Center rests partly on the inspiration aroused by the building. Le Corbusier's commission was to create an inspirational building." The University made very few precise requirements. Among them were that studio space be flexible so that it could be used for other purposes or partioned off into smaller areas, that there be a minimum of offices in order, as Sekler says, to avoid the atmosphere of a "bureaucratic hydrocephalus," and that there be a multipurpose large lecture hall adjoining the light and communications area.
Other facilities that have been included in the Center include, in addition to three large studios for architectural courses, a room on the second floor containing kilns, molds, etc., for experimental use, and half of the fourth floor whose use has not been designated.
In designing the building, a major effort was made both to bring students from various courses within the building into contact with each other, and to draw people from other parts of the University into contact with the activity of the VAC.
To those ends, Corbusier made the building singularly inviting from the outside by establishing a close inter-relationship between inside and out: the ramp, for example, arrives at the top of a platform which seems to be inside but is actually unenclosed; the outdoor patio on the ground level gives the impression of being enclosed; and the bay windows give those inside a close connection with the outside. He also created a large lobby and patio on the ground level with benches where people can meet.
Whatever its architectural advantages, the building unquestionably also has several drawbacks. The fact that the University was unwilling to spend $10,000 or so for heating coils underneath the ramp, makes the ramp useless for some four months of winter each year. The colors on many of the brise-soleil, however attractive, modify the light in several areas of the studios making working in color extremely difficult. And, for those who find the building intriguing in such respects as its constantly changing appearance as one walks past it, there are probably as many who feel that its style fits poorly with the buildings around it, that the third floor studio looks from Oxford St. like a hunchback on stilts, or that the large lecture room resembles a multi-colored gas chamber.
If the aesthetic complaints are signs of poor taste, perhaps the activities of the Center will educate their adherents out of their current views. As to the complaints regarding usefulness, Sekler ticalities are the price you pay for says quite simply that "certain imprac-having the work of a genius."