Visual Memory Training: A Brief History and Postscript

National Art Education Association

Visual Memory Training: A Brief History and PostscriptAuthor(s): John SwiftSource: Art Education, Vol. 30, No. 8 (Dec., 1977), pp. 24-27Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192205 .

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Visual Memory Training* A Brief

History and Postscript u-lUl .......

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John Swift In his 2nd Discourse to students and

members of the Royal Academy, Lon- don in 1769, Sir Joshua Reynolds said:

Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory: nothing can come of nothing: he who has laid up no materials, can produce no combinations.' In this statement he encapsulates

some of the theories of Johannes Joa- chim Winckelmann.

The Age of Enlightenment wished to apply to planning, education, and insti- tutions, scientific methods, which by their basis in reason would uplift society both culturally and morally into a new age of natural harmony. It upheld two main tenets: that man was capable of perfection, and that the human race must progress towards that condition, finding historical justification in the Ancient Greek civilization, which apparently had achieved this blessed state. It was inevitable, therefore, that the study of their art forms and specifically those portraying man, was basic to the new ethos, and Winckelmann was the prime exemplar of this historical study.

He found within Greek art the realisation of the "Ideal," which he suggested was the combination of beauti- ful parts from disparate models to form a unified whole, as he wrote, "Beauty in unity, variety and harmony"2 To copy an already idealised image was obviously more sensible than returning to nature and all her crude deformities. This concept was to play an important part in the curriculum of the Art Acade- mies in Europe, which had rapidly increased in number, from under 25 in 1740, to over 100 in 1790,3 and which found within the Neo-classic view- point an attainable, measurable and potentially pedagogic method for the achievement of the sublime; the ideal a la Grecque. In England Rey- nolds furthered these hopes by emphasis on the imitation of the Ancients, the painting of man's nobility as the high- est form of art, all others to be regarded as base, and the concept of beauty being a combination of parts to form an eclectic whole.

It is now apparent that the Reynolds quotation referred very specifically to the storing of ideal examples in the mind, in order, at a later date to redis- tribute them in visual works. Reynold's influence on the curriculum of the

Royal Academy was considerable, and later when the Normal School of Design was opened in London 1837, and quickly followed by provincial ones, it was in the main academicians who formulated the contents of the courses, their aims, and methods. Within a short time the original aim of elevating taste by training the artisans, an idea taken from France, Bavaria, and specifically Prussia, in order to compete with foreign designers, was mislaid, as a contingency of other pressures forced the establishments into little more than drawing schools with a fine art emphasis.

The English Schools of Design all followed a "National Course of Instruction"-"The 23 Stages" which itself was not far removed from the typical Art Academy syllabus-

Drawing from the flat, the cast, nature-Stages 1-10,

Painting from the flat, the round, nature-Stages 11-17,

Modelling from the flat, the round, nature-Stages 18-21, Design and Technical Studies-Stages 22 & 23.

These were later organised into Ele- mentary and Advanced grades, and in 1856 into Stages of Instruction--st (Elementary), 2nd and 3rd. The majority of students never reached the dizzy heights of painting, i.e., using colour, and a very small minority the later stages of Design. Originally there were craft-type classes for artisans, but these lacked popularity, and in the main the schools were filled with fee- paying sons and daughters of the middle classes. The content of the "South Kensington" Course remained fairly constant until 1913,4 and con- tained 3 examples of training the visual memory-

Stage 5b-Shading from the round or solid forms,

Stage 8e-Drawing the human figure or animal forms from the round or from nature,

Stage 18c-Modelling ornament. In 1852 the Elementary School (Pub-

lic Day School) syllabus was formed which included, 'Drawing of common objects from memory'5 and in 1853 The Teacher Training Course was established to provide trained teachers and pupil teachers for Elementary Schools. Drawing was to be compulsory in Training Colleges, so Henry Cole and Richard Redgrave (Director and Art Superintendent of Department of Science & Art respectively), drew up a syllabus and examination which also included memory drawing.6 The train-

ing for Secondary School art teachers and for art school masters- respectively The Art Class Teacher's Certificate (ACTC) and The Art Mas- ter's Certificate (AMC), both included the training of the visual memory.

It is no surprise that memory was regarded as an important factor within elementary education. In general sub- jects curricula, the retention of fact was necessary for any form of success, both at an early level and at university stage, and there were many mnemonic devices used to facilitate this attain- ment. The "South Kensington" system was not especially different; it also sought to implant knowledge into the mind to be re-used when relevant, visually to add taste and refinement to the perception. 18th and 19th century writers appeared to have regarded perception as being free from any influence, and therefore the memory was filled in order to consciously modify it.

In France, at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs (the Ecole Royale as it was then known), Horace Lecoq de Bois- baudran 1802-1897 erected the first systematic method of training the visual memory and published his findings initially in 1847, and together with further ideas in 1879 as "The Training of the Memory in Art."7

His ideas had strong support from not only the Academicians, but also the Romantic, Delacroix, and the scientist, Chevreul. There are two main maxims-

i) "Art is essentially individual" and ii) "Art teaching, based on reason and good sense ... must aim to keep the artist's individuality pure and unspoiled ... in order to cultivate it and bring it to perfection"8 Lecoq's basic idea of memory is

similar to the academic notion, i.e., "stored observation"9, and his methods of simple to complex also echo the academic syllabus. The methods used are clearly laid down and initially involved the memorizing of simple lines, angles, models, casts, and reliefs gradually increasing in complexity and difficulty. As skill developed less time was given, and constant practise was advocated, either on paper or mentally.10 Lecoq claimed that this method would enable the artist to capture fleeting sensations- expressions of faces, landscape, rapid movements, etc., soon to become a doubtful aim in the light of photographic advances, and that it benefit- ted the artist because it was a natural process, i.e., not an artificial aid."

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In the main he closely follows already established Academic precepts-simple to complex, parts before the whole, line before shade, drawing before colour, niggling accu- racy as a virtue, and only advanced classes allowed to study direct from nature. The advanced class sometimes worked out-of-doors, not an uncom- mon activity in French ateliers,'2 where models, draped or nude, stood or cavorted round the parkland. The pur- pose of this exercise was to record either:

i) The actual appearance at the moment from memory, or ii) The ideal picture it suggested.'3 Despite the fact he believed his

method would stop the paraphrasing of old masters and encourage the forma- tion of personal concepts, visual thinking, and the faculty of invention, the practical application of his methods would appear more likely to stunt some, if not most, of these qualities. Despite some more enlightened aspects, the methods of Lecoq as baldly stated in his book, lead one to the conclusion that he, too, was over- concerned with the input of knowledge, rather than any extraction of personal expression, although this contradicts what he writes, but a per- usal of the photographic examples of memory work in the rear of the book, tend to reinforce this assumption.

There is little doubt, however, that he was a successful teacher; there are many affectionate references to him in the writings of his ex-pupils, who include some notable artists, e.g., Fantin-Latour, Alphonse Legros, L. Lhermitte, Auguste Rodin, Jules Dalou, Solon, and Roty. Legros became professor of fine art at the Slade School, London, in 1876 and encouraged the retention of visual imag- ery in his teaching on the lines of his master.

Via Legros, and the many English artists who had studied in the ateliers of Paris, the French art educational ideas, including memory training, were fairly commonly known in London; e.g., James McNeil Whistler was an exponent of a mixture of ideas culled from Gleyre's atelier and from his friendship with Lecoq's pupils, Latour and Legros. Independently also, the training of the visual memory in England, basically to remember facts, was widely used in national examinations, and perhaps more importantly was considered significant by some of the more enlightened art educators of the latter half of the 19th century: T. R. Ablett, Ebenezer Cooke, and W.R. Lethaby. It formed part of the Elementary School examinations, and therefore the taught course, all Training Colleges practised it as a subject in itself and in relation to Blackboard Drawing (a necessary part of the professional expertise), and the majority of Schools of Art included it as

part of the "National Course of Instruc- tion."

By 1903; when Robert Catterson- Smith became headmaster of Bir- mingham Municipal School of Art, memory methods were by no means unknown; indeed his predecessor E. R. Taylor in his book Elementary Art Teaching'4 criticises the too-great expectations put on results by Schools of Art, and recommends some simple exercises for fundamental memory training. Catterson-Smith had been an assistant art inspector for London County Council under W. R. Lethaby and was therefore familiar with his ideas as well as those of T. R. Ablett via the "Royal Drawing Society" examinations, both of which gave some emphasis to visual memory.

In his book Drawing from Memory and Mind-Picturing'5 he underlines the importance of the "unconscious or subconscious"'6 and states his inten- tion to strengthen "the creative and constructive"17 by the holding of "mental pictures18 in the mind's eye. He defines memory as "the record in the brain of the impressions received consciously or unconsciously since life began, along with a record of our thoughts and actions . . . which enter into and influence all our thinking and doing".19 As did Reynolds and Lecoq, he links memory with the imagination, "the combining of images in the mind, called invention, fancy, imagination or sometimes even creation."20 The visual memory is important because "it par- takes of the individuality of the person in whose mind it occurs"2', i.e., it can- not but help be personal, it also supp- lies clear images which benefit the mind specifically and generally, and these images are composed of "expressive essentials,"22 the mind hav- ing rejected inessentials. He also argues memory is allied to reasoning, in that it translates an abstract idea into an image, i.e., resolves it into positive conception.23

Catterson-Smith seems to bethefirst exponent to move away from the idea of memory as merely a storehouse. He rejects the memorising of proportion and perspective, claiming that these can be worked out by the application of theoretical knowledge. He is quite correct, but this aspect had not been so succinctly stated previously, indeed "Drawing from Memory and Knowl- edge" was a frequent title, used by a variety of examining bodies in the 19th and 20th centuries. His methods are seen as means to train the mind to visualise, either from things seen or drawn, and/or from images arising spontaneously in the mind.24 He argues that the realisation of a trained visual memory when manifested as drawings, etc., is analogous to the process of thinking creatively, i.e., a mental concept, a mental redistribution of its parts, and its expressive and reasoned

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realisation. The City of Birmingham Polytechnic,

Art & Design Centre, hold much archi- val material of the works produced, showing the wide variety of areas covered by the memory approach-- drawing, and pointing from plant forms, lantern slides of ornament, live animals, objects in the museum, space- filling designs, modelling, lettering, historic ornament, from verbal de- scription, etc. Perhaps his most revolu- tionary teaching method was what he named "Visualisation" or "Shut-Eye Drawing," whereby after studying an object or problem for 2 or 3 minutes, the student was asked to draw it with his eyes closed, thus expressing the interior mental picture without reference to external criteria. The "shut- eye" drawing was then removed, and a memory drawing, with the eyes open, commenced. If parts of the drawing would not "mentally re-emerge," the student was encouraged to invent the missing section. There is no data as to yet when this process was first used. Whilst photographing and dating some of the examples, the earliest "shut-eye" work I have found seems to date from c.1912, but this is by no means a final date. The origins of the idea are also somewhat clouded; there is little reference to sources in his book, and they could derive from ideas as diverse as Leonardo's "stains on the wall," or Lecoq's "tracing pictures mentally," or merely the idea that closing the eyes helps one to concentrate.

The complex nature of some of the visualisation problems are exemplified in the following:

i) Slide shown to student of Thomas Bewick's "Wild Boar"-after 5-10 minutes removed. Student then asked to produce "shut-eye" drawing of-

a) The same pose but from a different position, b) Different poses-using the knowledge gathered in looking. ii) A knot in thick rope is tied and

untied several times before the student-Student then produces "shut- eye" drawing showing knot's construction, followed by a memory drawing.

iii) A piece of paper is folded several times, and pieces are cut out. The student is told the original shape and number of folds, sees the folded shape and its cut-out parts, and then produces "shut-eye" drawings of the altered piece as it would look when opened out.

The "shut-eye" drawing method was also used to realise street scenes, book illustrations, poses of models (especially short or moving ones), visits to the zoo and the cinema, as stimulus to design and perhaps most interestingly as a means of rousing the mind by suggestion. In this exercise the student was given a specific shape within which was some random scribble, and

from this he was expected to form a design. This idea, too, may have been taken from Leonardo's ideas of letting damp patches on walls act as visual stimulus to the imagination.

Catterson-Smith's ideas were highly thought of at the time, and were used in both the central school in Birmingham and the junior branch schools and art classes, where the practice continued until c.1944, when the Education Act placed the junior art schools under the aegis of Secondary Education, and their art emphasis was realigned to fit a more general scheme of education.

One of Catterson-Smith's more eminent students was Marion Richardson, and her ideas on mental-picturing are too well known to be developed here,25 but their debt to the methods outlined above are self-evident.

During the 20th century, memory in art examinations was always present, but in ever reducing circumstances. It was part of "The Drawing Examina- tion" and "The Advanced Examination" of 1913 to 1946, it was featured, nomi- nally at least, in those examinations' replacements: the "Intermediate Examination in Arts & Craft" and "The National Diploma in Design" which lasted from 1946 to 1963. But from the mid 1930s it seems to have suffered a slow demise, and whereas there is insufficient room here to analyse these reasons in depth, some brief indication can be made. The decline of memory drawing may be in part orwholly dueto one or more of the following:

a) The rise of "child-centred" education-the erosion of an external formal structure to learn- ing.

b) New aesthetic concepts-Post Impressionism/Formalism and Roger Fry.

c) Fine art emphasis towards naive or primitive art and its obvious expressive qualities.

d) The decentralisation of Art Col- leges in terms of course of instruction and examinations, initially after 1946, but consid- erably more so after 1963.

As far as I am aware, there is now no school or college of art in England which practises the systematic development of the visual memory, but then one might argue that very few of these establishments have a systematic training in any of the fine art areas, where essentially the training was tra- ditionally found. Many fine art depart- ments within colleges of art and poly- technics now regard their role as that of putting the student through an artistic process, i.e., modelled on artists' activities and behaviour, this may or may not be the best educative programme, but it is a decided swing away from any type of formal lesson, programmed content, and skill development format that characterised the English art school pre 1960. I do not intend to

imply that these activities do not occur, but that they spring from staff inclina- tion, student initiative, and a combination of these, rather than from a struc- tured timetable. Postscript

Artists have always used some aspects of visual memory in their work; it was inevitable. On the most basic level, within representational work, between the eye observing an object and observing the relative marks made on the paper, the image is kept intact by some sort of mental imagining; and, in non-representational work, the mark- making activity is altered and refined via a system of "recognition of right- ness," i.e., some form of gestalt which responds to the accumulation of past experiences, active and passive, with their positive retention and recall. There are many references to this ability to use mental images, ranging from Hogarth, Turner, Delacroix, Whistler, and Degas, to name some of the more eminent, and perhaps I could leave the penultimate words to an American sculptor, David Smith, whose view of visual memory fully accepts the role of the subconscious mind as a formative and essential part of image making.

"Reality includes the visual memory of all art ... (and) the poetic trans- position of it."26 "The truth of image is not single, it is many-the image in memory is many actions and many things-often try- ing to express its subtle overlapping in only one line or shape."27 "The artist's language is the memory from sight."28 It is an instinctive and yet reasoned

view, and whether it could be incorpo- rated into an educative pattern is open to debate, but if the future model of art student training is by the emulation of "artist-like" procedures, it may be that below the surface, the training of the visual memory is taking place subver- sively.

There is a possibility that the back- lash effect against an over academi- cised art training has prevented open discussion on visual memory training. Its past associations with the ideal, eclecticism, taste, the storing of knowledge, may still be too fresh in the mind for it to be usefully recalled in an objective manner. But if memory, prim- arily linked with the imagination as a constructive and creative factor, where visualisation reveals significant and personally expressive qualities is as possible as two such distinct charac- ters as Catterson-Smith and David Smith considered, it suggests that we are neglecting or ignoring an important element in art training.

John Swift is social science research council student, School of Art Educa- tion, Birminghan Polytechnic, Eng- land.

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REFERENCES

1Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, London: Collier-Macmillan, 1969, p. 31.

2 J. J. Winckelmann, "The History of Ancient Art," tr. C.M. Lodge, 1880, in Neoclassicism & Romanticism 1750-1850, L. Eitner, London: Prentice-Hall, Vol. I, p. 17.

3 N. Pevsner, Academies of Art: Past and Present, London: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1940, pp. 140-143.

4 The first School of Design was "The Normal School of Design" opened in 1837 at Somerset House, London, and branch schools began in 1841 with the opening of Spitalfield's Branch, Lon- don, quickly followed by Manchester, York, London Female School (1842) and Nottingham, Sheffield, Bir- mingham, Coventry & Newcastle in 1843. In 1841 the first "Normal School Class for Art Teachers" opened. 1852 The Department of Practical Art formed to oversee Schools of Design, now usually renamed Schools of Prac- tical or Ornamental Art, and in 1853 The Department of Science & Art replaced the above, being taken over in its turn in 1856 by the Committee of Council on Education. 1857 "Central Art Training School" moved to South Kensington, renamed "Normal Art Training School" (1863), becoming Royal College of Art in 1896.

5 S. McDonald, The History and Phi- losophy of Art Education, London: University of London Press, 1970, p. 167.

6 G. Sutton. Artisan or Artist?, Oxford: Pergamon, 1978, pp. 62-63, include "Committee of Council on Education-Minutes of 1854."

7 H. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, The Training of the Memory in Art, tr. L. Luard, London: McMillan & Co., 1911.

8 As above: Introduction by Selwyn Image-Slade Professor of Fine Art, London, and supporter of memory drawing, p. XXIV.

9 The Training of the Memory in Art, op. cit., p. 3.

10 Ibid., pp. 4-5. 11 Ibid., p. 6. 12 Albert Boime, The Academy and

French Painting in 19th Century, Lon- don: Phaidon, 1971, p. 47.

43 The Training of the Memory in Art, op. cit., p. 31.

14 E. R. Taylor, Elementary Art Teaching, London: Chapman & Hall, 1890.

15 Robert Catterson-Smith, Drawing from Memory and Mind Picturing, Lon- don: Pitman & Co., 1921.

16 Ibid., Introduction, p. VII. 17 Drawing from Memory & Mind

Picturing, op. cit., Introduction, p. VIII. 18 Ibid., p. VIII. 19 Drawing from Memory & Mind

Picturing, op. cit., p. 7. 20 Ibid., p. 9. 21 Ibid., pp. 10-11.

22 Ibid., pp. 10-11. 23 Ibid., p. 11. 24 Ibid., p. 16. 25 Marion Richardson, Art and the

Child, London: University of London, 1948.

26 Garnett McCoy, "David Smith," from The Artist & 1Nature, D. Smith, London: Penguin, 1973, p. 116.

27 Ibid., from Tradition & Identity, D. Smith, p. 137.

28 Ibid., p. 147.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Principal references Ashwin, Clive, "Art Education Docu-

ments & Policies 1768-1975," Society for Research into Higher Education, London, 1976.

Bell, Quentin, The Schools of Design, Routlege & Kegan Paul, Lon- don, 1963.

Boime, Albert, The Academy and French Painting in the 19th Century, Phaidon, London, 1971.

Boisbaudran, Horace Lecoq de, The Training of the Memory in Art, Tr. L. Luard, McMillan & Co., London, 1911.

Carline, Richard, Draw they must, Arnold, London, 1968.

Catterson-Smith Robert, Drawing from Memory and Mind Picturing, Pit- man & Sons, London, 1921.

Eitner, Lorenz, (ed) Neoclassicism & Romanticism 1750-1850, Prentice Hall, London, Volume I, 1971. McDonald, Stuart, The History and Philosophy of Art Education, Univer- sity of London, 1970.

Pevsner, Nikolaus, Academies of Art: Past & Present, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1940.

Reynolds, Joshua, Discourses on Art, Collier-MacMillan, London, 1969.

Sutton, Gordon, Artisan or Artist?, Pergamon, Oxford, 1967.

Taylor, E.R., Elementary Art Teach- ing, Chapman & Hall, London, 1890.

"Report of the Proceedings at the Annual Conference of Teachers," 1914, LCC, Education Offices, London. "Memory Drawing," papers by Selwyn Image, Catterson-Smith, L. Luard and a reply by G. Clausen. pp. 36-46.

City of Birmingham Polytechnic Archives:

a) Birmingham School of Art Man- agement Committee Reports 1900-1906.

b) Birmingham Municipal School of Art Committee Reports 1906-1921.

c) Actual works produced- including notes written on them by Catterson Smith in preparation for the publication of his book.

d) Large collection of lantern slides: i) Ornament to be drawn in memory

exercises, ii) Staff work, iii) Student work.

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Visual Memory Training: A Brief History and Postscript

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Transcript of Visual Memory Training: A Brief History and Postscript