Arthur Wesley Dow

Arthur Wesley Dow (April 6, 1857 – December 1, 1922) was an American painter, printmaker, photographer, and influential arts educator. His ideas were quite revolutionary for the period, he taught that rather than copying nature, art should be created by elements of the composition, like line, mass and color.

Quotes

• ..art lies in the fine choice. The artist does not teach us to see facts: he teaches us to feel harmonies.
  • "Talks on the Appreciation of Art", The Delinator (Jan 1915)

Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, Boston (1899)

• Painting, which is essentially a rhythmic harmony of coloured spaces.
• Realism was the death of art.
• Great art should come from the harmony of two lines.
  • Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, Boston (1899)

A Course in Fine Arts

• Ten Practical Experiments

1. Spacing (use gray appearance charcoal)

2. Shape (in varying proportions)

3. Arrangement

4. Rhythm

5. Drawn Line (charcoal and brush)

6. Masses(Chinese and Japanese ink painting)

7. Tone (difference)

8. Color ( suggested by stain glass)

9. Dark and Light(crayon on black paper)

10. Intensities

• A Course in Fine Arts- Arthur Dow- Bulletin of College of Art of Association of America Vol 1 no 4 September 1918

Other

• ..art lies in the fine choice. The artist does not teach us to see facts: he teaches us to feel harmonies.
  • "Talks on the Appreciation of Art", The Delinator (Jan 1915)

• Art is the most valued thing in the world...it is the expression of the highest form of human energy,the creative power nearest to the divine.The power is within - the question is how to reach it.
  • Arthur Wesley Dow & American Arts & Crafts, Nancy E Green & Jessica Poesch Exhibt Cat. New York (1999)

About Dow

• This man has one dominating idea..to fill space in a beautiful way.
  • Georgia O'Keeffe, The Artists Voice - Talks with Seventeen Artists, New York Harper & Row (1962)

External links

• Course in Fine Art (extract from Bulletin Vol 1 no 4, 1918)