All who are in any way concerned with visual art or with art education will be interested in this stimulating volume. The first part considers the difficulty with some of our present aims and methods in education. The second part outlines a rational program for schools, colleges, and graduate professional schools. Professor Pope puts forward the revolutionary proposal that advanced training for the visual arts—architecture, painting, sculpture, the so-called industrial arts, museum work, technical care of works of art, and teaching of the history and theory of art—should all be incorporated in a comprehensive professional school and that this should assume a general background of study in school and college which would be much the same for both professional people and laymen. The book concludes with a brief explanation of what we mean by the theory of the visual arts, a subject on which many persons are little informed.

To understand paintings made by Chinese or Japanese artists or by European artists of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, it is in a way just as necessary to know the conventions and the points of view which governed their execution, as it is to know Chinese and Italian in order to understand books written in these languages. It is the object of this volume to make the various kinds of drawing and painting intelligible by explaining the conventions and limitations on which they are based. The last chapter deals with the general points of view involved in the “modernistic” art of our own day.

An attempt to present the theory of tone or color in its application to painting in so far as this complicated subject is understood at the present time. It is intended not only for professional painters but for all students of the art of painting, and is based on the assumption that intelligent criticism and sound judgment must be founded on understanding. Aside from the general theory of tone or color, it discusses the limited or arbitrary treatment of values, colors, and color intensities in much painting of the past; the use of scaled palettes in the Renaissance and at the present day; and design in tone relations. In connection with general theory it clears up certain confusions of thought and terminology found in many scientific books on the subject of color.

To understand paintings made by Chinese or Japanese artists or by European artists of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, it is in a way just as necessary to know the conventions and the points of view which governed their execution, as it is to know Chinese and Italian in order to understand books written in these languages. It is the object of this volume to make the various kinds of drawing and painting intelligible by explaining the conventions and limitations on which they are based. The last chapter deals with the general points of view involved in the “modernistic” art of the day.