CONVOCATION ON THE ARTS
THE second weekend of the Inaugural Program was appropriately titled "A Convocation on the Arts." In concerts, lectures, exhibits, and drama the role of the Arts in liberal arts education and in life was exquisitely demonstrated and keenly examined.
A standing-room-only audience in the Center's Studio Theater opened the four-day schedule on Thursday afternoon and gave rapt attention to Wallace Fowlie, a leading American writer and critic on literature and the arts in France. In the evening, while Danton's Death was being played in the Hopkins Center Theater a capacity audience in Spaulding Auditorium was being delighted by the Dartmouth Community Symphony Orchestra, music director Mario di Bonaventura conducting. The program included Beethoven's Consecration of the House overture, the first movement of Schumann's Jugendsymphonie, the premiere performance of this work in the United States; and works of Milhaud and Mozart.
Michel St. Denis, French theater director, and Hans Hofmann, a leader in American abstract art, challenged Convocation audiences on Friday morning. In the afternoon lecture Meyric Rogers, curator of the Garvan Collections of American Decorative Arts at Yale, spoke on the craft arts. (Excerpts from their talks will be found in adjoining columns.)
The evening concert featured the New York Woodwind Quintet and the Estival Quartet. "For the next two works praise is too poor" stated The Dartmouth in describing the evening's program of Mozart, Barber, Schuller, Scarlatti, and Milhaud works. Milhaud's Concert de Chambre was given its world premiere.
Pier Luigi Nervi, architect of the new Dartmouth Field House, lectured on Saturday morning, then joined the other guests - Hofmann, St. Denis, Rogers - for an afternoon panel discussion, moderated by Rudolf Arnheim, Sarah Lawrence College professor and author.
A formal banquet in Alumni Hall Saturday evening was attended by some 500 who heard Trustee Charles J. Zimmerman '23, President Dickey, President Emeritus Hopkins, and others. This was followed by a second orchestra concert of the works of Marcello, Berwald, and Randell Thompson, and the eighth and final performance of the play.
The community's full attention was given to the honorary degree ceremony and dedication of the Field House on Sunday morning (see Page 31). In the afternoon the Dartmouth and Mount Holyoke College Glee Clubs joined with the orchestra in the final Convocation event.
PIER LUIGI NERVI: "Construction in reinforced concrete is emerging from the initial phases of research and study of practical possibilities with this revolutionary material, and is becoming one of the principal factors of the great architecture of tomorrow Reinforced concrete is the construction system that better than all those that man has ever used from prehistoric times until today, allows the form and structure of buildings to approach the requirements of statics, and to find in these the richest and most fertile architectural inspiration. . . . With the increase in size of buildings, the laws of statics become always more strictly determinate- in the same way that increased speeds make those of wind resistance more definitive for cars. Reinforced concrete will become the most expressive interpreter in the field of architecture of that 'style of truth' towards which we are being moved by technical progress.
"The arch of a few yards span, the slow ship, the low speed vehicle, the airplane that can just raise itself - those of 50 or so years ago - had a liberty of form which has already disappeared today for the arch of 100 yards or more, and the high speed ship, automobile and airplane. It is right then, to think of a grand struc- tural architecture of tomorrow, tightly controlled by conditions of static equilibrium, which will with ample freedom and incomparably greater possibilities and in a similar fashion, approach the marvelous architecture of the Gothic cathedrals. To the specific adaptability of reinforced concrete for the realization of clearly defined architectural structures can be added the richness and variety of details which can be obtained with proper building procedures."
MICHEL ST.-DENIS: The theater, as defined by Michel St.Denis, is the most direct interpretation of reality in terms of a living exchange between the dramatist's vision, the actors, and the public. Even within the dramatist, the initiation of all theater, the actor's attitude and craft commands, for, to St.Denis, the dramatist, and the theater director as well, must have an acting sense. He discussed the actor's necessity to start from within himself, then to reach above himself.
After citing the dangers in undisciplined self-analysis, St.Denis turned his attention to the position of theater in modern society. He finds that everything is being transformed in the theater, and that television, radio, and films are bringing about the development of theater in a popular sense. He cited examples from the experience of British repertory theaters to show how there is a close connection between the cultural state of the people, their ability to appreciate art, and the development of the arts. St.-Denis told of Les Maisons de la Culture centers for cultural diffusion throughout France. He emphasized the interrelationship of the Arts and the opportunities each gives to the others for enrichment.
HANS HOFMANN: "Speaking as an artist, let me consider what an artist is. Every artist — whether painter, sculptor, architect, musician, writer, dancer, and so on - is a creator. He cannot be an imitator. We have invented wonderful machines that imitate and reproduce. But machines have no intelligence - they cannot do what the heart and mind feel and think. The mind invented the machine, not the machine the mind. It is to be understood that, to the artist, what is to be expressed is of no use unless it is formulated aesthetically. ... Art differs in comparison with science. To begin with, it is based on the intuitive faculty ofour subconscious mind. It produces thereby the power of Empathy - that is, the capacity of sensing and feeling. Our subconscious mind stimulatesour conscious mind into rational awareness. Sensing and feeling would otherwise be merely a sentimental outlet....
"A painter who has never become aware of the duality of space is only an imitator of objects. He is not a composer - but only an arranger of objects. In nature there is actually more to see than objects. Objects are space-creators. There is positive and negative space. Positive space is made up of the objects, negative space is composed of the seeming voids between the objects. There is no empty space."
MEYRIC ROGERS: "The craft arts are concerned with the production by hand, with mechanical aids as needed, of objects of utility shaped to provide aesthetic satisfaction in themselves, largely independent of their particular utility. Perhaps we should note here that an important characteristic of the craft arts as distinct from so much industrial production is that they are constantly under the corrective control of the maker while in process. . . .
"The extraordinary concern for, and attention paid to, the visual arts today is, I believe, a symptom of their maladjustment in our human ecology. We are painfully aware of our needs and our fever mounts as we seek a cure. . . . The craft arts in their essentials, if not their traditional character and function, must therefore be preserved in our present ecology. We cannot return to Arcadia if we would though we need not abolish its memory. To paraphrase Cezanne we must reconstitute and revitalize our 'craft arts' according to the means and needs of our times. Our problems today admit no solution by slow natural evolution. We must face them and find what solution we can by the power of all the hard thought and sincere feeling we can gather, and by the education of our understanding."
Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, membersof the Hopkins Center Theater AdvisoryGroup, starred in answering questionsby students in an unscheduledConvocation event in the Studio Theater
The audience gathers in the Studio Theater for the lecture by MeyricRogers. The film premiere of "Arctic Circle" was also presented here.
Princeton's Dr. Carl Weinrich played indedication of James D. Vail Organ in theCenter's Spaulding Auditorium.
Alumni Hall was the scene of the formal Hopkins Center Inaugural Banquet on the final night of the ten-day program.
