Dewey's Debt to Albert Coombs Barnes

Dewey’s Debt to Albert Coombs Barnes

BY LAWRENCE I. DENNIS

C. M. Smith‘s article in a recent issue of Educational Theory1 clearly presented some of the contradictions and confusions surrounding Dewey’s esthetics. She is another in the line of critics who have found Art as Experience to be, if not completely non-pragmatic ( as Stephen Pepper), or altogether unsatisfactory (as David B. Manzella), at least out of line with his educational philosophy. That the debate has been recurrent is probably sufficient evidence by itself to suggest that Art as Experience, for all its tremendous insights, raises as many issues as it attempts to solve.

Smith is, I believe, correct in stating that Dewey does not come to a resolution of the subjective and objective elements in esthetic appreciation. But Dewey was far too experienced and far too acute, in the normal run of things, not to have seen his own confusion. Why did he not? It is to this issue that I will address myself, for while the answer does not excuse Dewey, nor in any way make for resolution of the conflicts, it does, I think, provide some insights to which no one I know, apart from a brief reference by Harold B. Dunkel: has addressed himself.

It seems evident to me that Dewey lacked a sensitivity to art and that this lack is precisely the reason for the contradictions contained in Art as Experience. He never really experienced what he was talking about. It often seems that Dewey spoke of art from an intellectual viewpoint rather than from that of a lover of art. This apparent lack of emotional involvement leads the reader to the uncomfortable conclusion that there is something distant about his appreciation of art. Let me hasten to add that I think he had a very good idea of what an esthetic experience was, but I suggest that this was never occasioned by a work of fine art (I might admit literature as an exception). This means that his experience in the fine arts, apart from literature (although his examples here are fairly representative they do not testify to a very sophisticated selection), must have been second-hand. Not only was the experience second-hand, but so also was the accompanying esthetic - it did not, indeed it could not, have fitted in with his general pragmatism.

The source of the confusion was Albert Coombs Barnes, whom Dunkel somewhat jestingly refers to as “the villain of the piece.” Barnes was born in Philadalphia in 1872, and, although he grew up in poor circumstances, he was ambitious. He eventually earned a degree in medicine from the University

Lawrence J . Dennis is Assistant Professor in Educational -4drninistration and Foundations at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

1C. M. Smith, “The Aesthetics of John Dewey and Aesthetic Education,” Educational

PHarold B. Dunkel, “Dewey and the Fine Arts,” School Review 67 (1959): pp. 229-245. Theory 21 (1971): pp. 131-145.

325

326 EDUCATIONAL THEORY

of Pennsylvania, where he did extremely well in his chemistry courses. Upon graduation, he dccided to put this obvious talent to use. That patent medi- cines were proving a profitable enterprise no doubt influenced him to go to Germany to further his studies in this area. Upon his return to America he got a job with the H.K. Mulford pharmaceutical firm in Philadelphia. He soon returned to Germany, this time to bring back to Mulford’s a young research chemist named Hermann Hille. Barnes and Hille, though the evidence would seem to suggest that the discovery was more the latter’s, invented a silver compound - produced under the trade name of Argyrol -which proved useful in the treatment of gonorrhea, and as a preventative of conjungtivitis in infants. The partners left Mulford’s and set up business on their own. The profits increased substantially from year to year - and certainly the credit for this must go to Barnes’s prescience as business mana er - but the relationship between the two men, which was never too goof, deteriorated. By 1907 Barnes had bought Hille out and assumed sole ownership of the Argyrol plant. He was well on his way to becoming a millionaire.

As Barnes acquired wealth he set out to acquire some of its accoutrements. He built a home, bought horses, and went fox-hunting. But more importantly he was able to indulge his passion for art. Many years before, as a student at Philadelphia’s Central High School, he had been friendly with William J. Glackens and John Sloan, who were both to achieve prominence in American art. He himself had tried his hand at painting, and now, as a wealthy man, he began to collect the work of others. Sometime in 1910 or 1911 he renewed his contact with Glackens and shortly after with Sloan. In 1912 he gave Glackens $20,000 and sent him to Paris to bring back some paintings. Glackens returned with a Renoir, a Degas, a Van Gogh and almost certainly with works by other French artists. A few months later Barnes himself went to Paris and fell in with the Steins (Gertrude, Leo, and Michael), and was introduced to the work of Picasso and Matisse. Thus he began his collection, which by the time of his death was “the finest collection of French post-impressionist painting in the United States; elsewhere, its only rivals were the Shchukin and Morosov collection in Moscow and Leningrad, now held by the state.”3 There is still no available catalogue, but in addition to the paintings just mentioned, there are works by many old masters including Titian, Goya, El Greco, as well as a magnificent collection of African art, Greek stone reliefs, and antique furnitme. This is an incredible success story, but it is one with a difference: Barnes’s passion for art was not merely the decorative activity of a poor boy who made good, but was a serious and consuming endeavor.

In the years both before and after World War I Barnes made many trips to Europe, not only to buy paintings but also to study them. He went sys- tematically through the art galleries of Europe trying to get at the qualities of great art, to find criteria for judging the merits of art. In 1915 he published his first article on art criticism, entitled, appropriately enough, “How to Judge a Painting.”4

3Lois G. Forer, “No Place for the Rabble,” Horizon 6 (Spring, 1961): p. 5. 4Albert C. Barnes, “How to Judge a Painting,” Arts and Decoration 5 (April 1915):

pp. 217-220, 246, 248-250.

DEWEY’S DEBT TO BARNES 327

Even though his artistic peregrinations took him away from the Argyrol plant, he continued, as he always had, to show great interest in the welfare of his employees. Certainly his actions smack of paternalism, but that was seventy years ago. He assumed the responsibility for the education of his workers. Some time each day was set aside for study-much of it the study of art, and later, almost exclusively the study of art. In his aims, which were largely social, and in his methods, he was profoundly influenced by the work of William James and John Dewey. However, when he read Democracy and Education published in 1916, he was determined to get to know its author. So in the fall in 1917 he enrolled in Dewey’s graduate seminar at Columbia University. Barnes was not too proud to commute from Philadelphia to New York, and to become a student at the age of 45. The two men formed a lasting friendship. This friendship with Dewey shaped Barnes’s whole future, and he, in turn, tried to give Dewey “a sense of aesthetic values to supplement his vague philosophical notions about art.”5 On the surface, the relationship was surprising: Barnes, despotic, larger than life, assertive, and belligerent; Dewey, quiet, patient, thoughtful and courteous. The association was not favored by many of Dewey’s acquaintances who thought that Barnes was using Dewey. Sidney Hook writes, “It was ahnost with relief that I discovered a serious shortcoming in him. That was his indulgent friendship for Albert C. Barnes.”6

There seems to be ample testimony that Dewey, certainly at the time he met Barnes, had little or no susceptibility to works of art. First of all, from Barnes himself, and, although this excerpt may not be entirely selfless in intent, it was written while Dewey was still alive and able to refute it had he chosen to do so. Barnes relates an occasion when he drew Dewey’s attention to the formal relationship between the themes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. He continues,

Dewey’s writings previous to the event just cited bear little indication that he had given particular attention to the philosophy of ar t or to the esthetic experience per se. The music may, or may not have been the beginning of his active interest, but certainly, from that date on, Dewey’s visits to our gallery were more frequent and our discussions in front of paintings were always the outstanding feature. As time went on, his remarks showed that he was trying to perceive not only the objective indications of the experience of a particular painter, as revealed by the form, but the individuality of that experience as determined by a consideration of its relations to the tradition of the painting as a whole. He supplemented this by attending the summer class conducted by a member of our staff in the principle galleries of Europe.’

William Schack quotes a letter he received from Thomas Benton, who had become friendly with Dewey through his work at the New School for Social Research. Benton says about Dewey that,

he never “responded” to them in favor or adversely, as people who “see” paintings do, Dewey never had a judgment of his own with regard to specific works. I have talked with him on the subject of art and could never believe that he had ever really seen any one work of art.8

SWilliam Schack, Art and Argyrol (New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1960), p. 106. 6Sidney Hook, “Some Memories of John Dewey,” Commentary 14 (1952): p. 249. 7Albert C. Barnes, “Dewey and Art,” New Leader, October 22, 1949, p. S-4. Whack, p. 106.


With reference to the time that the friendship between Dewey and Barnes was beginning, Brand Blanshard, a fellow graduate student with Barnes in 1917-1918, says, “I never supposed when I was working with Dewey that he had any particular interest in aesthetics at all,” but adds that art was “an interest which at that time I think was just beginning to grow in Dewey.. . . His aesthetic interests were apparently in a very early stage then. With characteristic generosity, Dewey regarded Barnes as rather an authority on art.”g Thomas Munro, a student of Dewey’s at Columbia for this whole period, and a colleague for a while (1915-1924) says that Dewey alluded to art “ody very rarely and very casually when I was his student.” This interview with Munro contains many other valuable clues to the character of Dewey’s esthetic interests at this time, Referring to Barnes he says, “He learned nothing about visual art from Dewey, so far as I know, and Dewey didn’t claim to know anything about it.”l@ But even more important, Barnes took the Munros and the Deweys to Europe with him for several summers in the middle 1920s. Barnes used to “lecture” on art both in the galleries and on the ship going over. In Munro’s words,

Barnes would lecture to his staff and guests on the approach to art in terms of the analysis of form. Dewey on those trips didn’t talk very much. He listened. He knew and he said frankly that he didn’t know much about the visual arts. He had little interest in most types of music. What he knew of ar t was in literature. There his tastes were not very esoteric or sophisticated.. . .I think he enjoyed literature without stopping to analyze or theorize about it very much in terms of aesthetic form.11

Later in the interview Munro also states that he did not “remember any occasion when he [Dewey] expressed an interest in music.”l2

This kind of evidence, while not conclusive, certainly suggests that Dewey himself had only a very limited appreciation for the fine arts. The issues now are: Was Dewey greatly influenced in his esthetic ideas by Albert Barnes? Did he assume many of Barnes’s ideas? Did this lead him to flounder in Art as Experience to the degree that C.M. Smith and others have suggested? I submit that the answer to these questions is decidely affirmative.

With regard to the extent of Barnes’s influence on Dewey, Dewey’s own testimony in one short extract from the Preface to Art as Experience should suffice,

My greatest indebtedness is to Dr. A. C. Barnes. The chapters have been gone over one by one with him, and yet what I owe to his comments and suggestions on this account is but a small measure of my debt. I have had the benefit of conversations with him through a period of years, many of which occurred in the presence of the unrivaled collection of pictures he has assembled. The influence of these conversations, together with that of his books, has been a chief factor in shaping my own

9Brand Blanshard, interview at Dewey Center, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale,

loThomas Munro, interview with Kenneth Duckett, April 16, 1967; Typescript a t Dewey

Illbid., p. 8. Wbid., p. 22.

May 18, 1965. Typescript.

Center, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, p. 7.


thinking about the philosophy of esthetics. Whatever is sound in this volume is due more than I can say to the great educational work carried on in the Barnes Foundation. That work is of a pioneer quality comparable to the best that has been done in any field during the present generation, that of science not ex- cepted.13

It is interesting that five of the nine reproductions in the original edition of Art as Experience were of works housed in the Barnes Foundation at Merion. In pursuit of honesty, I should note that the influence of Dewey on Barnes was equally as great as the influence of Barnes on Dewey. Barnes was very taken with Dewey’s methodology, and in the dedication of this first book, The Art in Painting (1925), he wrote “To John Dewey whose conceptions of experience, of method, of education, inspired the work of which his book is a part.”l4 And this can be amply demonstrated by the change in Barnes’s own approach to art from the publication of “How to Judge a Painting” to his later works. However, the concern here is not the mutual influence but the extent of the influence of Barnes upon Dewey.

With regard to Dewey’s assumption of many of Barnes’s central ideas, incontrovertible proof is not yet possible; the writings of the two men, however, offer clues. The most dramatic of these is found in a letter to Dewey written many years later in which Barnes, with typical voice, says, “I see no difference between such grotesque pedantry and what I wrote you about irrelevant reverie in connection with esthetics, and which you published in Art as Experience.”l5 To what extent Dewey accepted or adapted this idea of Barnes is impossible to determine unless that earlier letter becomes available, but certainly it is clear that Barnes himself, at any rate, laid claim to authorship.16 As stated earlier, Barnes’s Art in Painting came out in 1925, and subsequent books appeared during the 1930s. Dewey’s important writings concerning esthetics began with chapters in Experience and Education, also dated 1925, and culminated in Art as Experience of 1934. These almost con- temporaneous publications makes the ascription of ideas exceedingly difficult. This matter might be settled by a detailed study of their respective writings but here I shall do no more than demonstrate similarities.

Barnes set out to discover, and this, as mentioned earlier, was a search that began before World War I, criteria by which works of art may be judged -and for “works of art” one could read “paintings.” He was very much influenced by Dewey’s educational philosophy, and particularly, in this case, with his application of scientific method (the method of intelligence). In Schack‘s words, “Barnes set out to find . . . a method of judging paintings as objectively as possible, which ‘reduces to a minimum the role of merely personal and arbitrary preference.’ ”17 He therefore analyzed paintings into their basic elements, on the assumption that the way artists handled these elements determined how good or bad a painting was. Barnes found “that

p. viii.

pany, 1928), p. 7.

13John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Minton, Balcti and Company, 1934),

14Albert C. Barnes, The Art in Painting, Zed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Com-

l5Letter from Albert C. Barnes to John Dewey, June 9, 1949. 16What Dewey actually wrote appears on page 276 in Art ns Experience. 17Schack, p. 193.


there were three basic elements in all paintings whatever time or place: color ( associated with light), line and space.”18 He called these elements “plastic means,” and when they are composed into an expressive design “plastic forms.” To any student of Art as Experience these terms already have a familiar ring. So does this,

Mr. Berenson’s work deals not with the objective facts that enter into an appreciation of art-values, but with a form of antiquarianism made up of historical, social and sentimental interests entirely adventitious to plastic art.19

In The Art of Henri-Matissf9 there is a chapter on plastic form and design; the two kinds of design are expressive and decorative. Again this will be familiar, For additional proof that similarities, nay identicalities exist between the work of these two men, one need only compare the chapter entitled “Ex- pression and Form” in The Art of Renoir21 with the two chapters on form in Art as Experience.22

18Ibid. 19Barnes, The Art in Painting, pp. 419-420. mAlbert C. Barnes and Violette de Mazia, The Art of Henri-Matisse (New York,

ZlAlbert C. Barnes and Violette de Mazia, The A r t of Renoir (New York: Minton,

zzIn evidence, here are some parallel statements from The Art of Renoir and Art as

London: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1933).

Balch and Company, 1935).

Experience: Barnes writes,

In the whole ordered set of relationships each part both determines and is determined by every other; this thorough-going interdetermination of parts constitutes form in a work of art, as it does in a machine, an organism, or the intelligent execution of any purpose. (p. 25)

The characteristic of artistic design is the intimacy of the relations that hold the parts together.. . . T o understand the design of a complicated piece of machinery we have to know the purpose the machine is intended to serve, and how the various parts fit in to the accomplishment of that purpose.. . .Only when the constituent parts of a whole have the unique end of contributing to the consummation of a conscious experience, do design and shape lose superimposed character and become form. (p. 117)

The qualities of real things are drawn out and resynthesized in a form which adds, to the values actually present in the reality, a whole range of others which the artist transfers from remote realms of experience. Art is thus a clearer, more luminous, and imaginatively richer version of the world of nature. (p. 32)

Whatever path the work of art pursues, it, just because it is a full and intense experience, keeps alive the power to experience the common world in its fullness. It does so by reducing the raw materials of that experience to matter ordered through form.

And Dewey writes,

Barnes writes,

Whereas Dewey writes,

(P. 133) Barnes writes,

Works of art are great in proportion as they possess the power not only to impart the enhanced vitality characteristic of all genuine immediate experience, but to revive the feeling stored up from scattered experiences of the distant past. (p.30)

In order to perceive esthetically, he [the perceiver] must remake his past experiences so that they can enter integrally into a new pattern. He cannot dismiss his past experiences nor can he dwell among them as they have been in the past. (p. 138)

(Footnote continued)

And Dewey writes,


We now come to the functions of the critic, as explicated in Art as Ex- perience. The critic, according to Dewey, has the educative task of analysis- synthesis. In order to analyze effectively he must be sensitive to form and knowledgeable about the traditions of art. It is noteworthy that the two main sections of Barnes’s The Art of Renoir are entitled “The Development of Renoir’s Form,” and “Renoir and the Traditions.” To synthesize, the critic must have creative insights. Unfortunately Dewey gives us no examples of the former and but one (Goethe’s interpretation of the character of “Hamlet”) of the latter. However, Barnes gives us many - the bulk, in fact, of all his books.=

Barnes writes, The regular recurrence of night and day, of the seasons of the year, the systole and diastole of the heart, are natural rhythms to which we are all subject and which profoundly affect our lives. The alternation of these rhythms in nature lends contrast and movement to life, as their repetition and interdependence, their interweaving and dovetailing, lend unity; they thus provide both variety and unity, the indispensable conditions of satisfactory living. (p. 26)

I t is not, therefore, just because of the systole and diastole in the coursing of the blood, or alternate inspiration and exhalation in breathing, the swing of the legs and arms in locomotion, nor because of any combination of specific exemplifications of natural rhythm, that man delights in rhythmic portrayals and presentations. . . .But ultimately the delight springs from the fact that such things are instances of the relationships that determine the course of life, natural and achieved. (p. 150)

=The analysis of Rembrandt’s portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels may be considered typical, and is reproduced here in its entirety. The reader will not miss the subjective comments mingled with the objective statements.

The effect of this picture is immediately and permanently arresting. It consists of a rich golden design made of face and chest, a design which slopes gently towards each shoulder and so, with no visible contours, into the black background. The background is not felt as color but as infinite space: it seems as though there were nothing physical there at all. The design continues, with the golden quality gradually merged into a brown tempered with gold, down to the end of the hand, where the rich gold again emerges, though fainter than in the face and chest. This simple and arresting design, when examined, displays a new design in every area, the source of which is at first elusive: lines are few and extremely unpronounced; color is there only in the form of tones. The trick is turned by an ex- traordinary power for using light and shadow, in every conceivable degree of variation to attain an infinite variety of patterns and designs. The method is far removed from that of Velasquez, of clean-cut, unemotional detachment. Every area in this painting is a source of wonder and mystery; we feel the wonder and mystery-we see only the objective fact that calls them up in a way that we cannot explain. Here too is simplicity, but it is not, as in Velasquez, especially directed to the physical representation of objects: it is a simplicity plus a rendering of that simplicity by technical means extremely simple in themselves and loaded with the emotion-provoking power of the object portrayed, rather than with Velasquez’s depiction of physical essences.

The physical values are rendered with great command of paint, and Rembrandt is as great a realist as Velasquez in making us see and feel the material basis of things; but no flesh ever looked like that. And yet no flesh ever showed more clearly its origin in the supernatural in which we all believe in our mystical moments. In all this, in the unreal- real hair, face, nose, eyes, mouth, is that pervasive, indefinable addition which ties our mystic, religious nature to this world by a definite, specific, visible objective fact which is in front of our eyes, in the painting. The expression of the mouth is not sentiment, it is the feeling of the person herself and the same feeling that we have in looking at it. It is mysterious, noble, sublime, all merged into a religious experience, without reference to or use of adventitious aids like story-telling or the use of religious episodes. Rembrandt paints in terms of the broadest universal human values. (The Art in Painting, pp. 504 and 509)

And Dewey writes,


And Dewey was explicit in his glowing Foreword to The Art of Renoir when he says of the authors (Barnes and de Mazia) that “their treatment of these topics leaves nothing for me to add, and contains nothing that I should wish to change.”24

Barnes’s analyses contain much that is objective, but he could not resist making value judgments by the way. In some cases these are merely passing, in others they are flagrant. Barnes’s search for the objective qualities of art did not obviate a goodly sprinkling of subjective comment, one might even say of rhapsodizing. If Barnes was his authority, how could Dewey have escaped the trap? Smith is entirely correct in asserting that he never reconciled effectively the objective and subjective elements of the esthetic experience, but with Barnes as his model and guide this was inevitable.

With regard to whether Dewey’s reliance on Barnes led him to flounder in Art us Experience, the parallels and excerpts that I have presented are not conclusive. But Dewey did visit Barnes to get his advice on the lectures he was to give at Harvard in 1931 and which formed the basis for Art as Expe- rience. What advice did he get? It seems unlikely that we shall ever know because the Harvard lectures do not appear to have been transcribed and Dewey’s notes have not turned up and probably never will. Until textual criticism is directed to this matter it will remain an open issue. I feel that Dewey placed heavy reliance on the views of Barnes. That these views were respectable is amply attested to by the fact that The Art in Painting went through three editions, that it is still in use in colleges and universities, and that it has been highly praised by men of repute; for example, Ezra Pound wrote that it was “by far the most intelligent book on painting that has ever appeared in America.”” Pound notwithstanding, the book is inconsistent and at times naive. Those inconsistencies and that naivete found their way into Dewey’s work, and philosophizing is one of those areas in which inconsistencies and naivete are not acceptable.

Several anecdotes reveal what some professional artists thought of Barnes’s ideas. Schack writes,

Having convinced himself that he had the key to aesthetic truth, he [Barnes] had the courage to apply it as very few critics would-by telling a working artist where he was wrong. And it was no ordinary artist, but a man of the stature of Soutine. When Barnes pointed out the faults of form and color in certain of his pictures, Soutine was so impressed that he reworked them. As a result, Barnes admitted, “The form was now perfect, but in making it so he had taken the guts out of the picture.”%

I have long considered fatuous Dewey’s statement in Art us Experience that the appreciator of art should go through “the processes the artist went through in producing the work.”n Smith, too, found this same statement a

24Barnes and de Mazia, T h e Art of Renoir, p. vii. Wchack, p. 205.

27Dewey, Art as Experience, p. 325. zsrm., p. 203.


source of trouble, especially because it inhibits the beholder in creating his own experience. Others have found the idea similarly distressing, but its origin is Barnes not Dewey. Again in Schack‘s words,

When Jules Pascin came to Merion again, he had to listen to her [Violette de Mazia] lecture before dinner. H e was bored to the bone, as he would have been by any lecture on art. At the end Barnes said, “Isn’t that the way artists think, M. Pascin?” Sheepishly, the artist nodded. How the hell did he know how he or any artist thought!-he just painted!%

For a while the famed conductor, Leopold Stokowski, moved in the Barnes circle. He was present at the opening of the Barnes Foundation, on which occasion Dewey delivered a short speech. Barnes also must have gone into his analytical method in detail, for Stokowski said to a friend afterward that Barnes’s method “made of art a task rather than an enj~yment.”~g These are artists speaking, not philosophers, but their comments will demonstrate that Barnes was not considered by many people to be a final authority on art. Likewise, it is often on matters of art that Art as Experience also fails, and, because of that, philosophical doubts and questions arise. Dewey’s lapses were not due to his being a bad philosopher but simply to his being a poor appreciator of the fine arts.

I would not with Dunkel call Barnes “the villain of the piece,” for without him we most likely would have been deprived of one of the most important books in Dewey’s output; a book that has implications for much more than an understanding of art. If the art in Art as Experience is unsatisfactory, the educational theory is not. Dewey’s educational theory was fundamental to his entire philosophy and this, in Art as Experience, was not second-hand. Only a superficial reading of that book, in any case, would reveal educational implications simply for teaching the fine arts. Particularly insightful is the role that Dewey assigns to the critic. It seems to me that he views the critic as he views the teacher, and the tasks of both are distinctly educative in the fullest sense of the word. Therefore, I maintain that the educational implications are precisely what we may extract from the book as being thoroughly Deweyan; what we cannot extract with equal assurance is a theory of art, which is roundly based in Barnes’s views on judging a painting.

ZaSchack, p. 212. BZbid., p. 162.

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Dewey's Debt to Albert Coombs Barnes