arts & ideas IN THIS SECTION: Eugene Schwartz writes reviews as well as he lectures, and he finds a new font of inspiration, for art and for teaching, in the latest book of artist and teacher Van James. Artist Deborah Lothrop works out of the Steinerand Goethe-exploring insights about color, light, and darkness of Liane Collot d’Herbois. Her short note awakens the vibrant threshold between art and science. Maria Ver Eecke shares experiences of participating in Rudolf Steiner’s mystery dramas, much on our minds with a festival of all four plays coming in August. Herbert O. Hagens provides a guide to working with Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul in the year ahead, fitting 52 verses into 50 weeks from Easter to Easter 2014-2015. Joseph Rubano reports on biography work, specifically on how Steiner’s Foundation Stone Mantra comes to life. And we recall the great poetry of Daisy Aldan, inspired by a French cathedral. 26 •
being human
Drawing with Hand, Head, and Heart A review by Eugene Schwartz Drawing with Hand, Head, and Heart: A Natural Approach to Learning the Art of Drawing, by Van James; Steiner Books, 2013; 312 pages, 576 illustrations in color and black & white During the course of my thirty-five years as a Waldorf consultant, I have observed hundreds of class teachers at work. Most were trained Waldorf practitioners, and a good number were experienced, capable teachers who were comfortable with the Waldorf curriculum and methodology. Yet out of those hundreds, fewer than fifty were at all confident about their own drawing skills, and only half of those fifty were self-assured about teaching drawing to their students. As many young teachers have told me, their art instructors at the training centers were hard-pressed to even begin awakening an artistic sensibility in trainees who had never drawn, painted, or sculpted before—no less to turn these trainees into artists who could then teach children how to draw, paint, and sculpt. The more I visit Waldorf classrooms, the more I have witnessed a decline in the drawing standards set by teachers, which has, in time, lowered the expectations of entire schools. Most children in most Waldorf classes are not given enough guidance in the primary grades, and— paradoxically—they are not given enough creative freedom in the middle and upper grades. Fewer and fewer students are progressing much beyond a fourth grade level of drawing—the age at which a child’s inborn artistic gifts fade—because their teachers do not know how to take them to the next step. When combined with ever-greater pressure from parents (via school administrators) to focus more on academic subjects and less on “pretty pictures,” the ongoing decline of drawing in the Waldorf school seems inevitable. But lest we forget: “Teachers should love art so much that they do not want this experience to be lost to children,” Rudolf Steiner said in 1923. “...When children engage in [art] they feel their inner nature uplifted to the ideal plane. They acquire a second level of humanity alongside the first.” Those words are among the scores of inspiring quotes by Steiner and others to be found in the remarkable new book by Van James, Drawing with the Hand, Head, and Heart. Just when all seems so muddled in the realm of Waldorf drawing, James has created a volume that (as its title would suggest) brings a wealth of technical advice concerning the Hand’s role in drawing, clarity and common sense about the “why” of drawing that speaks to the Head, and an abundance of work by children, student teachers, and accomplished artists that touches the “emotional intelligence” of the Heart. In compiling such a book, James has set himself a daunting task. In only 300 pages, he has actually created two books: the first