THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE .. . _ : .. _ . ,: .. Page Sixteen Wednesday, January 15, 1958 Wednesday, January 15, 1958 THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE r Picasso: prolific and various, One of his students Pays the good model' tribute BOWLER! let's Go lotlinyg.. . OPEN BOWLING HOURS. Weekdays .:1 1 A.M. to 6:30 Saturday. . . . 11 A.M. to 12 mh Sunday.... ..1 P.M. to 12 mi "It's great for a Date' 20th CENTURY " Automatic Pinsetters * Air- 214 West Huron, % Block West of .... .... .... .... ........ ... -., Using canvas, string, pasted paper, oil paint, cloth, and two- inch nails, Picasso made "Gui- tar" (left) in 1926, some years after he made most of his col- lages. It is in the artist's own collection. "Bather Playing Ball," (right) painted in 1932, illustrates something of Picasso's experi- ments with both line and sur- realism. It, too, is in the artist's collection. Both photographs courtesy the Museum of Modern Art. figure and the mandolin to geo- metric forms-not all cubes-de- pendent upon the muted colors for emphasis. The decades of con- tinuous experiment since 1910 make "Girl with Mandolin" seem restrained and dignified and, in its familiarity, even classic: "Cubism has long since been left behind, and already it seems to be a final episode in the dislocation of a traditinal way of seeing, not as the start- ing point for a new art. . . Cubism it was that accus- tomed us to the idea that the objects around us were not there because of some un- changing decree of providence but were the artifacts, the transformable products of civ-. ilization." (Pierre Francastel Yale French Studies, Nos. 19 & 20.) Great Cubist paintings were to come: the portraits, "Wilhelm Uhde" and "D. H. Kahnweiler," for example, in which nature was less and less conventionally visible, or perhaps another level of it only more visible. Piscasso made many collages - the superb "Still Life with Chair Caning" (1911-12) is outstanding-of rope and calling cards, tobacco stamps, and wall- paper made to resemble wood, giv- ing perhaps a level of reality to what was intended as fake or as junk. The collage technique per- sisted: nails - or screw driver points-were poked through the canvas and laid-on burlap and called "Mandolin" in 1926. Dis- carded objects themselves were apparently discarded in a new context of dislocation, and "Le Journal" became incidentally the most famous newspaper in art history. But Picasso never left the recog- nizable, the human figure, for long. The "Ambroise Vollard" (1915) pencil portrait is as much finished as any work he ever made, one that has an -Ingres-like qual- ity. Impresarios and ballerinas he drew, "Two Peasants," a "Fisher- man" and "Bathers" in 1918-1919. The last two drawings are so deli- cate that they must be specially treated during any engraving pro- cess, to broaden and coarsen the line, else they would not appear in ordinary reproduction. The summer of 1921 Picasso spent at Fontainbleau, summing up and ending his Cubism. The two large canvases, shown side by side, of "Three Musicians," he painted simultaneously that sum- mer. In each are three figures at a table, harlequin, monk, and pierrot: "There is nothing par- ticularly new about these two great paintings. Their style de- scends from the cubist harlequins of the prveious six years. . . . The "Three Musicians" are, rather, the authoritative and magnificent summing up of a style and a period." (Alfred H. Barr: Picasso Fifty Years of His Art.) THE MONUMENTAL "classical" canvases - both in size and treatment-that follow the cubist period seem to be final statements of the parallel expression Picasso was recording in his drawings and graphics. The exhibit included "The 'Pipesof Pan," a large 1923 canvas owned by the artist. Seen in reproductions, even the best, the figures are dignified and solid, (Continued on Next Page) { 2e a&4: Finals closing in . .. Felt lows..s.No sleep... 5 A.M.: lights out ...11 A.M.: (Continued from Page 11) "GIRL with Mandolin" (1910), with its mnuted browns and greys, has been called "analytical cubism," the reduction of the member not long ago hearing Picasso and Gertrude Stein talking about various things that had happened at that time, one of them said but all that could not have happened in that one year, oh said the other, my dear you forget we were young then and we did a great deal in a year." (Ger- trude Stein: The Autobio- graphy of Alice B. Toklas.) (Continued from Page 4) sources are always in evidence in his teaching. He has constantly sought to help his students discover the hu- mane way of going to college. Fre- quently when announcing that he would give an examination to the class, he would counsel against the frantic, neurotic attempt to mem- orize every detail in the book. He encourages a working for con- trol, for intelligibility. "Don't open the work to the first word and try to review hurriedly everything you have read. Be calm. Reflect. Keep your book closed for a while, and try to summon up what you know from your previous reading of the work. Try to remember im- portant matters first. Open your book when you need to fill in your whole work. Grasp the work as a intelligible construction of the whole and memorize details that will contribute to an orderly ex- planation. Many students come to college and ruin their minds by an obsession with unintelligible separate parts, unrelated details. Study sensibly. Organize and in- tegrate your knowledge. Don't ruin your mind." NEVER had a conference with Bredvold when we talked about immediate course matters only. He radiated a mellow, leisurely feeling in the comfortable way he sat in his chair and methodical- ly lit and puffed on his pipe as he talked. He was never a harried academician, mechanically per- forming chores with students. In his office he was an 18th century conversationalist. He had time to tell me the long, heroic saga of his former colleague, Hereward T. Price, slowly and painfully making his way back to England after World War I, dia Asia and Can- ada. Or he would tell of his own experiences as a World War I Army captain whose greatest tri- als came after the war when he had to combat the 'discharge fever' of his men and preserve their sanity by keeping them oc- cupied with pretended war ma- neuvers. "We captured one hill about a thousand times." Or he would share his latest evidence of human endurance, courage, and balance: a Polish refugee of World War II he knew, who -had borne years of horror in Nazi con- centration camps and emerged without a trace of distortion and self-pity. Or he would punch away at the current behavioristic cant, the Kinsey Report, and quickly name the best humanistic cri- tiques of it. His robust belief in the power of human beings to live sanely and courageously is like that of Rob- ert Frost, whom he has admired in this century. And Bredvold tells of the time when somebody work- ing at the Michigan Union called him to saythatrFrost had regis- tered there for the night. "I rounded up all the graduate stu- dents I could, and we went to the Union and found Frost and sat there and listened to that wise old man for many hours." (Bredvold is forthright about the modern poets he does not like. "I have never been able to read Wallace Stevens. What do you have to do to read that man? Jump out of] your skin?") The kinship of spirit between a great 20th century scholar and a great 20th century poet is evident in the statement that Bredvold remembers from Frost's talk that night: "You young people are indefensible; you are at an indefensible age. You -must believe in something and believe something in." LIKE FROST, Bredvold has faith in the potential spirituality of the people he teaches, and he treats morally and intellectually lazy people with kindness and un- derstanding even while arguing for moral strenuousness as the distinctive mark of man. "Nobody has convictions about religion and salvation of the soul today. That's why we have tolerance. In the 17th century there were no psy- chiatrists who could make big money saving souls. Society pro- vides a way for you to make a journey to Detroit. Nobody pro- vides for your way through life, though. Every man can go to hell in his own way. We have rules to help people get to Detroit, rules that are enforced by authority that we recognize and accept for our own good. But in education we let children experiment. We don't permit children to experiment in crossing the street, to touch pass- ing wheels as dogs do. But we al- low them to touch the wheels of evil principles in their schooling. The principle of authority is as vital and necessary as that of liberty. The two must be har- monized. Tradition and the church give you ideas, and ideas are indispensable to the humaniz- ing process. Milton said that where there is much thinking there are many opinions, and where you have opinions you have truth in the making. But he was talking about good men." Humanists have seen education fall on evil days, enormous growth to serve superficial ends. "Ameri- can people believe with a super- stitious fervor in going to school, not in education; the only place in modern education where fun- damentals are stressed and where we are successful is athletics." Bredvold makes this uncomprom- ising attack, yet his remarkable faith and patience in his own teaching are revealed in the story he tells of the woman who as- serted in class at the beginning of his 18th century course, "The 18th century is artificial." Bred- void asked what had led her to this conclusion. "The people wore wigs," she announced tartly. "This lady," Bredvold adds, "had her own hair arranged in the shape of cherries hanging along her forehead." BREDVOLD found much to ap- prove of in Montaigne, but when the master slipped on an import- ant issue, Bredvold knew it. In his essay on education Montaigne says, "Let the students alone; they'll be all right." Bredvold says, "This is a good essay for a teach- er to read on Friday when he is tired. Boileau and J o h n s o n, though, have moral muscle and intellectual muscle. Read them during the week." Education for Bredvold means, ultimately, learning how to live well according to human stand- ards. And even though, like Jere- my Taylor, Swift, and Johnson, he knows that without moral working man can be "a vessel of dung," he does not make exorbi- tant demands. He disapproves of a morbid self-reproach for sins of the flesh. "The unrorgivable sin," says Bredvold, "is hardness' of heart. Don't lacerate yourself for physical sins, but spiritual ones." Anyone who sets up as a moral- ist courts the sin of pride. The dilemma of human life is that we have to seek knowledge and wis- dom to live by, but when we think we have some we are in danger of complacency. All his life Bredvold has continued to improve his own understanding. It was a humble high school teacher who bought some works of Kierkegaard with his first pay check. I have always marveled at Bredvold's amazing bibliographical knowledge, auth- ors and titles of countless books and articles that he can summon up instantaneously; yet one day when he could not remember the name of a man at Wooster Col- Prof. Bredvold, a reknowned scholar and teacher, retired last June from the English faculty, after receiving the University's highest honor-the Henry Rus- sell lectureship. He will return periodically to give guest lec- tures. Thornton Parsons is working on his Ph. D. in English here, and teaches at Central Michigan College in Ypsilanti. Divine lege who had written an article thirty years. ago, he said, "My memory is leaving me." To grad- uate students whose questions about his own writings would have afforded him a good chance to display his learning in class, he would say, "Read my books and articles. That's where I have said what I know as carefully and as well as I could." Leo Rockas will testify to Bredvold's radiant' ad- miration during Austin Warren's versatile performance for the English Department readings. But probably the story that best sums up the humble perspective of this humanist in a technician's era is this: As a young instructor at Michigan he went to the dental clinic to have a tooth filled. A student dentist labored all after- noon with that filling. At last it seemed to be finished, but as' Bredvold started to get up, the student asked him to wait anoth- er moment until he summoned his instructor. The instructor re- turned with the boy, peered into Bredvold's mouth, and said, "D." j CHECKED throughout a long period of lectures before I an- nounced my theory that there is a correlation between Bredvold's hunching of his right shoulder and his ability to find the precise word he has paused for. Some lec- turers fill these hiatuses with voiced sounds. But not Bredvold. He pauses, hunches his shoulder, and.-at the end of the hunch the right word comes out. We who have loved and revered this great teacher and wise man will not speak of Michigan's re- placing him on the English fac- ulty. Somebody else will be teach- ing the 18th century, merely. All people, but teachers especially, re- quire good models to keep them doing their best. One of mine will always be Louis Bredvold. 815 601 South State East Williams NO LAUN DERE[ COMFORT Al KYER MODE &CLE FOR YOUR D inspi ration get new skirt from ... 12Noon: chase a t f abLu Made pu r- Aous Sal e!! P.M. Ran matching .. . 2 P.M.: took exam... 5 back to for SP RS Q IEverything for the Skiei WHITE STAG SKI APP NORTHLAND SKI-PC H ENKE BOOTS DUOFOLD INSULATED UN SAFETY BINDING AFT ER SKi BOOT JANTZEN SWEATEI CCM SKATES .F swea ter!!!... Looks as great as . . . 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