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August 14, 2005
Is wet-on-wet painting in waldorf schools a form of meditation?
Just a quick recap: I grabbed a brief quote off of the PLANS web-site which included the statement:
many of the "artistic" activities in Waldorf are more accurately described as religious rituals, such as meditation on symbols important in Anthroposophy.
I made fun of this statement and Dan offered up the claim that wet-on-wet painting exercises actually were meditation exercises.
I responded:
Please offer up a quotation from Steiner or from a waldorf
teacher using the word meditation in connection with wet-on-wet
painting exercises for children.
Dan’s response fell extremely flat in my opinion. I simply asked for the word meditation used in connection with wet-on-wet painting exercises. He offered two quotes, neither including the word meditation (nor can anything within the quotes be interpreted to imply meditation) and claimed that this matter proved his point. [I’ve included all of Dan’s material at the bottom so that everyone can examine it for themselves.]
To finish off the subject, he includes a quote from Steiner about a color meditation. The work quoted is not a teacher training text, does not describe an exercise for children and isn’t even a painting exercise. (This exercise could be done while contemplating fabric, construction paper, oil paints, pastels or any other color medium. From the actual wording it sounds to me as though it is supposed to be done as an inward exercise, with no color medium whatsoever.) Then he shows some painting samples from a parent which could, possibly, be construed as having something to do with the exercise in question. On the other hand, the painting samples could be the result of perfectly straightforward color work for children. Remember that the children in waldorf schools mostly paint with the three primary colors, so the fact that some of the paintings include red and blue is not exactly an amazing coincidence. Nor are solid backgrounds with a single color in the center conclusive evidence. Many of my daughter’s painting were painted with a single color and many more with just two colors. It is certainly, faintly possible that a teacher at that particular school was indeed trying to influence children by exposing them to a color exercise meant for adults, but I think I’d want a bit more evidence on the point before I formed a final judgement on the matter.
As an example of PLANS research this is pathetic. As “proof” that all of the wet-on-wet painting classes at all of the waldorf schools in the entire world are actually meditation exercises...words fail me.
As part of my “research” on this topic I called up my younger brother who spent several years at a waldorf school. He isn’t an anthroposophist and isn’t terrifically devoted to waldorf (nor does he loathe it). I’d call him cheerfully neutral.
I asked him if he remembered doing wet-on-wet paintings.
B: Yeah, we did a couple a week or so.
D: Do you remember ever doing anything that could possibly be interpreted as a form of meditation in connection with painting?
B: Huh?
[I explained that it was a serious question.]
B: Well, I suppose when we were trying to decide what to paint it might be called a form of meditation...
D: Well, what do you remember about doing these paintings? Did your teachers show you how to do stuff or what?
B: I remember one class where we learned how to paint mountains in the distance.
D: Describe.
B: Well, first you diluted your paint until there was just a little paint, but mostly water and covered the whole paper. Then you took a little more paint, but still fairly dilute and started further down the page and laid down a second layer. Then more paint and a third layer further down. If you made the tops of the layers a little jagged it looked like mountains going off into the distance.
D: Okay.
First, he describes thinking about what to paint. Whoops, creativity and freedom of choice rearing their ugly head. Then he describes a perfectly straightforward class in technique. Hmmm..
My brother’s teacher was a very serious anthroposophist: but somehow he missed the class on making the kids meditate during their wet-on-wet painting classes. Damn!
Deborah
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Dan, thanks very much for including correct citations with each quote. You made my librarian's heart rejoice :-)
Dan offered the following material:
"Art is taught in the Steiner schools independent of contemporary
trends and tastes ... Art is taught, not to make the children into
artists, but to expose them to the healing influence of color, to
exercise their creative wills, and to counteract the tendency of our
time to set the imagination apart from other learning activities."
[Richards, Mary Caroline. Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education
in America. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press,
1980, p. 26]
"What we first and foremost want to achieve is to open the mind of
the child for the true quality of the colors, to give him the
exciting experiences of red and blue and yellow and green, and to let
him partake as fully as possible in the healing truth: "Color is a
manifestation of life revealed by the spirit." [Pusch, Ruth, Editor.
Waldorf Schools: Volume I: Kindergarten and Early Grades:
Thirty-three articles from "Education as an Art", Bulletin of the
Waldorf Schools of North America 1940-1978. Spring Valley, NY:
Mercury Press, 1993, p. 111]
Grounding us in Steiner, a meditation on colors:
Concept of a blue circular disc with red surrounding. Then
transformation into a red disc with blue surround. Reconversion to
the original state. Do this seven consecutive times. Conceive through
inner observation how thinking thereby becomes mobile and free in
itself and ultimately is raised to the condition free from the body.
[Steiner, Rudolf. From the History and Contents of the First Section
of the Esoteric School 1904-1914: Letters, Documents, and Lectures.
Edited by Hella Wiesberger, Trans. John Wood. Hudson, NY:
Anthroposophic Press, 1998, p. 71]
And finally, an example of this very exercise, as given to Sharon
Lombard's daughter at the Viroquoa Waldorf School:
http://www.waldorfcritics.org/active/artgallery/talismans05-13.html
Posted by Deborah at August 14, 2005 3:49 PM