ABSTRACT
During the first half of the twentieth century in Britain, Europe, Canada and the USA there developed a distinct notion that the common school and mass education offered a means by which the attitudes, tastes and behaviours of the majority of the population could be reached and potentially altered. How far this sentiment was linked by personal travel and correspondence across national borders is a question that scholars have yet to begin to explore, but a start has been made through the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded Research Network, The Decorated School. Two years of funding have resulted in laying some of the groundwork for the further global exploration of this vast and rich field that brings together the interests of educationalists, architects, designers and artists towards a
Catherine Burke*
Introduction: frameworks of cross-disciplinary research
During the first half of the twentieth century in Britain, Europe, Canada and the USA there developed a distinct notion that the common school and mass education offered a means by which the attitudes, tastes and behaviours of the majority of the population could be reached and potentially altered. How far this sentiment was linked by personal travel and correspondence across national borders is a question that scholars have yet to begin to explore, but a start has been made through the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded Research Network, The Decorated School. Two years of funding have resulted in laying some of the groundwork for the further global exploration of this vast and rich field that brings together the interests of educationalists, architects, designers and artists towards a
democratisation of the arts for all.2 The project’s blog, www.thedecoratedschool.blogspot.com, has documented and recorded narrative histories of schoolbased art as integral elements of the buildings and grounds, and continues to be of interest to scholars and the general public across the world. This was and is a global phenomenon, but we have begun the exploration in the UK and Europe, where the establishment of mass education towards the last quarter of the nineteenth century offered for the first time the opportunity to affect the aesthetic sensibilities of large numbers of the general population who lived lives devoid of art and beauty as defined by the middle classes and bourgeoisie. The 1851 Great Exhibition in London, for the French at least, demonstrated the necessity for France to organise artistic and aesthetic education in order to maintain its quality and leadership in decorative and applied arts. Returning to France after visiting the Great Exhibition, Count Léon de Laborde produced a report promoting the union of art and industry and recommending education of taste for the masses through extensive reproduction of works of art in streets, schools and cottages.3 In England, the Great Exhibition had the effect of suggesting for the first time that art, as a subject, should be an integral part of a liberal education for the masses, “not merely a polite accompaniment for the leisured classes”.4 For some, this was an urgent task if social unrest and revolution were to be avoided. However, this period also witnessed widespread experimentation with art forms, resulting for many in a sense of insecurity about matters of aesthetics. The years immediately following the First World War and the Russian Revolution were characterised by abstraction in art, challenges to traditional forms of expression and major campaigns and agendas set by young modern artists in Europe.
